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Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
Candace Bushnell May Be A Feminist, But That Doesn't Mean We Have To Like Her

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ladyfalcon is skin deep
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
Over time I've realized that the only regrets I will take to my grave are the times I haven't said something when I should have. Not even necessarily over such important things as fighting sexism, but even down to people in authority spouting facts that bear no relation to reality, that sort of thing. I'd much rather be a bonerkiller humorless feminist than have any more of that disappointment in myself to carry around.
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NadaDunlop
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
So many of these comments mention 'I often hold back' and it resonates with me because I do, too...

But this article and this thread have made me realize I AM NOT ALONE, very vividly. And I can't help but wonder if all of us stopped holding back, maybe we wouldn't feel so alone?

On a related but separate not: I've stopped going to parties and stopped going to bars because its literally impossible for me to without someone saying something directly to me that insults and offends me, as a woman and human being. I wish I knew some of you like-minded people in real life. :/ I'm tired of people saying I take things too personally or am too sensitive; I wish I knew people who would back me up and bolster me instead.

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EdenMoore
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
This is something that has really pissed me off for a long time: How are women supposed to be legitimately sexy (that is, enjoying sex and being good in bed) if we're constantly insecure about our bodies?

It's something that makes it really hard for me not to hate men who engage in that hot or not bullshit. I'm convinced that most of them don't genuinely like sex, or are at least somewhat fearful of it. If they genuinely loved sex, they wouldn't denigrate an entire group of people they're allegedly attracted to.
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VirginiaDentata
09/28/09

@EdenMoore: Or when words such as "cocksucker" are used as insults, why would I want suck cock? Which really sucks (hardy har) because I enjoy giving head immensely, but hearing that it as an insult, well, kinda takes the joy out of it.
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ytuhermanotambien
09/28/09

@VirginiaDentata: Or using "pussy" as an insult. Anyone who does is definitely not getting access to mine.
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Meangirl.is.for.the.Horde
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
My poor SO and close friends have to bear the brunt of my "That's sexist/racist!" remarks on everything from eHarmony commercials to movie previews. I mean, my Tourette's like snap judgements are clearly valuable and insightful (how else would they know why they should be ashamed of their Akon ringtone?!) ... if a bit wearying when you just want to watch a bit of TV after a long day or have a light conversation.

So yeah, I need to maintain to them that I can still have a sense of humor about things- including and especially feminism. My recourse is to occasionally take the piss out of myself: make up an argument with big scholarly words about how I have a cold because everyone knows germs are not colorblind, or how the term "great white shark" is racist. When a girls gone wild ad comes on and I can see all glances slide to me and brace for my eyerolling and hate, it earns you tons of goodwill with your friends to just occasionally say, "What? I'd hit that."
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NowhereGirl
09/28/09

@Meangirl.is.for.the.Horde: I know exactly what you mean. You definitely have to learn when and where and with whom it is appropriate to go off on things. My husband told me that he was embarrassed one night at dinner at his parents house when I started talking about something too "feministy." But he understands now, after years of me going off randomly about things, that I really do keep my mouth shut about it quite a lot, and that it's something he doesn't understand to walk through the world endlessly bombarded by how women are denigrated and objectified CONSTANTLY in our society. I don't however, hold my tongue when his friends are over, and I never will. They all think I'm kind of a bitch, but they treat me with a lot more respect than I think they would otherwise.
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SallySassyPants
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
I had an experience last week in the exit interview from my old company - I brought up that there was sexism in the way women were ignored in meetings, the way men got true promotions and women got these weird sort-of promotions, and how the owner of the company would flirt with the women and with clients. The HR lady, who i consider a friend and is very nice, said, "Oh, well, I guess I just don't look for those things. I just assume I'm as good as them and I get treated that way."

I was just shocked to hear that. I mean, I think I'm just as good as the guys, too, but that doesn't guarantee they'll treat me equally.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
09/28/09

@SallySassyPants: Denial. It's not just for swimming and boating anymore.
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Edited by Rooo sez BISH PLZ at 09/28/09 6:47 PM Rooo sez BISH PLZ was starred

rixatrix
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
Sexism examples:

1) My friend who feels it's his civic duty to criticize the looks of high-earning celebrity women. When I called him out on it, I was shamed, then shunned, and had to endure quite a bit of drama in our little friend group.

2) A woman I work with (she's in accounts, I'm in the creative department in an ad agency) seems to hold me to different standards than her male coworkers. Since I'm a girl, I have to engage in small talk, constantly encourage her, and understand if she bursts into tears inappropriately. She doesn't seem to expect these things from the men around her, and she's accused me and another female coworker of being "mean to her!" because we're a no-bullshit team. And we are legitimately not mean to her, so it seems very manipulative, which I don't appreciate.

3) Another male coworker makes frequent comments about when I might get married. I do not discuss my personal life with him, but he'll ask me and my female coworker, "So when are you going to get married?" Um, excuse me? Again, I don't hear him asking the dudes.

The problem with calling people out on sexism is that it's often subtle, so that when you say something, you risk looking like a conspiracy theorist. "Oh, you're just being sensitive." I have yet to experience really overt sexism - a mechanic talking down to me, or a salesman assuming I don't know anything about power tools. Rather, I experience the sort of ubiquitous sexism that we all endure - waiters giving the tab to my boyfriend (we split everything), men holding the door open even as I'm several steps away (hello, obligation? now I feel bad for walking so slow). It's hard to pin that kind of stuff down as sexism unless your bullshit meter is finely tuned.
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whynotshesaid promoted this comment Edited by rixatrix at 09/28/09 6:33 PM rixatrix was starred rixatrix was unstarred

whynotshesaid
09/28/09

@rixatrix: Re: #1 - I've always thought that guys who do that do so to pump their own egos up. Like, "Sure, she might make more money than I do, and have more power than I do, but I'd never fuck her, so she loses." As if the absence of his penis keeps the woman up at nights.
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Perhaps Not
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
Great post. It is actually morally wrong not to stifle an impulse to find some things funny or sexy. People with Down's Syndrome do things that we would find ridiculous in people without that handicap, and refusing to find them amusing is a sign of maturity, not of being a stick-in-the-mud.

Similarly, a disturbingly large percentage of pornography is about the degradation of women - not the consensual fuzzy-handcuffs kind, the borderline-rape kind - and those films are, in the words of the late, great David Foster Wallace, "not for men who want to be aroused and maybe masturbate. They are for men who have problems with women and want to see them humiliated. Whether Bizarro-Sleaze [the type of film referenced - see Consider the Lobster for the full essay, "Big Red Son"] films might conceivably help armchair misogynists 'work out' some of their anger toward females is irrelevant. Catharsis is not these films' intent. Their intent is to capitalize on a market demand that clearly exists."

To paraphrase St. Paul, "Sinful passions... were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death."

Preachy? You bet. Don't care.
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flucky
09/28/09

@Perhaps Not: I can't believe you just quoted Paul to make a feminist point. Hermeneutics WIN!
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rixatrix
09/28/09

@Perhaps Not: I'm wondering, what's your take on pornography that specifically degrades men, like dominance/submission stuff? Because there are men who get off on that, too.
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vim876
09/29/09

@Perhaps Not:
"...Similarly, a disturbingly large percentage of pornography is about the degradation of women - not the consensual fuzzy-handcuffs kind, the borderline-rape kind - and those films are, in the words of the late, great David Foster Wallace, "not for men who want to be aroused and maybe masturbate. They are for men who have problems with women and want to see them humiliated..."

I'm curious what you think of this: one of my best friends (male) watches porn that is usually somewhere in-between "fuzzy handcuffs" and "borderline rape." However, the company that produces most of what he watches has a segment at the end of every video where the actors come out and interact in a real-life way, talking about what they enjoyed about the scene, being friend-affectionate with each other, and generally assuring the viewer that everything they have just seen was between consensual adults and no one was harmed. I know this because he showed me one (which wasn't weird, because I take a sex educator role sometimes with many of my friends) so he could talk about how he wouldn't really feel ok with porn that didn't reassure him that it was fantasy and not reality, and that the people involved were all cool with it. I think that sort of porn is ok, because it is drawing a firm line between actually hurting people and consensually engaging in sex-play dealing with our culture's concepts of gender and power. I'm just curious to know how others feel about this.
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Perhaps Not
09/29/09

@rixatrix: I think that, broadly speaking, men occupy a place of power in most societies on earth that makes their degredation in porn - especially when it's done for the enjoyment of other men and ostensibly the performers themselves - something not worth worrying too much about. As a rule, I think men who participate in dom porn do it because they want to have demeaning sex, not because executives have decided that they're attractive and should be mistreated for the benefit of other people who find them attractive. Porn - at least mainstream het porn, which has far and away the largest market share - is about putting yourself in the position of the man in the shoot or the video. Even when a male character doesn't "want" to be, I dunno, pretend raped by a woman half his size in stiletto heels and a corset, he's acting out a male fantasy by proxy. There's not the same slippery slope that leads a pretty actress from a nude photo shoot to hardcore, nasty, degrading sex - that's a product of the commodification of women's bodies and it is sadly the capsule biography of a lot of women who perform in porn. No women of my acquaintance have ever expressed a desire to be treated in the way that most porn stars treat women during their videos. Ever.
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Perhaps Not
09/29/09

@vim876: I applaud your friend for seeking out porn that distinguishes fantasy from reality, but I think, if he's not being disingenuous, that he's in the very small minority. Most porn seeks to blur the distinction between actresses being paid to have sex and girls you might pick up at a bar, and I'd refer you to the entirety of that DFW essay, particularly that section: "sex-play dealing with our culture's concepts of gender and power," when it caters to the fantasy life of an upsetting number of men, tends to portray only one power dynamic, fulfill only one kind of desire: to see women consistently and horribly degraded. I disagree that the encouragement of that impulse contributes to any kind of healthy intergender intercourse, sexual or otherwise.
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PilgrimSoul
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
A very good friend of mine once said that the downside of being a feminist is that it will make even the people you love think you're crazy, and you'll have days where you think they're right.

This has been my experience.
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Edited by PilgrimSoul at 09/28/09 5:55 PM PilgrimSoul was starred PilgrimSoul was unstarred

dianersb was bit by a zombie
09/28/09

@PilgrimSoul: Mine as well. Especially when they look at me and tell me that I might be worrying too much after I go on a rant about princesses.
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CerebralMagpie
09/28/09

@PilgrimSoul: I've even had my well-meaning, feminist-within SO tell me I'm going to become a bitter, old lonely person if I keep alienating everybody because of my principles.
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cailizma
09/28/09

@PilgrimSoul: That is so heartbreakingly true. And the thing is, it's not fun to be upset about all the sexism that exists. It's easier to brush it aside; it's less depressing.
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dianersb was bit by a zombie
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
I would rather be a ranty pants than have my boss think it was okay to objectify what's in my pants.
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TurtleSpeak
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
I love this piece, thanks for writing it.

"Making feminism even harder to sell is the fact that it often attacks things that men are supposed to find hot — the pursuit of ever-younger partners, for instance, or surgically enhanced breasts, or mainstream pornography."

I find that to be very true. I never really talk about these things with anyone because I know the inevitable retorts- and I really can't be bothered to go down that road. To be honest I don't care what people find attractive, or what they masturbate to, but I find it disturbing that no one* is willing to think critically about these things. No one questions why it is that these things appeal to them (or, they claim it's "biology"- which is incredibly simplistic and incredibly wrong given our current cultural climate, where no one is free to develop sexually without a significant amount of intervention from certain industries that have a quota to fill... I'm not going to get into it, don't want to rant).
Sadly I think we are too far gone (as a society) to back up and reassess some of these things. Porn culture has become so ubiquitous and it's influence is so strong in the lives of men and women, it's depressing to think how much programming we'd have to undo before we could have a healthy relationship with our bodies, our partners, and porn itself, which can have a place in healthy sexuality but not in it's current manifestation.

*Except feminists! And we just get laughed at.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
09/28/09

@TurtleSpeak: I don't like to think it can't be done. I'd like to think one can be extreme about it, but quiet. (And it took me lots of years and lots of media thrown across the room.)
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whats_in_a_name
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
The last paragraph reminds me of something that Jackson Katz says in his book "The Macho Paradox" Basically what he says is that in most cultures it is considered "macho" for a man to rape or otherwise sexually assult women or other men, when it fact using the deffinition of macho it would be much more macho for a man to stand up against his peers and respect women.

[www.amazon.com]
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Edited by whats_in_a_name at 09/28/09 5:48 PM whats_in_a_name was starred whats_in_a_name was unstarred

Rooo sez BISH PLZ
09/28/09

@whats_in_a_name: I've often thought that. Interesting to have it validated. (And by a man, no less.)
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whats_in_a_name
09/28/09

@Rooo sez BISH PLZ: It's a very interesting book, I highly recommend it, for both men and women.
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secondhandsally
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
Whenever people say "can't you take a joke" or "I was just joking" I always think about how what they're talking about is what they were *intending* and how that has almost nothing to do with what we're discussing, the effect of something.

I usual point out that something can be both funny (or intended to be funny) and hurtful. And do you really want the funny asshole that people smile at to their faces and then tell others that they're a dick?
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whynotshesaid
09/28/09

@secondhandsally: Heh, that's more thoughtful than my response, which is usually, "Oh, that was supposed to be a joke? Aren't those supposed to be funny?"
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Melonball Bounce
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
I used to have a very misogynistic boss. He was horrible, always leaning over my cubicle and making comments on my appearance. He once announced to the entire office that "all women are whores" and continued to elaborate, "i bet every single one of you have used your sexuality to gain something."

I'm still mad about that years later. And pissed off that I didn't have the guts to say anything about it...

All the women that did report him for sexual harassment were deemed 'stupid bitches that can't take a joke' and they all quit soon after because that assdouche seriously created a hostile working environment for them...
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TurtleSpeak
09/28/09

@totallysober: Holy crap, he actually announced that? And no one said anything? Probably afraid to be fired, I guess. Given my bad temper I'd probably have thrown a stapler at his head.
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Ailatan
09/28/09

@totallysober: I have that boss NOW. I hate him and he knows that. Whenever he starts going on with that sort of witticism (for him) like "all women are whores" I just get up and leave the room.
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whynotshesaid
09/28/09

@totallysober: Jesus Christ, how are these people allowed to have jobs? Even putting aside questions of sexism, it's just shitty business practice. I can't imagine it helps productivity when one particularly toxic middle-manager makes the workplace hostile for a large chunk of the employees.
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bowleserised
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
I baulked at her opening sentence:

"When The Times published my article last month on how feminism’s silence over the past decade has ushered in a grim, sexualised culture,"

Did she do any research? Has she not read any major feminist blogs or read the Guardian or the NYT or recent feminist texts or followed any campaigns?
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emilyanne
09/28/09

In reply to Complaining About Sexism Makes You A "Ranty-Pants"
With that Harriet Harman column which is actually one of the most offensive pieces I've ever read - both editor and writer tried to pass it off as a 'joke' while refusing to admit that they would never write about a male politician in such a way. For any one interested you can google Rod Liddle, the writer of the piece, and see what a charming history he has regarding women.
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Ailatan
09/28/09

@emilyanne: Hey! Long time no see! Sorry I'm not more articulate, I'm happy I bumped into you.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
09/28/09

@emilyanne: I've ... heard ... of him.
*is ill*

Much nicer to "see" you back. :-)
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