{"id":41407,"date":"2014-03-12T15:10:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T21:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/12\/on-being-consciously-non-sexist.html"},"modified":"2014-03-12T15:10:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T21:10:54","slug":"on-being-consciously-non-sexist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/12\/on-being-consciously-non-sexist.html","title":{"rendered":"On Being Consciously Non-Sexist"},"content":{"rendered":"
Or non-racist, or non-[fill-in-the-blank]ist …<\/p>\n

There seem to be three levels here that the label of sexism (to choose an ism –<\/del> and just to further simplify, we'll make it sexism against women) covers:<\/p>\n

1. Holding and expressing opinions about women that are negative, objectifying \/ dehumanizing, or limiting. E.g., "Women characters are either weak and flighty or bitchy ball-busters, but regardless they are only worth paying attention to if they have huge bazongas and can cook a good dinner."<\/p>\n

2. Using imagery and tropes about women that are negative, objectifying \/ dehumanizing, or limiting, even if those don't really reflect conscious opinions. E.g., "This character is a strong, intelligent, independent woman who has sworn vengeance for her brutal rape, which is why she wears a chain mail bikini so as to taunt men over her huge bazongas."<\/p>\n

3. Drawing a distinction between male and female characters. (This sometimes morphs into drawing the "wrong" distinctions between male and female characters.)<\/p>\n

I think this broad use of the term "sexism" itself leads to a lot of the conflict over what represents sexism and whether something is sexist or someone is sexist or how to solve the problems of sexism in our society (or even if there is<\/i> a problem with sexism in our society, or video games, or comic books).<\/p>\n

There's still plenty of ugly Sexism Type 1 in culture around us, though it's no longer the accepted norm and certainly draws protests when it comes up. We don't hear many jokes about women drivers, as an example.<\/p>\n

Sexism Type 2 is more of a debate, as it gets into the "judge what I express by what I intend" vs "judge what I express by how you see it" realm. Having a protagonist's girlfriend — even if she's a brilliant scientist and entrepreneur and laudable as a role model in every fashion — get "fridged" so as to motivate the male protagonist to future action is most likely sexist, even if it's not "meant" as such.<\/p>\n

Sexism Type 3 gets deep in to genders studies and fundamental cultural understandings and conflicts. Drawing women all with big bazongas is sexist. Ignoring that women have breasts (and, in many cases, even if driven by cultural issues, choose to emphasize them) seems unrealistic, even if it gets away from that body sexism — unless you talk to other people who say "If everyone is a generic character, then they take on the characteristics of the dominant group, so ignoring that women are women is to make them men, which is sexist" … except that then you get back into the question of what makes women women<\/i> in a way that won't put some other folks' noses out of joint.<\/p>\n

I guess the point of the article is true — regardless of what sexism "actually" entails, it's non-trivial to avoid doing it (or at least to avoid seeming to do it, which may or may not be the same or similar of a thing).\u00a0\ufeff<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

\n \n <\/div>\n

There’s More to Making Non-Sexist Art Than Not Being Sexist<\/a>
\n If you don’t want to make art that’s prejudiced, then you need to take conscious, concrete steps to do so\u2014as the game developers behind Desktop Dungeon found out.\n <\/p>\n

View this post on Google+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or non-racist, or non-[fill-in-the-blank]ist … There seem to be three levels here that the label of sexism (to choose an ism – and just to further simplify, we'll make it sexism against women) covers: 1. Holding and expressing opinions about women that are negative, objectifying \/ dehumanizing, or limiting. E.g., "Women characters are either weak … Continue reading “On Being Consciously Non-Sexist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7218,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/10\/07\/boobies_eh.html","url_meta":{"origin":41407,"position":0},"title":"Boobies, eh?","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Oct-04 1:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"Bazongas Booster\" may be down off the front page for another year, but you can read all the thrills of Marn's Jog for the Jugs right here. You go,...","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6394,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/12\/jog_for_the_jug.html","url_meta":{"origin":41407,"position":1},"title":"Jog for the Jugs","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 12-Sep-04 12:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Marn is once again raising money for breast cancer research at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure (though with her twisted knee problems, this year it...","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"marn-jog.jpg","src":"\/blog\/images\/marn-jog.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27454,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/19\/the-vagina-manger-dialogue.html","url_meta":{"origin":41407,"position":2},"title":"The Vagina Manger Dialogue","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 19-Apr-12 7:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"So I heard about the \"Catholic League\" (Bill Donohue) having a hissy fit about a Jon Stewart segment, which actually led Margie and me to track down the piece on our DVR (thanks for giving it more publicity, Catholic League!).While not the most hysterical Daily Show bit I've ever seen,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5462,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/08\/nice_sexist_pig.html","url_meta":{"origin":41407,"position":3},"title":"Nice sexist piggy … good sexist piggy …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 8-Mar-04 7:10am","format":false,"excerpt":"An article in this morning's Rocky sent me over to the Understanding Prejudice site, which includes a survey to determine your degree of sexism along two axes: hostile sexism (women...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39313,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/22\/obamacare-north-korea-huge-massacres.html","url_meta":{"origin":41407,"position":4},"title":"Obamacare = North Korea = Huge Massacres!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-Oct-13 11:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"'Don\u2019t tell me that the apostates that run this country today who have abandoned a Christian world and life view can\u2019t become the same kind of tyrants that happen in North Korea that now has been whipping out tens of thousands of people in some of the largest massacres we\u2019ve\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":127663,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/24\/hugos-and-puppies-and-warriors-oh-my.html","url_meta":{"origin":41407,"position":5},"title":"Hugos and Puppies and Warriors (oh, my!)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-Aug-15 4:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a bit facile to argue that this year's Hugo kerfuffles remind me of every online social group I've moderated that has melted down. But ... The irksome thing is that I really appreciate the accusations that things are considered True Art only if they are controversial or genre-changing. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}