A new definition of the
word sexism has taken hold in the English-speaking world, even to the point
where it’s showing up in official definitions. No longer used merely to
describe the belief that women are somehow inferior to men, sexism can now
refer to any belief in gender differences. Case in point: when Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield fielded
a question from a young boy about how the superhero came by his iconic costume
by explaining that he sewed it himself, even though sewing is “kind of a
feminine thing to do,” Emma Gray and The
Huffington Post couldn’t resist griping about Garfield’s “Casual
Sexism” and celebrating his girlfriend Emma Stone’s “Most Perfect Way” of calling
it out. Gray writes,
Instead of letting the comment—which assumes that there is something
fundamentally female about sewing, and that doing such a “girly” thing must be qualified
with a “masculine” outcome—slide, Stone turned the Q&A panel into an
important teachable moment. She stopped her boyfriend and asked: “It's
feminine, how?”
Those three words are underwhelming enough to
warrant suspicion that Gray is really just cheerleading for someone she sees as
playing for the right team.
A
few decades ago, people would express beliefs about the proper roles and places
for women quite openly in public. Outside of a few bastions of radical
conservatism, you’re unlikely to hear anyone say that women shouldn’t be
allowed to run businesses or serve in high office today. But rather than being
leveled with decreasing frequency the charge of sexism is now applied to a wider
and more questionable assortment of ideas and statements. Surprised at having
fallen afoul of this broadening definition of sexism, Garfield responded to
Stone’s challenge by saying,
It’s amazing how you took that as an insult. It’s feminine because I
would say femininity is about more delicacy and precision and detail work and
craftsmanship. Like my mother, she’s an amazing craftsman. She in fact made my
first Spider-Man costume when I was three. So I use it as a compliment, to
compliment the feminine in women but in men as well. We all have feminine in
us, young men.
Gray sees that last statement as a result of how
Stone “pressed Garfield to explain himself.” Watch the video, though, and you’ll
see she did little pressing. He seemed happy to explain what he meant. And that
last line was actually a reiteration of the point he’d made originally by
saying, “It’s kind of a feminine thing to do, but he
really made a very masculine costume”—the line that Stone pounced on.
Garfield’s
handling of both the young boy’s question and Stone’s captious interruption is
far more impressive than Stone’s supposedly perfect way of calling him out.
Indeed, Stone’s response was crudely ideological, implying quite simply that her
boyfriend had revealed something embarrassing about himself—gotcha!—and
encouraging him to expound further on his unacceptable ideas so she and the
audience could chastise him. She had, like Gray, assumed that any reference to
gender roles was sexist by definition. But did Garfield’s original answer to
the boy’s question really reveal that he “assumes that
there is something fundamentally female about sewing, and that doing such a ‘girly’
thing must be qualified with a ‘masculine’ outcome,” as Gray claims? (Note her
deceptively inconsistent use of scare quotes and actual quotes.)
Garfield’s
thinking throughout the exchange was quite sophisticated. First, he tried to play up
Spider-Man’s initiative and self-sufficiency because he knew the young fan
would appreciate these qualities in his hero. Then he seems to have realized
that the young boy might be put off by the image of his favorite superhero
engaging in an activity that’s predominantly taken up by women. Finally, he
realized he could use this potential uneasiness as an opportunity for making
the point that just because a male does something generally considered feminine
that doesn’t mean he’s any less masculine. This is the opposite of sexism. So
why did Stone and Gray cry foul?
One of the tenets of modern feminism is that
gender roles are either entirely chimerical or, to the extent that they exist,
socially constructed. In other words, they’re nothing but collective delusions.
Accepting, acknowledging, or referring to gender roles then, especially in the
presence of a young child, abets in the perpetuation of these separate roles. Another
tenet of modern feminism that comes into play here is that gender roles are
inextricably linked to gender oppression. The only way for us as a society to
move toward greater equality, according to this ideology, is for us to do away
with gender roles altogether. Thus, when Garfield or anyone else refers to them
as if they were real or in any way significant, he must be challenged.
One of the
problems with Stone’s and Gray’s charge of sexism is that there happens to be a
great deal of truth in every aspect of Garfield’s answer to the boy’s question.
Developmental psychologists consistently find that young children
really are preoccupied with categorizing behaviors by gender and that the
salience of gender to children arises so reliably and at so young an age that
it’s unlikely to stem from socialization. Studies have
also consistently found that women tend to excel in tasks requiring fine
motor skill, while men excel in most other dimensions of motor ability. And
what percentage of men ever go beyond sewing buttons on their shirts—if they do
even that? Why but for the sake of political correctness would anyone deny this difference? Garfield’s response to Stone’s challenge was also remarkably subtle.
He didn’t act as though he’d been caught in a faux pas but instead turned the
challenge around, calling Stone out for assuming he somehow intended to
disparage women. He then proudly expounded on his original point. If anything,
it looked a little embarrassing for Stone.
Modern
feminism has grown over the past decade to include the push for LGBT rights.
Historically, gender roles were officially sanctioned and strictly enforced, so it was
understandable that anyone advocating for women’s rights would be inclined to
question those roles. Today, countless people who don’t fit neatly into
conventional gender categories are in a struggle with constituencies who insist
their lifestyles and sexual preferences are unnatural. But even those of us who
support equal rights for LGBT people have to ask ourselves if the best strategy
for combating bigotry is an aggressive and wholesale denial of gender. Isn’t it
possible to recognize gender differences, and even celebrate them, without
trying to enforce them prescriptively? Can’t we accept the possibility that
some average differences are innate without imposing definitions on individuals
or punishing them for all the ways they upset expectations? And can’t we
challenge religious conservatives for the asinine belief that nature sets up
rigid categories and the idiotic assumption that biology is about order as
opposed to diversity instead of ignoring (or attacking) psychologists who study gender differences?
I think
most people realize there’s something not just unbecoming but unfair about
modern feminism’s anti-gender attitude. And most people probably don’t
appreciate all the cheap gotchas liberal publications like The Huffington Post and The
Guardian and Slate are so fond of touting. Every time feminists accuse someone of sexism for simply referring
to obvious gender differences, they belie their
own case that feminism is no more and no less than a belief in the equality
of women. Only twenty percent of Americans identify themselves as feminists,
while over eighty percent believe in equality for women. Feminism, like sexism,
has clearly come to mean something other than what it used to. It may be the case
that just as the gender roles of the past century gradually came to be seen as
too rigid so too that century’s ideologies are increasingly seen as too lacking
in nuance and their proponents too quick to condemn. It may even be that we
Americans and Brits no longer need churchy ideologies to tell us all people deserve to be treated equally.
