Who Should Speak Up?
I was travelling back to Canberra on the bus from my family home, and as it is a rather long journey, I was reading a book. It was trashy chicklit – ‘Not Finding Mr Right’ by Anita Heiss, and while the book itself was unremarkable (though the heroine, Alice Aigner, had one of the most likeable and unique voices I’ve ever read in chicklit) there was one passage that stood out for me, where the author references a feminist critic, who said that when a man makes a sexist comment, it is not up to women to correct him, but other men.
I found this very interesting, because if I hear some bloke making a sexist comment, I’m going to pounce immediately, not sit meekly like a good girl and wait for a man to do it for me. But I do understand the logic in the statement. For sexism to be truly eradicated (I’m talking specifically in the traditional patriarchal sense here, though it probably has a more universal application) then awareness needs to be reflexive and come from within – in this case, from within the male gender.
Heiss takes the argument and applies it to racism in her book – in that case, the divide between Anglo and Indigenous Australians. It is better, she hypothesises (all this in a chicklit novel!) that when a racist comment is made – for example, an Anglo making a derogatory remark about an Indigenous Aussie – that the rebuke come from another Anglo. I can certainly see the logic in this, but I think I would find it very hard to apply myself – back in the gender ballpark now. I think a man would probably be more inclined to listen to another man, especially as he is the kind of man who is going around making derogatory remarks about women.
But does this mean waiting? And if one waits for a man to swoop in and make the rebuke, would that not lessen the impact of one’s message?
In short, I think I think that it’s a nice theory. But difficult to apply. I would like to think that men would rebuke other men for making misogynistic remarks – but I’d like to think that they were fighting with the girls for the right to do so.
Thoughts?
~Jodi
The Black Valentine's Day Manifesto 