Today I come to understand, a little better, what a number of my female colleagues have been trying to tell me for years: That men do not realize they are sexist.
I’m not talking about obvious sexism. That kind is easy to spot.
I mean the sexism of highly educated, politically progressive men, thoughtful intellectuals, who would be horrified to be labeled as sexist. That is why theirs is the most insidious kind of prejudice.
I think Simone de Beauvoir framed it very well: Men think of themselves as genderless. So to invite a woman into a an intellectual conversation is perhaps to introduce a “person of gender” — to bring gender into what would otherwise be a purely genderless discussion.
Of course such thinking doesn’t make any rational sense. But irrational thinking can become the norm when a prejudice is so pervasive that it becomes part of the very air a culture breathes.
Perhaps that is why it can be so difficult for even the smartest men to see their own acts of prejudice.
Well said. Particularly: “Men think of themselves as genderless.”
Sorry, I never realised a man (including intellectuals) who didn’t realise he is sexist, when he was. I only met men (mostly intellectuals) who pretended to be feminists and were sexists of the worst kind.