Sexism vs. Racism: Where Are We?

In her contribution to the debate over the state of feminism and the mother-daughter battle circling Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as the first viable female presidential contender, The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave, Amanda Fortini writes, “In particular, the campaign has divided women and the men they know on the subject of race. Indelicate as it seems to bring up, the oft-repeated question is, why do overtly sexist remarks slip by almost without comment, while any racially motivated insult would be widely censured?”

An insightful comment, it is as much as asking whether Don Imus was (initially) kicked off the air for referring to members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as the racist “nappy-headed” or the sexist “hos.” Given how much words such as “slut” and “ho” are slung around in the American media today, I could probably take a wild guess.

Fortini continues on to write, “The point is not to determine whether it is harder to be a white woman or a black man in America today, nor which candidate would have more symbolic value. At issue is the fact that race is, as it should be, taboo grounds for criticism, but gender remains open territory.” I am grateful that Fortini is not entering the preposterous realms of Gerraldine Ferraro, who would argue that Obama’s success is due to his role as a black candidate (I’m sure the vast number of African-Americans elected to the Senate and Congress since Reconstruction could only agree…oh wait. And I’m sure those Democratic voters who gave Obama their vote for a complex of hard-thought reasons are equally appreciative of the statement). I am further happy that she is not entering the simplistic territory of Gloria Steinem, who would argue that “gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.”

By all means I do believe gender is vastly restricting, but I don’t think it can be reduced to such a blanket statement given the various manifestations of gender-cum-race-cum-class-cum-generation. Nonetheless, I do think it fair to state, and at this point in the presidential race, fairly obvious, that sexist remarks are tolerated in a way that racist remarks no longer are in American culture. Fortini provides a laundry-list of examples in her article. I was appalled when I saw my young female cousin join the Facebook group: “Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Run for President She Should Just Run the Dishes,” and find it gut-wrenchingly unnerving that McCain would respond to an audience question: “How do we beat the bitch?” with the response: “That’s an excellent question!” On the other hand, we are (tremendously) having one of the most weighty and complex conversations on race this nation has had in… well, ever? Why the levity on the sexism end and the fine probing on the racism side? Why, that is, is sexism not taken seriously, while racism is?

Many commentators have pegged it on the younger generation (hence the so-called mother-daughter fight). Supposedly, it is the youth of educated women who think everything is hunky-dory in the classroom and have not yet experienced the sexism of the workplace, who think: “if it ain’t happening to me it ain’t happening at all.” But I don’t think this is the real issue. After all, in a paragraph just before making this argument, Fortini lists various cultural manifestations of sexism: the fixation on the bodies of female starlets, the deleterious effect on teenage girls, etc. College-aged and younger women today have an overwhelming obsession with their bodies and images, under the impression that “looking” a certain way will help them to reach higher social echelons. In the care-free, responsibility-free atmosphere of college, women are by no means immune to issues of date rape, harassment, the labyrinth of female/male/gay/straight/bi/transgender sexual relations which may or may not border on sexism, and various manifestations of the “old boys club“–it’s still there, don’t think it’s not. Whether women experience overt sexism or not, I think it fair to say that they are not immune to the insidious ways in which a society structured around sexism affects their everyday behaviors and choices, as guided by the responsive actions and decisions of those around them. But we should not place all this weighty blame on a generation of girls who were born into and molded by such a society.

American society now recognizes the absurdity of assuming that one race embodies certain characteristics, but it has not yet reached that point in regards to gender. There are some bodied reasons for this: people find women’s reproductive roles so ingrained that they think they must necessitate certain characteristics, needs, wants of women. On the other hand we have come to recognize that the color of one’s skin does not biologically determine one’s makeup. Women are still expected to occupy the more feminized roles in society; they worry about being called “sluts” or “whores,” or yes, “bitches”; questions of childcare inevitably revolve around the women’s work/home decisions. Both men and women ignore the fact that telling Hillary to go “fold the laundry” is inherently sexist, because they still believe, in some way, that this is the woman’s role.

I wonder, then, whether the second-wave insistence on women banded together against the sexist onslaught isn’t ignoring a much more powerful tool for undermining these social notions. Yes, on one hand, it is why women need to address the micro-concerns: the sexist slurs and the division of household duties. But, does it make sense to claim that women, as a gender group, must vote for Hillary? As if we, en masse, carried the exact same concerns and perspectives? Isn’t it absurd to ignore the differences between women’s situations that might in turn help prove that women are not one stereotypical, collective laundry-cleaning, baby-bearing, Mary-vs.-Eve-splicing gender? Wouldn’t it be better to acknowledge that “womanhood” is a veritable patchwork of ages, sexual orientations, races, economic levels, regional groups, reproductive decisions, and career concerns? Wouldn’t it be better to attack such repugnant sexism by making it just as hard, and offensive, to peg “women” under one, all-encompassing label as it is to apply any stereotypical catchphrase to a race?

This is why we have a new generation of women who refuse to listen to their “mothers’” concerns. Despite the large common ground we hold — career, economics, bodily sovereignty, right to sexuality — because our society has changed, our concerns today are different and, in some ways, more expansive. And this is why this third wave generation appreciates the “mothers” for voicing their concerns– as one voice in a crowd, proving that we are a multitude of identities. But please, don’t tell us that we don’t have a right to our own voice as well.