Gloria Steinem on sexism
January 9th, 2008, 7:27 am · Post a Comment · posted by fsherman
One quote from her New York Times column
: “So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what”
I’ve often noticed that TV and movie characters can be heroes even when sexist to an outrageous degree. They’d never get away with it if they had the same level of racism or anti-Semitism.
