Clinton has, to be sure, faced a raw misogyny that has been more out in the open than the racial attacks on Obama have been. But while sexism may be more casually accepted, racism, which is often coded, is more insidious and trickier to confront. Clinton’s response to “Iron my shirt” was immediate and straightforward: “Oh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well.” Says Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, “While sexism can be denounced more directly, that doesn’t mean it’s worse. Things that are racist have yet to be labeled and understood as such.”
–Betsy Reed, Race to the Bottom, The Nation 19 May 2008, 11-18.
This is an interesting statement which I think is true of the situation of which Crenshaw speaks. But is it true generally? Are there not also sexist things which have yet to be labeled and understood as such? Discuss.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I don’t think that the mechanics of sexism are all that out in the open — at least from my experience. What I have found is that so long as society is running smoothly — that is, so long as human relations are untroubled — the worst aspects of sexism are unlikely to come to the fore. However, if you have a situation — whether in the workplace or the home — in which you have a psychologically troubled male, society immediately presses for a female fallguy.
This seems to have something to do with essentialistic ideas about different “natures”, but there also seems to be a primeval aspect to it –some process of rough calculation that determines that it might be possible to save a man from public damage by sacrificing a woman. In any case, the woman in close proximity to the troubled man is socially nominated to sacrifice something (or much) of her public image, and indeed, her belief in herself, in order to sustain, somehow, the image of the man.
Because the pressures to adopt certain roles of culpability and weakness are behind the scenes, very few people observe the rampant sexism in this.
Yes – definitely! And primeval. And it has to do also with my course on voyages to the jungle, in which we discovered that these were at one level all dysfunctional masculinity quests. This gets hard wired in so early on that it seems “natural.”
Actually I’m not opposed to men voyaging through the jungle — or women voyaging there, for that matter. But I wish it would teach them self reliance, an ethics of rugged independence that required no female sacrifices. (Actually I’m not sure what the content of your courses were.)
What I’m saying is that there is a lot of talk and belief in the innate superiority of the male — however there is even more of a space to prove it. Such a proof would be welcome to me — rugged individual experience with no female sacrifices to support it.
Further to my comment in moderation, I’d like to add that the whole ‘back to Nature’ fashion that is popular with many Western males is inherently psychologically flawed. Consider this: When I go to martial arts training, I learn the skills of a warrior –mental and physical discipline. What I am disciplining here is my “nature”. But the back to nature fashion counsels its victim to give in to his most basic temptations — to give in to his ‘needs’ and to allow others to be the fallguys for his weaknesses.
The question is: how can anybody else endure that? Why would anybody find such an ape attractive?
“But the back to nature fashion counsels its victim to give in to his most basic temptations — to give in to his ‘needs’ and to allow others to be the fallguys for his weaknesses.”
That is more or less what we discovered in the class. I thought it was going to be about colonial(ist) fantasies but as we read the books, starting with Heart of Darkness and also seeing this hilarious Les Blank film on Werner Herzog, Burden of Dreams, and then moving on to modern Latin American narrative, we realized that it was about Western masculinity and the problem you describe.
Well I thought that this exploitative and opting out approach to life might have been a rather new fashion. It involves a mentality to trading down: “I may be apelike, but I am the shrewdish ape in the tribe!” So self esteem is maintained even under these circumstances.
I realise that a lot of what we take for masculinity is based upon a smoke and mirrors effect (and not least upon making women look bad so that even the lowliest ape feels positive about himself). However, I was also under the impression that sometimes a genuine amount of courage is involved with various expressions of masculinity, in the traditional sense. (And also, historically, on the part of women — although female courage would not come under the rubric of “femininity” and would thus be overlooked.)
Yes – this, on the courage involved in *actually* fulfilling the roles, is what the city characters in the novels discovered and could not handle. They got to the jungle and the smoke and mirrors strategy no longer worked. And the people there were less sophisticated but more competent.
They got to the jungle and the smoke and mirrors strategy no longer worked. And the people there were less sophisticated but more competent.
I’m all for bringing the jungle home.
There’s a very strange book we didn’t get to read but will next time, I think: MACUNAIMA. It has a movie as well. In it the city becomes a jungle; one leaves one’s conscience behind (in one’s jungle home) before going there. I should study it seriously but it is not in my research program – although now that I mention it I might put it in this book. I should think about what it is and is not doing with gender.
Leaving one’s conscience behind is what tends to happen in a situation where anonymous pressure threaten one’s survival — or seem to. City dwellers are more likely to leave their consciences behind than those who dwell in small communities.
Yes!
Here is just a random note–
One of the reflections that I had after reading your paper that raised issues of belongingness, was that maybe this is a misnomer. I think what we don’t like is to feel decentred within an association of people who are largly narcissists. That produces a deep feeling of unsatisfaction, along with another feeling that we don’t really belong anywhere, although we’d like to.
However, a cure for not belonging would be to remove oneself from the company and association of narcissists. Dealing with people who are real — who form their language with the explicit intent of conveying their real selves — can produce a deep sense of belonging again. And it doesn’t matter who these people are — if they are Spanish, American or Mexican. At base, their language is a human language that we can all come home to.
“I think what we don’t like is to feel decentred within an association of people who are largly narcissists.”
Precisely. This is of course my problem in one of my departments. And then you can meet one non narcissist, no matter how foreign, and feel normal again. It is very striking.
And then you can meet one non narcissist, no matter how foreign, and feel normal again. It is very striking.
Yes — you feel like you “belong” again. So belonging might not be so culturally specific or culturally determined as I had imagined.
And, between you and me, this is why I’m more than happy to maintain my Zimbabwe associations –even unto sending money. What I get from that is the opportunity to engage with non-narcissists.
oh , I updated the masturbation complex on my site.
I still need to absorb that post. On the non narcissists, yes. It is how I got involved in Spanish and Portuguese, actually (although this description does not of course apply to all such speakers), and how I got involved with the prisoners – and the artists … (why are so many academics narcissists)?
I don’t find the Australian academics I know to be so narcissistic. I can see how academia breeds that disposition, but I think Perth academics suffer much more from a kind of cultural insularity (we are the most isolated city, geographically) rather than narcissism. However, what happens behind the scenes I am not privy to.
Upon reflection I don’t find the American ones to be all that narcissistic either, except in certain departments – English and French come to mind, although this doesn’t apply to everyone in those fields, of course. There is something or other to be made of or expanded upon from this – having to do with the precarious position of the humanities, poststructuralism, and different things like that.
I think that something about scholarship is actually a little bit, well, deferential in its very construction. I mean I am studying Marechera to learn from him — which is only right because he knew more than I did, and I need to follow this pattern. However, part of me wants to be the writer, and not just the person who is studying the writer. I’m not quite sure that this is for narcissistic reasons, either. I’m just afraid of locking myself into a position as “a scholar”, rather than pursuing whatever appeals to my intellect at the time. (Apparently this is an ENTP trait — to fear being locked into something.)
It’s also a difference between being an intellectual and being an academic. I read an illuminating article about that once and posted about it when I was still blogging on blogspot. One can be both, but one can also be either. Academia means narrow specialization and often academics who aren’t also intellectuals will only be intellectual in and about their research area. I think most people I studied with were both, or at least so it seemed at the time, and so I was shocked to find academics who were just academics – couldn’t figure it out at all.
Yeah. Well one thing I am a trifle concerned with is the way that gender operates in all this. You know how it goes? A wifey can cook at home, but she is never “the Shef”. A lady can write quite nice domestic poetry, but she is never “a Poet”.
So, I imagine that in due course the iron shackles will be placed, again, around my wrists, with people just assuming that I’m of the humble academic mode and would never stand to be “an Intellecual”.
So it is that our very existences are made false.
Sorry — “Chef”
I was thinking of the Zimbabwean colloquial term, “Shef”, which means half way between Chief and someone who cooks up trouble — the party inner circle.
Well someone I met today said this is also the problem in the corporate world. Hence the term academic industrial complex … and so on! Shef, that’s funny…
..Or did I get the words in reverse order of spelling actually? I notice in the poem I’m now studying, its was “Shefs”, but now I can’t find it, and I cannot do much today, as I need a day off.
Oh well. I might be going to a conference in London if I am invited
conference I am organizing, called “Dambudzo Marechera: A
> Celebration”, to be held in Oxford, UK, on May 15-17, 2009. It is intended as a
> multi-media festival aimed to encourage a deeper engagement with Marechera’s
> writing through creative approaches. Its additional aims are to promote African
> literatures in English in the UK, foster interest in the issues of
> postcoloniality, and discuss the challenges of teaching and studying African
> literature within the context of a university in the West. Confirmed speakers
> include Flora Veit-Wild, Ben Okri, James Currey, Norman Vance, Robert Fraser,
> Gerald Gaylard, Brian Chikwava, Helon Habila, Nhamo Mhiripiri, and Heeten
> Bhagat. Several Zimbabwean artists will also pay tribute to Marechera,
> including Chimanimani, an eclectic music ensemble. The festival website,
> http://www.marecheracelebration.org, will be launched next month.
Ah yes:
Portraying post-independence (circa early 80s):
Minds run out of petrol are abandoned
At the university garage
Black lassitude in fits and starts
Lashes out in beautiful fist:
Workers of the world Ignite!
Under the gumtree and jacaranda
Beggars and tourists, the povo and the shefs.