Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    
    	How To Tell A Bussinessman from a Businesswoman
    
    A businessman is aggressive; a businesswoman is pushy.
    
    He is careful about details; she's picky.
    
    He loses his temper because he's so involved in his job; she's
       bitchy.
    
    He's depressed (or hung over), so everyone tiptoes past his office;
       she's moody, so it must be her time of the month.
    
    He follows through; she doesn't know when to quit.
    
    He's firm; she's stubborn.
    
    He makes wise judgments; she reveals her prejudices.
    
    He is a man of the world; she's been around.
    
    He isn't afraid to say what he thinks; she's opinionated.
    
    He exercises authority; she's tyrannical.
    
    He's discreet; she's secretive.
    
    He's a stern taskmaster; she's difficult to work for.
    
    
    (Loosely adapted from "The Executive Woman")
    
    

        What bothers me most about this kind of thing is that it seems
        to just perpetuate what ought to be put to bed for once and for
        all. Granted that some people feel as some of these little
        contrasts suggest, but on the whole very few people hold them
        all in that extreme. The lists in these two notes seem to imply
        that all men or most men believe all of these things. I just
        don't believe that's so. 
        
        Lots of us (us people, not just us men) have biases and quirks
        we'd rather not. Some of us are really quite horrid. Most of the
        sexism I've seen, though, is more subtle and less intentional
        and straight-forward than these lists.
        
        Also, I think a lot of what happens to us is conditioned in part
        by our expectations. If you keep pounding into women's and
        girl's heads that they will always be treated badly by men or in
        the work place, I think they'll believe it, come to expect it
        and pertetuate it. If more of us could just act as though the
        world was full of human beings, and treat them and expected to
        be treated with love and respect, I think it would do us much
        more good. 
        
        If women expect mistreatment and treat it as a normal, if
        horrid, part of life, I think that sexism will survive longer
        than if they react with surprise and indignation when it occurs.
        "Oh! My, how could you! You couldn't possibly have meant THAT!"
        seems a much better reaction to cultivate than "Oh, no! Another
        male chauvanist pig. Just about what you can expect from a man." 
        
        I'm not saying that sexism is really much of a surprise here and
        now, or that people should be ignorant of it and its dangers.
        I'm just talking about tone and approach, about expectations,
        and effective ways of getting along in the world. Among other
        things, men can use the surprised indignation approach much more
        readily than the "oppression is just business as usual" approach.
        (Well, if not more readily at least more positively.) If we
        define non-sexist as normal, and sexists as a deviants, it gives
        us more of an edge than if we define sexism as the norm and
        ourselves as martyrs for the cause. 
        
        JimB. (A hippy who has come to believe in winning by co-�pting
        	the establishment.)

I disagree with .-1, think it's a good idea to expose these subtle and
covert examples of sexism by exposing them to ridicule. I don't think lists
like .0 and .1 perpetuate sexism, they just point it out. Sure they're
exaggerated and stark, but once you learn the difference between black and
white you can also learn the difference between dark gray and light gray, or
pure white and off-white.

There is a very prevalent attitude in these "post-feminist '80's" that women
are now liberated, and we no longer have to watch our language, or ferret
out sexist policies and statutes, or worry about equal employment
opportunities for women or pay any more attention to any of the problems
that surfaced in the '60's as women's issues. I think this attitude goes a
long way toward perpetuating sexism, and I'd like to see it dropped.

Don.

    
    Re .2, conditions just haven't improved enough to give up the fight
    yet!
    
    Re .3, I totally agree.
    
    Lorna
    

        If you will reread my note .2 again, I think you will find that
        I am not advocating complacency or denying that sexism can be a
        real problem today. I merely feel that absolute statements like
        those found in .0 and .1, and in fact the bitter views one hears
        upon occasion in this file and elsewhere contribute to the very
        thing they wish to end.
        
        Absolute statements like "marriage is a bad deal for women" or
        "all men are oppressors of women", or "women can't get ahead",
        or "just like a man", or on and on, all reinforce the
        expectation that sexism is business as usual. It defines what is
        normal and what is unusual. I firmly believe that what is needed
        is to define sexism as something distasteful, abnormal and out-
        dated.
        
        I'm not claiming that sexism is the sole property of the past,
        just that it OUGHT to be that we should CONDEMN it as an idea
        whose time has come and gone. 
        
        It's part of a general optimistic approach that I take to the
        world. I don't want to concentrate on the bad things that we
        have to overcome, but on the dreams that we have and the gains
        that we've accomplished. Look at the rhetoric of men like Ghandi
        and Martin Luthor King. They didn't deny there were problems,
        they fought against them, but they did so by upholding the good
        not by concentrating on the bad. "I have a dream" is a much
        better way of accomplishing social change than "Down with
        Whitey".
        
        Bitterness and recrimination only beget disaffection and
        division. Dreams and accomplishments advance the world and
        change what is written in our hearts. Deny the bad and affirm
        the good, that's my way. I claim it works, and in the mean-time
        it leaves you happier than being consumed by anger. 
        
        JimB. (Still a hippy who believes in winning by co-�pting the
        	establishment.)

    re .0
    
    "He's having lunch with the President -- he's on his way up.
     She's having lunch with the President -- she's having an affair."
    
    Assumptions like these (the President is assumed to be male), 
    always make me cringe.  (And pretty ironic in this context!)
    It's a good example of how we need to keep pointing out 
    sexism when we see it.
    
    
    Camille