There can be little doubt that sexism is a real phenomena. There can also be little doubt that it acts as a real restriction on the development of women and their careers. It is also a fact that apart from outright and open discrimination against women, there are forms of sexism which are insidious and fairly pervasive with a long-standing tradition behind them. But any meaningful investigation of the nature of this sexism would have to include its causes. Without any investigation of social causation, a mere description of some forms of sexism can easily descend to the level of childish assertion. And this is exactly what has happened in Nijole Benokraitis Subtle Sexism.
Lest I be accused of exaggerating, I refer to the epilogue where a story is told about a mermaid who was captured by three men and begs to be set free in return for granting each of them a wish. The first man asks her to double his IQ. The second asks her to triple his. And the third asks her to quintuple his. The doubled IQ. starts reciting Shakespeare, the tripled starts spouting mathematical solutions to hitherto unsolved problems of physics and chemistry. But the mermaid tries to dissuade the third. The last lines of the book are:
Please, begs the mermaid, `You dont know what youre asking...itll change your entire view on the universe...wont you ask for something else ?...a million dollars, anything ? But no matter what the mermaid said, the guy insisted on having his IQ increased by five times its usual power. So the mermaid sighed and said, `Done.
And he became a woman.
Such a conclusion of what is supposed to be used as a reader to be used in courses in social work, womens studies, gender roles, political science, public administration, marriage and family, business administration, communications, criminal justice, social problems, and human resources makes one pity the students who are subjected to it.
Benokraitis is professor of sociology in the division of criminology, criminal justice, and social policy at the University of Baltimore. She claims in her preface to this edited collection of articles that much of the openly blatant sexism in the US has decreased because of federal and state laws against overt discrimination. Although in her explanation she seems to equate sexism with sexual harassment, either way it seems difficult to believe, given the record of sexual crimes in the US. She defines three forms of sex discrimination blatant, subtle and covert for greater analytical clarity although they may often overlap or occur simultaneously. Blatant and covert are both defined as intentional. Subtle sex discrimination refers to the unequal and harmful treatment of women that is typically less visible and obvious than blatant sex discrimination. Nine types of subtle discrimination are detailed: condescending chivalry, supportive discouragement, friendly harassment, subjective objectification, radiant devaluation, liberated sexism, benevolent exploitation, considerate domination, and collegial exclusion. Very politically correct!
The articles essentially consist of examples of all these in different fields like college campuses, engineering, family patterns, the legal profession and courts, etc. Most of them are individual examples. A few attempt micro-statistical samples. There is one article on Hillary Clinton in political humour which argues that sexual and demeaning oral jokes about Hillary abound because of an uneasiness, at best, and hostility, at worst, towards influential women. Admittedly, the jokes listed are quite crude and cheap, but there is much more than mere sexism to account for them.
And here lies the major weakness of the book. There is no comment, let alone analysis of the nature of society where a dehumanising of relations between people is taking place. Despite a few token references to the lower echelons of society, the book is mostly preoccupied with the professional middle classes, all involved in a highly charged competitive world. That this is a marked feature is demonstrated by the host of little stories of interaction between men and women that are listed as examples of sexist behaviour. The relationship between the uncouth attitudes to women and the overall set of social and cultural values of American society that underpin them is completely ignored.
The result is a highly unsatisfactory and shallow analysis, assumption of a feminist audience and pedantic methods of effecting a change. Having a distinctly white collar bias, the book has a tendency to miss the wood for the trees.
It seems that the authors have little to offer in terms of prospects for change other than a few warming trends like a task force on the status of women at Ball State University whose report on sexism evoked the following response from an academic dean: The information you brought us was irritating, uncomfortable, and forces us to confront a problem....according to the Pearl Theory, we can plan for something beautiful and valuable to grow once the oyster is irritated, uncomfortable and shaken. Would it be rude to laugh?
