The New Sexism of The 21st Century

For decades, there have been a significant number of men in the west that have reported being on the receiving end of a vague, nondescript and inverted form of sexism that they've never been able to put my finger on. It's coming from women but not from all women, to be clear, but certainly the experience many have had has been consistent over a great deal of women over a significant amount of time and what most have said was that they felt there was something that they were doing wrong about how they moved through the world and that they couldn't be 'themselves'. They were forced to behave in ways that seemed unnatural to them and they couldn't feel safe being their authentic selves.

When you dive deeper into this pattern of behaviour that men have experienced from women over the past several decades and try to come to terms with where it was coming from, the discoveries can only point to one conclusion.

What the research indicates is inescapable. Women are sexists.

For example, take a look at this Facebook Post that I placed on Facebook along with the thread of comments between two women (embedded as a footnote at the end of this article), one who understood my post and another, who is obviously sexists, didn't (click on the image to read the thread generated between these two).

If this had been a post about race issues in a dictionary instead of gender and the thread was as blatantly racist as it was sexist, this person would be banned for life for her hate crime. At the same time, her tone exhibits the exact kind of the oppressed victimhood that typifies the kind of inverse sexism men have been experiencing for decades. What the hell is going on?

The term 'sexist' dates back to 1965 when it first was used to describe anyone who discriminated based on gender. The equality that women sought was equality of opportunity. They wanted access to all the same opportunities as men. Totally reasonable.

According to Shapiro (1985) the term was most likely coined on November 18, 1965 during the “Student-Faculty Forum” at Franklin and Marshall College (p. 5). The word appears in Pauline M. Leet’s forum contribution entitled, “Women and the Undergraduate”, where she defines it by comparing it to racism:

When you argue…that since fewer women write good poetry this justifies their total exclusion, you are taking a position analogous to that of the racist — I might call you in this case a “sexist”… Both the racist and the sexist are acting as if all that has happened had never happened, and both of them are making decisions and coming to conclusions about someone’s value by referring to factors which are in both cases irrelevant. [p. 3] [Leet (1965) in Shapiro (p. 6)]

However, after 50 years, that's not the meaning that the word has taken on. In fact, it's become something far more darker and something even bordering on sinister. Equality of Opportunity has morphed over the past 50 years into Equality of Outcome.

Somewhere along the way, the notion of Equality of Outcome entered into modern lexicon of western sociological philosophies and beliefs. Probably the most salient and common form of Equality of Outcome that we see comes in the form of participation trophies at youth soccer and baseball events. One of the most jarring examples of this came recently at Hanover Park High School in New Jersey where anyone who tries out for the Cheerleading squad becomes a member of the team.

Everyone's a winner, no one is a loser. The underlying dogma behind this Equality of Outcome is that players who lose will feel bad and it will cause irreparable harm to the losing child's self esteem so trophies are given for the sheer stake of participating. What the research is now telling us though is that participation trophies actually make kids who lose feel worse about themselves because they know the didn't deserve it and it makes the kids who win feel worse about themselves because participation trophies for the losers devalues rewards associated with winning. The evidence suggests that participation trophies breed entitlement and narcissism, which is exactly the opposite of what the belief system that led to the trophies to begin with suggested. But time and again where we see Equality of Outcome used as a way to bring about social, legislative or political change, we rarely if ever see the underlying theory behind it's implementation vetted. For example, are participations trophies really such a good idea?

But the prevailing dogma that Equality of Outcome is based on goes much further and deeper than simply rewarding youth sports participants for showing up to a soccer match. We see it anywhere from Title IX here in the US to Bill C-16 in Canada. The basic premise behind the philosophical beliefs that have fomented Equality of Outcome in society is that hierarchies are artificial social constructs (usually patriarchal, financial, racial and political in nature) that have oppressed the underserved over time and therefore that these systems require legislative oversight to correct them. While this notion actually sounds plausible in theory, research suggests that these organizational, societal and provincial hierarchies are natural, not just in humans but in other species as well and that any attempt to subvert them is both futile and scientifically proven to be factually incorrect.

Unfortunately, what has come along with the belief in Equality of Outcome is the fact that the meaning of the word sexism has changed from describing discrimination based on gender in 1965 to discrimination based on inequality in 2018. In other words (and we see this elsewhere but especially with feminists), people who've adopted this Equality of Outcome principle have also simultaneously adopted an Equality of Stature position as well. What Ideologues at the end of the spectrum will tell you is that there are no differences between genders and therefore, not only should people have equal rights under the law, but you should treat all people equally and failure to do so is a form of bigotry.

When you're working in the mailroom of a large corporation and the CEO happens to be with you in the elevator and you expect him to treat you like an equal, then you're engaging in Equality of Stature. That's not to say the CEO shouldn't treat you like a human with dignity and respect, but in the context of the operation of the corporation, during working hours, you're not on equal footing with those above you, nor are the people below you in the organizational hierarchy on equal footing with you and to think or belief otherwise is both delusional and foolish.

If you don't treat people that believe in Equality of Stature as equals, then you are automatically guilty of being an elitist, a racist, a homophobe, a misogynist, a bigot, etc. and God help you if this person is a woman and you don't treat her as an equal. This misguided concept of equity over equality has devolved into an egalitarian nightmare for qualified, competent people who are being asked to subjugate themselves to an erroneous socially correct paradigm. That's not to say that we should all treat each other with dignity and compassion, but that's completely different to the insistence that we should all assume that we're all equal. We are not.

And this is where women are most guilty of being sexist. Equality of Stature sexism is a twisted form of inverted sexism that has developed over the past 50 years that is based on the misguided notion that there are no biological differences between men and women (aside from genitalia), in spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. It's important to note that there's nothing in this body of scientific work that concludes any gender is superior over the other or that one is inferior. Some differences (such as spatial awareness) seem to favor males more and some (such as bonding emotionally with others) seem to benefit women more but in total sum of attributes, it would be foolish to put one gender above the other.

Scientifically, we see that while there is a tremendous amount of overlap between different genders, there's a statistically significant difference as well and we see these differences across racial, ethnic, cultural, generational and intellectual demographics in addition to just gender. Hell, there are significant differences between men who are right handed vs. men who are left handed! Does that mean we should have laws that force legal firms to have a proportionate amount of left handed attorneys in their organizations as they do right handed attorneys?

What's important to understand is that the underlying philosophical belief of any Equality of Outcome agenda is that of the oppressor and the oppressed, the haves and the have nots, the victor and the victim. However, adopting the oppressed victim mentality has always been a very dangerous ideology to identify yourself with, especially dogmatically, demographically and organizationally. Have women been oppressed? Of course they have. Have minorities been oppressed? Of course they have. Have different races, different religious groups, different ethnicities been oppressed? Of course they have. Have MEN been oppressed? Of course they have and to blame men for all of your problems is both disempowering and factually incorrect. Life isn't fair. Get over it and stop blaming men for all your problems. Playing victim can yield positive results in the short term, otherwise no one would do it but in the long run, playing victim always leaves the person worse off than when they started.

By the 1965 definition of sexism, are women sexists? Certainly not very many but by the 2018 defacto standard that the concept of sexist has devolved into, probably more than 50% are sexist. Are all women sexists? Probably not. But taking into account Equality of Stature based inverted sexism, probably a great deal more women are guilty of being sexist then you can imagine. When this form of sexism is appropriately described to women, they start to see that they've been sold a bill of goods that is neither factually correct or particularly empowering. In fact, this victim based perspective is disempowering and it dishonors the places where females are superior over men. You can't have it both ways. You can't argue for a belief system where there are no differences between genders while relishing in the characteristics and attributes that make women better than men.

In our society, within any given demographic, community, tribe or nation where there is any form of systemic ideology, there are bound to be a variety of commonly held thoughts. Over time, as these thoughts and concepts coalesce and crystallize into beliefs within a group of people, they become dogma and anywhere in society that we find entrenched dogma, we’re going to see institutionalized bigotry. That’s just how it is. Bigotry simply means a lack of tolerance for non-like minded thinkers (or heretics) and when you’ve got a group of people who all believe the same thing and they are confronted with someone who doesn’t share their belief, they are naturally dismissed, marginalized and disregarded.

We see this in religions, in science, in cultural disputes and most recently in the phenomenon known as Social Justice (which sprouted forth from the Equality of Outcome ideologues). With Social Justice comes the notion of social correctness but apart from things like yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater and randomly sending off mail bombs, who is to say what is and isn’t socially correct? Social Justice becomes a very slippery slope when the very thing that a Social Justice Warrior is intent on protesting (which ultimately is one form or another of bigotry) is the exact same thing that they end up engaging in. Whatever particular social injustice a person is attempting to fight, whether its gender fluidity, #MeToo, white male privilege, gentrification or what have you, the base position is based on beliefs and when those beliefs are held for a long enough time by a large enough group of people they become a dogmatic construct and that can be very dangerous. 

Even the idea of labeling individuals or groups as social justice warriors could ultimately result in a unique form of social justice that runs in opposition to social justice warriors. Let your mind ping-pong back and forth on that. Where does it end?

What’s important to understand and recognize is that dogma, in it's many flavors and varieties, is pervasive and ubiquitous in society and its critical to be aware of it and see it for what it is.  Dogma is simply a belief that has crystallized over a large number of people over an extended period time.

• The birth of knowledge is wonder.
• The death of wonder is belief.

When you believe something, you cease wondering because you think you already know the truth.  Believing and knowing are two different things.

So what do you believe?