On the Fox News show Outnumbered recently, the always-outspoken
ex-KISS bass player Gene Simmons scoffed at a 2012 study
posted on Medium.com
which warned of “the insidious nature of benevolent sexism” and the hidden dangers
of holding a door open for a woman.
Dr. Stephen Franzoi and Dr.
Debra Oswald, professors of psychology at Marquette University, co-wrote the
study entitled “Experiencing Sexism and Young Women’s Body Esteem,” about
how young women’s body esteem is affected by both hostile and “benevolent”
sexism from family members and everyday experiences.
If you have been blissfully
ignorant of benevolent sexism, it’s been central to feminist theory since the
late 1990s. The Marquette University study explains that benevolent sexism is characterized
“by beliefs and actions that appear outwardly positive, but actually undermine
gender equality.” It is “subtler” than “hostile sexism,” its more extreme partner
which consists of open acts or policies of gender discrimination, and so
widespread and “deeply ingrained in American culture that women experience it
daily but may not even realize it.” Something as seemingly innocuous as a man
holding a door open for a woman, for example, is benevolent sexism.
How does this fiendish strategy
work? “This pattern of sexist behavior restricts what the woman can and cannot
do by setting up rewards and punishments” for her behavior, Oswald writes. For
example, if a father believes that women should stick to a proper feminine role
in society, he tends to encourage his daughter to perpetuate that social conformity
by, say, complimenting her on a traditional feminine appearance with makeup and
certain dress. It’s unclear whether the solution is for men to stop complimenting
women’s appearance, or for women to start dressing like men.
The researchers gave a series of
surveys to 86 first-year female college students and their parents to explore
any connection between the students’ body esteem and “parental support of
sexist beliefs.” It turned out that the women who had higher body esteem were
more likely to have fathers who practiced benevolent sexism. The researchers
found this “disconcerting” and insist that “it highlights the insidious nature
of benevolent sexism.”
If you have been under the
impression that poor body esteem was a serious problem for women and especially
young girls today, you may be wondering how something that elevates that esteem
can be considered bad. Well, academics like Franzoi and Oswald worry that when
women feel good about themselves, it “decreas[es] efforts to change the social
structure that promotes benevolent sexism and male dominance.”
In other words, benevolent sexism
is bad because it makes women feel good about themselves and thus perpetuates
benevolent sexism. And that’s bad because if women feel good about themselves,
they can’t be manipulated into tearing down the existing social structure.
So the researchers claim that this
type of sexism “undermines the long-term esteem of women because it binds them
to gender-specific roles… Sexism has evolved into a system where women are
rewarded for engaging in the traditional feminine role” and punished for
engaging “in nontraditional roles that may challenge the traditional gender
relations and power balance.”
The study didn’t address whether
engaging in nontraditional roles actually makes the majority of women any
happier or more fulfilled. Nor did it address whether the feminist imperative
to “challenge traditional gender relations and power balance” has actually improved relations between men and women.
It doesn’t take a study to see that gender relations today, at least among
younger generations, are characterized mostly by anger, confusion and
bitterness. Young men don’t know how to be men or to treat women, and they
blame them for that confusion; young women despise men for being immature and
confused, and yet they believe that their own liberation means acting like the
worst examples of men. They are all a lost generation, to paraphrase Gertrude
Stein. This is the result of the radical feminist assault on men and the notion
of gender itself.
Gene Simmons and his four female
co-hosts on Outnumbered didn’t take
the notion of benevolent sexism seriously. They all seemed perfectly
comfortable in their traditional gender roles, and by “traditional” I mean the
recognition that biological gender differences exist, that men and women are
equal but different and complement each other, and that we can embrace that
balance and not buy into the feminist imperative to be angry antagonists.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 8/27/14)
