For all the references to the “historic” quality of Hillary’s run for the presidency, sexism as a political topic, still seems to be merely riding along in the passenger seat. While racism as a topic has gone viral, like the Reverend Wright videos, sexism plays like an old sitcom in syndication, Geraldine Ferraro and Gloria Steinem speaking out like ghosts of a social-issue past, conjuring images of bra-burning flower-children from our culture’s collective subconscious. The tepidness of analysis on media sexism compared to that on racism seems so glaring it raises the question of just how far behind we are in fighting such ignorance.
Obama made a great speech this week on race in America. Almost every aspect of race relations he mentioned, however, could be just as well applied to gender relations. As the 2005 Census demonstrates, there is a wealth and income gap between males and females, just as there is between whites and blacks. There is discrimination in hiring, among police and fire departments, and at loan agencies against women and African-Americans. The failure of our abstinence-based sex-education programs to protect young women is also evident, as a new study reveals that one out of four teenage girls has at least one sexually transmitted disease, an astounding reflection of the lack of resources and information young people receive. Furthermore, the meager number of women in science-and-math-related studies is justified by “scientific proof†concerning the “male brain” versus the “female brain,” a throwback to the way analysts for decades excused racism on “scientific†notions of “inherent biological differences.†It’s the same today with sexism.
Tracy Morgan’s spiel on SNL last week is an example of the way we view racism and sexism. Morgan trades in stereotype, of course, but the stereotypes he drew on here make the same subtle distinction we hear made all the time, an essential factor in the nature of the biases. Black stereotypes are mostly cultural stereotypes: smoking Newports, drinking Old English, growing up on government cheese, etc., as Morgan put it. Of course, these stereotypes reference the negative characteristics arch-racists spuriously ascribe to African genetics, but most people see these stereotypes as tied to distinct social and economic history. The gender stereotypes, though, are accepted as societal but also as obviously biological. Morgan implies Hillary Clinton’s prime merit is that she is the wife of Bill Clinton, the masculine icon that has shadowed Hillary since the beginning of her political career. Then he goes on to reference her female sexuality as something weak and exploitable. She’s rich and unloved and so desperate because, you know, women are like that. She’s also a raging nag if she’s calling you at 3 a.m., because a woman will only call you at 3 a.m. to rage and nag.
Morgan makes it funny because the character he plays is the kind of human who would cause anyone in his life to rage and nag. Still, it’s revealing. There is a divide that separates racism from sexism and that suggests to me that the former will be easier to master than the latter. The effects suffered as a result of the gender power-politics constructed by mostly white men are equally objectionable to those suffered due to the race politics Obama mentioned in his speech. Sexism and racism should both be fought against from the same podium.
Obama is absolutely right about the legacy of discrimination existing not just in the minds of some people but as a universal American reality. I wonder, though, whether any woman would have received as sympathetic a response for making a similarly powerful speech about sexism? Or would she merely have been called an overly sensitive, PMSing feminist and dismissed, even if mostly subconsciously, as making much to do about merely the natural current of biological life on the planet?
——
Hyunhye Seo works as a SESA (sex educator sales associate) at Good Vibrations in Berkeley. Visit her at work with questions or comments regarding pop, politics and/or sex.
