I know more about sexism than most victims of it.
I realize this is a tangent, and perhaps should be moved to the "Fuck Sexism" thread, but I'd like you to explain what you meant by this statement.
I may be misinterpreting what you said (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but this offended me. It offended me very deeply. At the most basic level, you will never understand sexism "more than most victims of it" simply because you are male. What you said (as I read it) seems akin to a white person who has done extensive research on racism who claims that they know more about racism than those directly affected by it. A white person will never know more about racism than a minority, no matter how much they have read and studied. An able-bodied person will never know more about ableism than someone with a disability, no matter how many degrees they have in that field. A cisgendered person will never know more about trans*phobia than someone who is transgendered, no matter how many books they have read. Because those aforementioned people--no matter how many books they have read, or how many degrees they have, or how many years of their life they have poured into understanding these social injustices--are among the privileged. You are among the privileged, Josh, because you were born a man. Yes, you are likely more book-smart than the vast majority of people on this forum. You are most likely more book-smart and well-read on sexism than most victims. But at the core of it, you will never know more about sexism than women.
Again, if I'm misinterpreting what you said, let me know, but as it stands I take serious issue with your statement. As someone who has suffered both mild and severe forms of sexism, what you said dumbfounded and disturbed me.
If you mean that I'm not subject to misogyny by virtue of my sex, and thus don't have the firsthand experience of it, you are completely right. I have been fortunate not to be the direct target of misogynistic behavior, partly because as you say I was born into the privileged sex and partly because I'm picky about the company I keep.
I will say, to be clear, that I have often been the indirect victim of sexism as told by how it directly affects the world I live in and the people who are important to me, and occasionally I have even been the direct victim of misandry.
But the emotional experience of a thing is not the same as a conceptual understanding of that thing. I am literate in sexism. I know all about what it entails, how it works, where it occurs, why it happens, how to recognize it, where it comes from, and so forth. Many of the victims of sexism--sometimes even as a direct consequence of the sexism against them--do not know some or all of these things. They may only know the sting of oppression. In addition to my personal interaction with many friends and others over the years (which is not to be marginalized, I thank you), I have studied the issue more thoroughly than, almost certainly, everybody else here. Nor have I simply memorized details, but come to understand the nature of sexism as fluently as I speak the English language.
It's sort of my pet issue, and all that.
As I mentioned earlier, in philosophy there is the question of whether firsthand experience of a thing is necessary to understand that thing. The issue comes up precisely because there are those who say "If you have not experienced a thing yourself then you cannot know more about it than those who have," which is what you have said here. That assertion is generally incorrect. It gets down to what "understanding" means. Suppose I were blind--which is a much more severe scenario than knowledge of sexism, as it assumes a fundamentally lower level of sentience. Let's say I studied all about eyesight, the concept of visual stimuli, the nature of how it works, the texture of one's exposure to it, and so on. If I were really passionate about it, I could easily come to know more about eyesight than the vast majority of sighted people, who take it for granted and would be hard-pressed to say many pertinent factual things about it because they have never really thought about it or become scientifically literate about it. Without experiencing eyesight, I could come to imagine it, to wax artistic about it, to conceive of it using reference points that are meaningful to me, and to appreciate the power that it gives a sighted individual. What I would not be able to do is directly experience it myself. If I were able to cast off my blindness and directly experience the power of vision, the only things that would change are that I would be able to derive utility from it, and, more pertinently, the experience of vision would combine with my conceptual understanding of it to make my understanding more literal--more
personal.
With misogyny, it isn't even the case that I am missing one of my senses. What I am missing are the ill-effects of misogyny. Instead of being fundamentally cut off from the experience, however, the ill-effects of misogyny are specific versions of more general ill-effects--such as the subversion of the will, selective treatment on irrelevant grounds, irrational hatred, and actual physical violence. I have experienced all of those things, and they are cousins of the experiences of misogyny. I hope you can appreciate the significance of the fact that the experience of misogyny is not unique in human existence.
However, even if the experience really were something as fundamentally unique as, say, eyesight--something which cannot be experienced in any other way--it would still not be the case that I could not come to know a thing as well as or better than many (not all!) among those who can experience it. To objectively understand of a thing--to understand how it affects people, how it works, etc.--personal experience isn't necessary. The personal experience certainly helps. But it isn't a prerequisite, because the nature of comprehension transcends emotion. Emotion--that is, direct personal experience--colors our understanding. It adds to it. It does not diminish it. But the structure of the thing being understood exists independently of the tones in which it is colored.
None of the above ought to be a point of contention. If you construed my wording in my earlier post to somehow diminish or demean the experience of those who suffer from sexism, then please accept this clearer explanation in its stead. More than that, I cannot offer. I have been on the receiving end of bigotry before; I know what the feeling of it is like if not necessarily the flavor of any one form that bigotry takes. And I empathize more than perhaps you appreciate with the victims of sexism. Human experiences, after all, seldom occur in a vacuum, and one person's experience can affect people connected to that person. To say that I have not personally known the pain of misogyny belies the pain that I feel of it through others, the pain I feel to see all of my species brutalized by sexism in all its forms, and to a lesser extent the pain I feel from occasionally being the target of misandry--which is what you did to me in your very post.
I may seem like an arrogant intellectual, because after all I am. But that appearance does lead people to mistake me sometimes. For some reason, of all the discrimination I have suffered in my lifetime, the one that hurt the most was back when I worked at my student newspaper at university. I was in the newsroom, where several of us were talking about something to do with racial poverty. When I made a point (I don't remember exactly what), the news editor, who is brown-skinned, asked me something to the effect of what I could possibly know about being poor. It's true that I'm white-skinned, but I was also probably the poorest person in that room. He didn't know that, and maybe you don't know that any male who is not utterly disconnected from humanity can come to know and understand the evils of misogyny even without being a personal victim of it.
You are very good at being clear with your feelings. I appreciate your telling me that my earlier post dumbfounded and disturbed you. I hope this explanation eases your discomfort. Even so, I am wary of posting such an honest reply. Romantic breakups are a rotten time to be getting into arguments, and if this post
doesn't ease your comforts then I have done nothing but add to your pile of frustrations, which I would really hate to do. Nevertheless, I gave it much thought and I am posting it anyway. There isn't much I can do for you, Saj. You are so often hurting and I always feel helpless to do anything to help you feel better, despite wishing that there was something I could do--because I empathize with your plight and also because I happen to think you're a good person. But there's not, not a thing I can do to help. The most I can do is respect you, and try and be your friend, and be honest with you when you ask me a serious question. So now you have my honest answer. Sexism isn't just an academic issue for me. I take it very, deeply personally. You cannot say I am not wounded by its existence in this world, or that I don't know about it--or at least you cannot say those things and be correct. In a thread dominated by people whose intellectual contributions I not only disrespect but in tush's case outright disdain, I hope that you, at least, will understand what I mean. If not, then at least I have made the effort.
