Hilzoy is one of the best writers in the liberal blogosphere, but I have some issues with this post, which my esteemed co-blogger Jeff linked to.
Hilzoy was responding to the image you see here, which is currently on the front page of US News and World Report’s “Washington Whispers.” She wrote:
But let’s take this a bit further. Here are some other polls I do not expect to see on the Washington Whispers page:
If you needed some yard work done, would you hire Mel Martinez, Henry Cisneros, Xavier Becerra, or Bill Richardson?
If you needed a rap DJ for a party, would you hire Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, John Lewis, or Michael Steele?
If you needed an interior decorator, would you choose Jim McGreevey, Barney Frank, Larry Craig, or the disinterred corpse of Harvey Milk?
It’s not just that the people who make up polls for the Washington Whispers page would not expect John McCain to run a daycare center. It’s that they would probably recognize any of these other appeals to stereotypes as offensive. And yet, oddly enough, asking which one of four prominent women we’d like to have running our children’s day care center is A-OK.
Oddly enough, I had exactly the same idea for a response to this “poll,” and described it to a couple of friends. I think making this sort of comparison (what I think of as the “replace _____ with the word black school of criticism”) is the first thought of a lot of white people. I don’t know if making that sort of comparison occurred to Renee (who is a woman of color), but if it did, she didn’t make it the subject of her critique. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. (Renee’s critique, which is focused on analyzing the sexism in the “poll,” is excellent.)
It’s true, as Hilzoy said, that the US News editors would not likely allow her alternative poll ideas to be posted. And if they did, there might be a sizable outcry, like the outcry over Sean Delonas’ infamous dead monkey cartoon.
But the problem with Hilzoy’s post is that many of her readers (who are, I’d bet, mostly white and straight) might come away thinking that this “poll” demonstrates that racism and homophobia aren’t acceptable in the media anymore, but sexism is.
I assume (hope) that isn’t what Hilzoy intended to say. But even if that wasn’t her intent, as writers, we have to be aware not just of what we mean to say, but of how our posts are likely to be received by our audience. And the reading I described is frequent among white feminists; we saw a lot of this during the past election.
I don’t think many black, latin@, and/or queer activists would agree that bigotry against them isn’t as bad in the mainstream media. It’s bad in different ways, and rating them better or worse would be a terrible waste of time. It’s true, as Hilzoy says, that US News probably wouldn’t ask “If you needed some yard work done, would you hire Mel Martinez, Henry Cisneros, Xavier Becerra, or Bill Richardson?”; but an anti-immigrant bashfest by Lou Dobbs in their “serious” op-ed section would be completely unremarkable.
That may be all Hilzoy was attempting to say — but it’s not what she wrote. And I suspect it’s not the message that her readers (who are — like my readers — probably mostly white and straight) took away. This is an area where it’s better not to make the comparison at all — but if bloggers do make it, then we should at least forclose some of the more regressive interpretations such comparisons encourage.
(Tomorrow, I’ll post more about the general practice of “replace _____ with the word black” critiques, and why I think they’re a bad idea.)
I’m a little torn by this one. I agree with the main point that trying to decide whether racism, sexism, or homophobia is worse or more accepted in mainstream media is a waste of time and a loss for all involved. They’re just different, not necessarily better or worse. However, I think that becasue they are different, there may be useful things to be learned by comparing how racism works in the current culture versus sexism, etc. It might be interesting, for example, to know why people feel it is reasonable to make this sort of “who is better at the stereotypical role” about women but not about minorities whereas few women get pulled over for “driving while female”. What is different about the mechanism by which the prejudice acts in each case that makes one sort manifest in one way, another in a different way?
Dianne, I definitely agree: That would be a question worth exploring.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Hilzoy’s post does explore it, or even encourage that interpretation over the “sexism is worse” interpretation some folks are drawn to.
Very well-said.
And of course also the issue of such comparisons treating these issues as separate and distinct in a way that ignores the connections between them and all the folks who occupy more than one category.
…and tho I understand Hilzoy’s discomfort with stereotyping, it seems maybe also worth mentioning that accessible & quality childcare could be a perfectly valid political priority for lots of feminists (altho this poll certainly isn’t saying that, so maybe it’s an irrelevant comment).
I concur with Dianne; this kind of exercise is useless (nay, counterproductive) if used to argue that this kind of oppression is bigger than that kind of oppression, but it can be tremendously useful in bypassing an inability to see exactly what’s wrong with this picture. Perhaps it’s–sadly–time for a standard disclaimer whenever this sort of analogy is used.
And just so I’m not just mindlessly me-tooing, the best example of the “rotate ninety degrees” school of trying to analogize around bias that I’ve ever seen is Douglas Hofstadter’s “A Person Paper on Purity in Language“.
Why? It would be uncomfortable; it would no doubt be a somewhat unpleasant conversation. But a waste of time? I don’t see why it would be so, any more
See, from my perspective this is precisely the sort of comparison that needs to get made. Anti-immigration sentiment (for example) can stem from nationalism, classism, xenophobia, and racism, to name four of the most common bases; it can also stem from economic or moral beliefs entirely unrelated to any “ism” at all.
Is it an equivalent comparison, or not? Does an op-ed against immigration equate to the daycare article? Does it have ‘less’ of an effect, viewed alone?
Of course, that does not mean that race ‘loses’ to sexism, because frequency and type are both relevant. My own belief is actually the reverse: that race is addressed somewhat less openly (there are some things that are said about sex that aren’t usually said directly about race), but that race is addressed much more commonly (there are many more issues which affect race at least by proxy, like class and citizenship and language and location, and much of the reason that race isn’t addressed openly is because so many proxies exist.)
But irrecpective of whether you agree or disagree with me, why isn’t it an important topic?
Hi, and thanks for the post. Fwiw, I didn’t mean to say that racism isn’t OK any more, but sexism is, though you’re right, of course, that I should have anticipated and forestalled that take on it. I do think that there is this difference between the two: that USAToday did publish the poll it published, but would not (imho) have published the analogs I wrote up. (Though, on reflection, I was less sure about the gay version: looking back, I wondered whether some part of the implausibility of that one came from the idea of Barney Frank, in particular, as an interior decorator.)
Just as a completely off-the-cuff thought, which I reserve the right to retract instantly and decide was completely stupid: it seems to me that while a number of whites are just uncomfortable with blacks per se, in others racism takes the form of asking blacks to prove that they’re the *right kind* of black person in ways that whites are generally never asked to do. (“We don’t have anything against *blacks per se*; just against *those* blacks.” Etc.) One reason the rap DJ version (an earlier draft asked: who would you rather have as your crack dealer?) seems odd is that the people mentioned would, I think, seem to a lot people to have passed the relevant test, so why would you think these things about *them*?. Whereas I don’t think that sexism normally masquerades as having to prove anything of the kind. There is no test passing which immunizes you from being thought of as a potential day care center provider, for the same kinds of reasons that would preclude any version of ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?’ in which the Sidney Poitier character was female rather than black, but an *OK* woman because of her many achievements and general social acceptability. (I tend to think that homophobia is more like sexism in this respect: there is no proving that you’re the *right kind* of gay man or lesbian.)
This, if true, would be a kind of structural difference between (some) racism and (most) sexism. I do not mean it to have any implications about which is worse — I hate that sort of comparison. But it would explain my sense that USAToday would not have published the analogs I listed (at least not the black and Hispanic versions).
But, as I said, this is just off the cuff rambling, so is probably all wrong.
Whereas I don’t think that sexism normally masquerades as having to prove anything of the kind. There is no test passing which immunizes you from being thought of as a potential day care center provider
Well, I think the “potential day care center provider” question isn’t put across as “who would be good at running a labor-intensive small business in a semi-regulated industry that requires good skills in dealing with the public?” but really as “who’s a good mommy?” And all women are potential good mommies, and that’s not really a bad thing; I wouldn’t want any level of education or professional accomplishment to immunize someone from being thought of as a good mommy.
I’d say the problem is in seeing day care as “substitute mommy” rather than as a service provider who ensures your kid doesn’t drink bleach while you’re at work. The problematic “substitute mommy” view of day care is part of why it’s so contested and difficult an issue: there’s very little pressure on men to save the kids from having to go to day care, because day care isn’t “substitute daddy,” and there are some women who expect too much from day care because they think of it as “substitute mommy” instead of as a fairly basic service that’s just watching the kid, not parenting the kid.
there is no proving that you’re the *right kind* of gay man or lesbian.
I kind of disagree with this one too. The current version of the “right kind” of gay man or lesbian among average, centrist Americans is a gay man or lesbian who fits within masculine or feminine gender norms respectively, who either is in a long-term committed monogamous relationship or who is semi-celibate while searching for such a relationship, and who above all does not refer to his or her sex life but is politely tolerant of hearing about heteros’ sex lives without looking squicked out. Oh, and of course who isn’t “militant,” but that’s a prereq for being the right kind of any minority group.
Or, to use the more common phrase, they’re okay with gay men and lesbians, “just as long as they don’t flaunt it”.
grendelkhan,
I would specify that among centrists, it’s OK to “flaunt” a long-term partner; particularly among moderate women, there’s acceptance and even welcome for bringing a quasi-spouse of the same sex to social events, for example. I have seen Republican women actually coo over plans for a same-sex commitment ceremony.
The idea is to Cover, as Kenji Yoshino would put it, which for gays is to fit as nearly as possible into existing traditional hetero norms. Being in a long-term sexually monogamous live-in relationship is how hetero people have been expected to live, so when gay people live that way, they’re more acceptable. This is how you end up with people who are OK with same-sex marriage but also don’t see why there should be protections for gender identity; it’s the difference between being OK with gays and OK with queerness.
However, that there are lots of people, myself included, who think that some aspects of what used to be identified as “gay culture” really were destructive; I’m with Dan Savage in thinking that the loss of the bathhouses is not that great a loss. Savage’s rhetoric on the issue actually uses the kind of “if this were X other group, it wouldn’t be allowed” analogy that Amp is writing against: “If straight girls were getting HIV or STDs in bathhouses at the appalling levels that gay men are, they would be shut already. It’s a way society demonstrates that it doesn’t give a shit about us.”