A review of the basics: sexism in America*
In America, 1/3 of women will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetimes. 1/4 will be in an abusive relationship. Those of us who are lucky enough not to have either of these things happen will still be "kept in line" (kept in fear) by sexual harrassment, catcalling, rape jokes, the continuous acquital of those few rapists who ever do get put on trial, victim blaming, slut-shaming, and all the other lovely things that are part of our rape culture. Those things? Happen to 100% of women.
The pay gap has not disappeared, not even for those of us graduating from Stanford or equivalent institutions. It's even worse for women of color than it is for white women. Women are less likely to be hired in jobs that are still gendered male, less likely to be promoted, less likely to be in administration. Women interviewing for jobs or eligible for promotion are subject to the assumption that they will be worse workers because they will inevitably have children and have to care for them. The face of poverty is overwhelmingly female. Obtaining housing, loans, etc is vastly more difficult as a single woman than it is for a man or a heterosexual couple.
It is a constant fight for a woman's body to be her own. It is everyone else's business whether and when and with whom you have sex, whether you like it, whether it is going to lead to babies, and how you choose to cause or prevent it from doing so. Both a woman's "no" and a woman's "yes" to sexual activity are consistently devalued. Enjoying sex is suspect. Birth control options are often expensive and can be risky to physical or mental health, but it takes a great deal of extra effort to become informed about what the options and risks might be. Information about sex or the workings of your own body is difficult to get and is seen as shameful, regardless of whether you are actually sexually active.
As a woman, every important life choice you make will be, according to this system, wrong. Whether you do or don't have sex with a given person, whether you get married or not, have children or not, have this career or that one or neither, share your thoughts and emotions or keep them to yourself, get involved in politics or stay out of them, conform to a monolithic standard of beauty or don't - this system has a terminology to devalue you and your choices no matter which of those you choose. You can be a prude, a slut, a tease, frigid, overemotional, irrational, heartless, a bitch, a doormat, ugly, a piece of meat, or of course a dyke. Being a good, strong, happy woman - is possible, if difficult, but it won't stop those words from being used.
Almost every woman in this country has, to a greater or lesser extent, a somewhat problematic relationship with food. This relationship is not her fault or her choice, yet the universal assumption is that it is. If you are "fat", it is considered to be a moral failing, despite the fact that size is basically genetic and that it is completely possible to be healthy at any weight. If you are skinny, you are praised, even though this is either something you did nothing to attain or something that is making you miserable or even killing you. Being unattractive is also considered to make you less worthy of respect. These are also problems for men, but not anywhere near to the extent that they plague the lives of women.
Three thousand years of history, literature, art, law, medicine, sciences, humanities, and general intellectual thought are stuffed full of active and automatic misogyny, assumptions of the male as the default, and silencing of women. Men dominate conversations, interrupt women, tell them things they already know (see the anecdote of the woman who had a man explain to her the content of a book she had actually written and he hadn't read), and expect more attentiveness from women in conversation than they give. When women become uncomfortable in male-dominated spaces, it is attributed to the characteristics of the women rather than the behavior of the men.
Housework is a big fucking deal. Women consistently do a much larger portion of housework than men do. Even when the women work more outside the home. Even when the men think they are progressive and nice guys and do their share. This is not even taking into account the vastly disproportionate amount of childcare done by women - as an automatic assumption, not an active decision, and one that often comes out of left field for the new mothers who really believed their partner would pull his weight. Furthermore, women also do more emotional work in relationships. If you do not think that emotional work is work, then you have never done it.
Women suffer from depression at much higher rates than men. It is much more likely that this is a direct result of oppression than anything genetic (see also the higher rates of depression suffered by people of color, or queer youth). Yet the medical model is still set up with men as the default. Our view of women as emotional caregivers means that women who suffer from depression get much less consistent support from their friends and peers than do men dealing with emotional problems, and are more likely to be labeled as needy for asking for support.
And here is the kicker about all of this: every single piece of it is part of an interconnected system. And you are part of this system. No matter how much you deplore the "big things", you contribute to them every time you engage in one of the "little things". Every single time you use the term "bitch", you reinforce this system, no matter how much of a horrible person the woman is that you're describing. Every time you make a joke about women belonging in the kitchen and then think it's cute when someone objects; every time you make a woman's appearance relevant when it shouldn't be; every time you don't call someone out on a rape joke; every time you think anyone is being oversensitive about sexism; every time you let your girlfriend do something you really should have done yourself.
I'm not saying you are a bad person for engaging in the system. We live in the system; it's near-impossible to get out of it entirely. I don't call people out on every unacceptable joke either. (I don't recommend it - you can do more good if you have friends to work with, and friendship requires not calling people out all the time.) But I want you to know that there isn't a clear defining line between the big things and the little things. Some things aren't magically acceptable because they're only a little bit sexist.
And here's the good thing: because the system works in the little things, you can do something about it. If everyone works hard on changing a few little things at a time, it'll work out a lot easier than tackling all the big things from the top down. It's what the folks over at Shakesville and some other places call bailing out the water with teaspoons. One teaspoon at a time.
*This post is woefully inadequate at addressing the problems of intersectionality, but remember that sexism is inextricably tied up with racism, homophobia, ableism, religious prejudice, and so forth. This post is also about sexism in America, not all sexism. One reason for that is that I want to talk about what I know best. The other is to remember that sexism is NOT a problem third-world countries have and we don't. All currently existing cultures have problems with embedded sexism, which manifest in different ways, but are essentially similar.
The pay gap has not disappeared, not even for those of us graduating from Stanford or equivalent institutions. It's even worse for women of color than it is for white women. Women are less likely to be hired in jobs that are still gendered male, less likely to be promoted, less likely to be in administration. Women interviewing for jobs or eligible for promotion are subject to the assumption that they will be worse workers because they will inevitably have children and have to care for them. The face of poverty is overwhelmingly female. Obtaining housing, loans, etc is vastly more difficult as a single woman than it is for a man or a heterosexual couple.
It is a constant fight for a woman's body to be her own. It is everyone else's business whether and when and with whom you have sex, whether you like it, whether it is going to lead to babies, and how you choose to cause or prevent it from doing so. Both a woman's "no" and a woman's "yes" to sexual activity are consistently devalued. Enjoying sex is suspect. Birth control options are often expensive and can be risky to physical or mental health, but it takes a great deal of extra effort to become informed about what the options and risks might be. Information about sex or the workings of your own body is difficult to get and is seen as shameful, regardless of whether you are actually sexually active.
As a woman, every important life choice you make will be, according to this system, wrong. Whether you do or don't have sex with a given person, whether you get married or not, have children or not, have this career or that one or neither, share your thoughts and emotions or keep them to yourself, get involved in politics or stay out of them, conform to a monolithic standard of beauty or don't - this system has a terminology to devalue you and your choices no matter which of those you choose. You can be a prude, a slut, a tease, frigid, overemotional, irrational, heartless, a bitch, a doormat, ugly, a piece of meat, or of course a dyke. Being a good, strong, happy woman - is possible, if difficult, but it won't stop those words from being used.
Almost every woman in this country has, to a greater or lesser extent, a somewhat problematic relationship with food. This relationship is not her fault or her choice, yet the universal assumption is that it is. If you are "fat", it is considered to be a moral failing, despite the fact that size is basically genetic and that it is completely possible to be healthy at any weight. If you are skinny, you are praised, even though this is either something you did nothing to attain or something that is making you miserable or even killing you. Being unattractive is also considered to make you less worthy of respect. These are also problems for men, but not anywhere near to the extent that they plague the lives of women.
Three thousand years of history, literature, art, law, medicine, sciences, humanities, and general intellectual thought are stuffed full of active and automatic misogyny, assumptions of the male as the default, and silencing of women. Men dominate conversations, interrupt women, tell them things they already know (see the anecdote of the woman who had a man explain to her the content of a book she had actually written and he hadn't read), and expect more attentiveness from women in conversation than they give. When women become uncomfortable in male-dominated spaces, it is attributed to the characteristics of the women rather than the behavior of the men.
Housework is a big fucking deal. Women consistently do a much larger portion of housework than men do. Even when the women work more outside the home. Even when the men think they are progressive and nice guys and do their share. This is not even taking into account the vastly disproportionate amount of childcare done by women - as an automatic assumption, not an active decision, and one that often comes out of left field for the new mothers who really believed their partner would pull his weight. Furthermore, women also do more emotional work in relationships. If you do not think that emotional work is work, then you have never done it.
Women suffer from depression at much higher rates than men. It is much more likely that this is a direct result of oppression than anything genetic (see also the higher rates of depression suffered by people of color, or queer youth). Yet the medical model is still set up with men as the default. Our view of women as emotional caregivers means that women who suffer from depression get much less consistent support from their friends and peers than do men dealing with emotional problems, and are more likely to be labeled as needy for asking for support.
And here is the kicker about all of this: every single piece of it is part of an interconnected system. And you are part of this system. No matter how much you deplore the "big things", you contribute to them every time you engage in one of the "little things". Every single time you use the term "bitch", you reinforce this system, no matter how much of a horrible person the woman is that you're describing. Every time you make a joke about women belonging in the kitchen and then think it's cute when someone objects; every time you make a woman's appearance relevant when it shouldn't be; every time you don't call someone out on a rape joke; every time you think anyone is being oversensitive about sexism; every time you let your girlfriend do something you really should have done yourself.
I'm not saying you are a bad person for engaging in the system. We live in the system; it's near-impossible to get out of it entirely. I don't call people out on every unacceptable joke either. (I don't recommend it - you can do more good if you have friends to work with, and friendship requires not calling people out all the time.) But I want you to know that there isn't a clear defining line between the big things and the little things. Some things aren't magically acceptable because they're only a little bit sexist.
And here's the good thing: because the system works in the little things, you can do something about it. If everyone works hard on changing a few little things at a time, it'll work out a lot easier than tackling all the big things from the top down. It's what the folks over at Shakesville and some other places call bailing out the water with teaspoons. One teaspoon at a time.
*This post is woefully inadequate at addressing the problems of intersectionality, but remember that sexism is inextricably tied up with racism, homophobia, ableism, religious prejudice, and so forth. This post is also about sexism in America, not all sexism. One reason for that is that I want to talk about what I know best. The other is to remember that sexism is NOT a problem third-world countries have and we don't. All currently existing cultures have problems with embedded sexism, which manifest in different ways, but are essentially similar.