Bullshit paradigm needs smashing.

Future ally

When something makes me really mad (and this time I'm not talking about someone taking my ice cream or whatever - this is outrage I'm talking about here) it usually isn't just sexist. I don't think sexism ever comes all by itself, naked, a pure hatred of women. That's not how the human mind works.

I'll use a metaphor here - sexism is a brick in the wall of obfuscation and hatred that prevails, chill and wall-like, over today's society. That wall is built from racism, homophobia, ableism, and every other kind of cruelty humanity perpetrates on humanity. If we knock the sexist brick out, one brick's gone and the wall is closer to falling, but the wall's still there, and the mortar that bound it to the other bricks hasn't crumbled all the way out either.

We don't need hammers; we need dynamite.

The variety of prejudices comprising the dominant paradigm enforce each other.

If you think men are natural dominators and women are natural "nurturers," are you going to find the idea tenable that two people who happen to fit into the same one of your gender categories can have a loving relationship? Probably that idea will rush in one ear and out the other like the sound of leaves scattering in the wind.

If you think women should be subservient to men, are you going to notice the casual cruelty of white men who denigrate, fetishize, or simply ignore women of races not his own? If you give it even passing notice, you wouldn't think in a million years to call it out.

If you think easy, constant, socially approved sexual satisfaction is not just a right but a responsibility for men, will you ever realize that those whose sexualities society mocks or declares taboo - the disabled, the elderly, the young, the "unattractive" - also have relationships, desires and emotions? I'd guess that information might slide right under your nose.

If you buy the idea that sexual attractiveness is contingent on regular use of chemical makeup and expensive diet food, and, if your "problem" is especially bad, corrective surgery, are you going to look at that "Made in China" label on your designer clothes and really grasp what it means in terms of human and environmental cost? You tell me.

I've read about Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's concept called "kyriarchy," and I think this is really expressive of the ideas feminism now needs to tackle. I am wont to approach the multileveled juggernaut of oppression that kyriarchy is through the lens of feminism, since my mommy raised me reading Ms., but for me and for all feminists, there can't be a clinging to "just feminism," "just women's issues." Who is the default woman who is "just a woman?" My guess is she's a white woman, middle-class or higher, and she's got nearly as much bullshit paradigm going for her as her guy buddies do.