Flowers and Chocolate
Maybe it began with Martine's post on "reverse sexism", or really something else, or maybe it's just a recurring topic with me, but it cropped up in a conversation with James a couple of days ago — how often we say sexist things — in this context, I mean comments which belittle women — without necessarily realising it. In my experience, this has mostly come from men (it might just be that I appear to hang around men more so than women), but women are also prone to saying the same about other women.
Consider the "woman driver" phenomenon. Chances are pretty good that if a car comes screeching around the corner or halts very suddenly, or some other equivalent apparent clumsiness, and you happen to notice that it is a woman behind the wheel ... the phrase "woman driver" probably comes to mind. If it's a man, you'd probably think "idiot", but never "man driver". I've caught myself thinking "woman driver" more than just a few times, and as I became aware of the significance of it, I marvelled at the strength of stereotypes which has been so solidly instilled in my thinking all the way through my youth.
In fact, I was not aware that there was anything wrong with this "paradigm" until I learned to drive, and I realised that I was, in fact, not at all a bad driver. I remember the day I was doing a hill start during a lesson and balanced the clutch and the gas so well that when I let down the hand-brake, the car neither rolled backwards nor lurched forwards — it stayed purring, ready to go. My driving instructor was suitably impressed. And surely there are other women like me. So whence did this "woman driver" thing come? And the worse thing is, even women buy the paradigm. If you begin to teach a woman how to drive but feed her negative things which make her feel stupid, of course she will make a nervous and unskilled driver. Try doing exactly the same to a man and see what kind of driver he becomes.
So, I brought this point up in a discussion with James, and he mentioned that a study has proved that men have better sense of direction than women. I have to admit that I scoffed at that. For one thing, very few things have been abused more than the humble scientific method — it is not possible to conclude if the results of a study is accurate without knowing the original hypothesis, the method, and the sample on which the experiment or survey has been conducted. It only takes an inaccurate and insensible sample to void the experiment, depending on the hypothesis, and such "results" never include the margin of error that is present in every scientific experiment. Secondly, why on earth would someone conduct such a study in the first place? What would have been the point? To prove that one gender is better at another at a certain thing? And what would that achieve? Economic benefits? Did it have the underlying intention to convince women not to bother buying maps because they won't be able to read it? Somehow, I think not.
I was still pondering about the particular study the following morning (in the shower, it's my thinking place), and thought that in fact, if the study really wanted to prove that men are more predisposed towards women in having a sense of direction, the study would have to be conducted on children, maybe around the age of 2 or 3, before the education of children takes on too much of a role which would introduce a heavy bias into the growth and development of a child, socially and biologically.
I digress. I now cite two conversations that have happened to me recently:
(talking about what we do, day-to-day, during our free-time)
Me: Oh, I just tend to preoccupy myself with doing stuff.
Guy #1: Do you preoccupy yourself because you recently broke up with your boyfriend?
Me: I'm sleepy.
Guy #2: Not sleeping well? Are you stressed?
Me: Probably :)
Guy #2: Are you stressed because you just broke up with your boyfriend?
Me: Funny, why do you ask that?
Guy #2: Well I don't know a 26 year-old lady might be stressed about.
Now, I didn't scream at either of these two men. They were not at fault, they have merely absorbed the trash their society has fed them — an implication that a girl could be so terribly preoccupied with her man that she has not a life nor interests of her own. (Oh all you who know me well, laugh now!) The sad thing is, I have encountered enough instances of conversation like this personally to not even flinch.
Heard at a bus-stop, between a Canadian man and a Malaysian or Singaporean woman:
Man: Do you have to go home and cook?
Woman: Um, no, I don't cook.
Man: Oh, that's kinda cute.
Me: (!!!)
Woman: I can cook, but I don't cook very well.
Man: How long have you been married?
Woman: Since 1997.
Man: Oh, that's a while. I just thought that seeing as you're married, you'd be making more of an effort ...
Over the weekend, in a bookstore, I was looking for "The Ethics of Ambiguity" by Simone de Beauvoir.
Storekeeper: People still read her? Isn't she just a pimp for Sartre?
Alarm bells were ringing in my head as I walked out. Again, I didn't pick a fight, I was busy trying to decide if that was a sexist comment or not. In the end, I decided it was. If Sartre had a male partner in his personal and professional life, there would have been little question that both men developed their ideas together, if both wrote separately on the same ideas. Eventhough Sartre and de Beauvoir had an intellectual relationship, this somehow warrant that she ought to be questioned about her contribution to his ideas.
The fact remains that many of these "givens" and "paradigms" still exist in our normal conversation today, whether we are men or women. It doesn't mean, as I tried to explain my point of view to James, that we can't joke about it, but it truly comes down to respect and "appropriateness", and context. Humour is something requires an entire investigation all by itself.
And so I poured my thoughts out to the wise and witty Wena who nowadays greet me with "Coffee!!" instead of "Hi!" because she thinks I'm a caffeine addict. I complained that specifically amongst the Asian culture, where I keep meeting men who are not aware of the implications of their words, that some re-education is required. And the wise-and-witty-Wena said, "And women too."
And women too. As women, we are still learning about our place in the world. Several thousand years of history is hard to change. It is necessary to learn to fight, but it is also just as important to learn when not to fight.
"Respecting a woman" should never even be a phrase that comes to mind. It's certainly not about flowers and chocolate and candle-lit dinners. It should be about respecting a person for being a person in their own right.
Posted by sniffles at October 08, 2003 10:46 AM