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Notes -
What makes sexism more tolerable than racism?
So I was watching a video the other day about being a woman in NYC. And something this women said stuck out to me, and this something I notice In liberal/Progressive circles when it comes to Men specifically:
There is often deep talk in many feminist circles, and society, generally, about how scary it is to be a women, and how fearful women are of Men. Im not here to argue that this fear is unjustified - I understand it fully, but here is what I think is a bigger problem with this: It is, by definition, prejudice. Thats honestly not the problem I have with it, the problem is a perceived double standard between prejudices.
Im sure everyone here is aware of the not so secret that Men as a group commit more violent crime than women - Mass Shootings, Rape, ect. As a response people are more fearful and more cautious of men as a whole. And for the most part, it seems that we consider this prejudice justifiable. No one would really refer to this as "Sexism"
Yet, with race & religion (and fascinatingly enough, this young women herself, despite being very liberal, is prejudice against her own race) we would reject this very reasoning. For example, according to the Global Terrorism Index, at least 75% of global terrorism comes from Islamic Groups. Yet, if some one says that they fear Muslims, or don't think they should be able to migrate into the country, many of these liberal types would revere this as a form of "racism", after all, not all Muslims are terrorist. Same for Black Men, they have a disproportionate amount of criminality, yet if you said what this young lady said as police officer, and that you profile Black Men more often because they are more likely to do it, you'd be cooked alive.
The obvious intuitive response someone could give here is that, Men & Women are obviously different in a way that people of different races and religions are not (unless you are a race realist). We know biologically that males are more aggressive, so them engaging in more criminality and being the scarier sex overall should be no surprise, thus, this prejudice isn't wrong. But the issue here is that this is obviously not a very progressive explanation, as these progressives typically believe that differences between the sexes are due to the social construct of gender, and that society is largely responsible for this difference. But this merely mirrors the same beliefs about differences we see between races and religious groups, no? If all these differences were indeed, socially constructed, and a product of patriarchy - white supremacy, etc, Than why wouldnt it follow that this prejudice is wrong too? Is it not sexist to believe that someone is inherently more likely to kill and rape you due to a immutable and arbitrary characteristic, like gender, in the same way believing that black people are Muslims are more likely to kill and rape others because of their faith & skin color, and treat individuals within these groups accordingly based on that? Its not something inherent about men (or muslims, black people) that make them more likely to be violent, society is to blame!
So the question here is this: Why is prejudice based on sex tolerable, but prejudice based on race & religion, not?
I think there's a few things going on, personally.
One is that men aren't really a group, in a sense that they defend themselves or have social legitimisation to fall back on, qua being men. Even when "the patriarchy" was a thing, "men" weren't a group, "old powerful fathers" were. Young men have historically always been shafted. Because men don't really constitute a group (in the sense of banding together or defending each other's interests, purely based on their sex), they don't and can't defend themselves very well (or at all) against being tarred like that. Women are a group, women see each other as a (weak) collective, they advocate for group interests and repudiate attacks against women-as-identity. Even when masculinity was more of a thing it was never really a thing for men for themselves (rather for family, nation, etc.)
Also, women are better at advocating their positions through appealing to social consensus. That's again because they form a meaningful group but also because they are better at some interpersonal stuff (not all of it). So they are better at making "men suck" be a social consensus thing.
Black people very much are a group. I think the study showing that black people show great in-group solidarity, greater than other ethnicities, has been shared a lot here. Black identity is something that's cared about, it's high status, it has social legitimisation, etc. Black people argue as a collective, men don't.
Muslims also are a group that strongly defends its honour, sometimes to the point of violence (cf. Quran burning). And, well, sadly that works. Politicians would rather introduce blasphemy laws than piss them off.
But black men aren't a group qua being men - only qua being black. So black women saying men suck being OK is not surprising.
Of course this all pre-supposes you don't buy into the tenets of modern liberalism at face value - that it's about people being treated equally rather than power between people (the often repeated "Who, whom?"). But I think at this point even ardent liberals don't pretend the movement is about actual equality anymore.
Notably, since then there has been a pretty effective campaign that has largely eliminated, reoriented, or discredited male-specific spaces. There are a few around still, but there were prominent men's colleges and other groups last century. Many have adapted to allow women (and I'm not sure I'm personally upset by this), but women's specific spaces (women's colleges, Girl Scouts) are still allowed.
Similar, but even more aggressively for race-specific spaces.
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