Interesting article on benevolent sexism

[Major Nikon]

Jeff pointed out in one of his posts that it's pretty hard to think of an example of benevolent sexism that isn't really sexism against men. If you think of the simplistic example of holding a door open for women, but not for men, what one is really doing is granting a privilege to women that men don't receive. From a logical standpoint it's no different than the mirror sexism of paying a man more than a woman for the same work.

I don't agree with everything in the article. Some of the examples given for benevolent sexism appear to be actually hostile sexism and some of the conclusions don't make a lot of sense. However, there were a few points worth noting which may be of interest here.

If we’re talking up the importance of work-life balance and familial roles for women but we’re not also mentioning those things about men, that’s a problem. If a woman’s accomplishments must be accompanied by a reassurance that she really was “a good Mom,” but a man’s accomplishments are allowed to stand on their own, that’s a problem. And lest you think that I only care about women, let’s not act like this doesn’t have a real and dangerous impact on men, too. If a man spends years of his life as a doting father and caring husband, yet his strong devotion to his family is not considered an important fact for his obituary because he’s male…then yes, that’s also a big problem.

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However, to those people who still may be tempted to argue that benevolent sexism is nothing more than an overreaction to well-intentioned compliments, let me pose this question: What happens when there is a predominant stereotype saying that women are better stay-at-home parents than men because they are inherently more caring, maternal, and compassionate? It seems nice enough, but how does this ideology affect the woman who wants to continue to work full time after having her first child and faces judgment from her colleagues who accuse her of neglecting her child? How does it affect the man who wants to stay at home with his newborn baby, only to discover that his company doesn’t offer paternity leave because they assume that women are the better candidates to be staying at home?

What's interesting about benevolent sexism is that the pass it gets, even here on DU by some. The idea that women are delicate flowers seems to be almost universally accepted even among progressive circles. The author suggests that this may actually be far more harmful than hostile sexism.

Maybe the answer lies right here, on the benevolent side of prejudice. While “old fashioned” forms of discrimination may have died down quite a bit (after all, it really isn’t quite as socially acceptable in most areas of the world to be as explicitly sexist and/or racist as people have been in the past), more “benevolent” forms of discrimination still very much exist, and they have their own sneaky ways of suppressing equality. Unaffected bystanders (or perpetrators) may construe benevolently sexist sentiments as harmless or even beneficial; in fact, as demonstrated by Becker and Wright, targets may even feel better about themselves after exposure to benevolently sexist statements. This could be, in some ways, even worse than explicit, hostile discrimination; because it hides under the guise of compliments, it’s easy to use benevolent sexism to demotivate people against collective action or convince people that there is no longer a need to fight for equality.

I find it interesting how some are obsessed with finding hostile sexism under every rock, yet the knight in shining armor types are often revered by the same people.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/2013/04/02/benevolent-sexism/