The madwoman in the attic
I’ve had occasion to notice it before, and I daresay I will again – some people just seem to be unable to disagree with, or even mention, a woman without breaking out the Special Insulting language. That’s especially noticeable when there are men being disagreed with or mentioned too, and they don’t get the Special Insulting language.
Look at Science and Religion Today.
Jerry Coyne is disappointed. Michael Shermer responds. Josh Rosenau jumps in, and sides, and calls. But I – I don’t do anything as quiet and reasonable as that. Well naturally not: I don’t have the balls.
It’s not as if the tone of what I say, or the part of it quoted there, is wildly different from the tone of the people who have the balls. But I’m the one who…
Well there you go. As Samuel Johnson said, if we wanted to listen to a woman talk we wouldn’t spend all our time talking to each other, now would we.
(It is seriously irritating though. It means that no matter what you do – no matter how carefully you write, no matter how much you know, no matter how clearly you think [and I’m not claiming any of that for myself – I’m just saying], to some people you will still be a stupid frantic over-emotional crazy female who can safely be belittled and sneered at because after all – she is just a woman.
It makes me tired.)
Jeez, Ophelia, why the tizzy? Why can’t you post more level-headed, sensible things, like Rosenau:
See how much more calm and thoughtful his response is?
Seriously, though, this is especially egregious, since, if anything, Rosenau’s response was much more a frantic “tizzy” than any of the others.
Yes, that’s pretty much what I thought.
Ho hum.
If I were a regular commenter, I would now make a pseudo-sexist joke. But I won’t. I empathize with your tiredness; as someone who can at most be called an ally to most causes (heterosexual white man that I am), *I* can feel tired, and most of the stupid stuff isn’t even directed at me.
I mean, where are the comments talking about Christopher Hitchens being a typical territorial man-ape?
Anyway, just a heads-up that you’re not alone out there.
Yes, nothing says “tizzy” quite like the phrase, “does not increase our respect for their probity.”
I got nothin’. Only ugh.
It’s definitely frustrating & I think you capture it perfectly with “Special Insulting language.” That’s exactly what it is.
Similarly, a few months ago, I posted an argumentative piece (on my old blog, I think) and the first response was from a guy (who I vaguely know from online sites and such) who said “Wow! I’ve never met a pretty girl who could also hold her own in an argument!” Sigh. That’s one of those situations where I really doubt the person meant to be a dick, but it’s still really cringe-worthy and annoying on many levels.
Oooooooh. This sort of thing really gets up my nose.
I sometimes wonder whether it’s deliberate, or whether they really don’t know that they’re doing it, or (my favourite possibility) that it’s something in between. My hypothesis: they are much more affronted by a woman daring to argue, to the point of being made angry, which anger is then acted out in the form of the Special Insulting Language.
I’ve personally experienced enough instances of macho types getting their hackles up at my doing the same thing all the other men were doing, to think that it’s got to be something like this.
Grrrrr….feeling some anger of my own that needs expressing….
At the bottom of the page I noticed that the blog was sponsored by The Templeton Foundation.
I don’t know if it is just confirmation bias speaking – but somehow I wasn’t surprised.
What can I say but, “Ugh!”
You’re right, Ophelia. It’s everywhere. I hadn’t noticed, before you began to point it out. And Rosenau takes the cue. You’re not only in a tizzy, you’re silly. Got to love those Christians. (I assume that they didn’t get a grant from Templeton for nothing.)
Yes, females get the same from the media for being gun owners. A whole language of hate gets added sexism; for instance a female NRA spokesperson got described as ‘heavy-breasted’ in US national media. A friend, a female shooter got sexual demands ‘or lose her job’ plus a lot of femaleness-oriented hate talk during the Australian moral panic after Port Arthur.
Good, it’s not just me then (being made tired by it).
Thanks to Miranda Hale for telling me about the post, by the way.
That’s pretty bad. “Tizzy”? WTF?
Eric: This is a small point, but a) I wrote before S&R Today, so I couldn’t have “take[n] the cue”; b) I’m not a Christian (though that sentence may be referring only to S&R Today, but I can see how someone else might misread that, so I want to clarify); c) I didn’t call Ophelia silly. I said the argument was silly. Serious, thoughtful people can make silly arguments, and I don’t think of silliness as a gendered attribute.
Today’s Jesus and Mo is appropriate for this situation:
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/12/01/mind/
Well, I’m not going to accuse you of ‘tizzying’, but you appear to have appropriated my trademark “ho hum” sign-off-expression-of-resigned-acceptance…
And what’s more, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Ho hum.
:-)
I bet I did, without realizing it.
Oh well…………
Yeah, and sometimes the Special Insults can be back-handed, too. Once, very recently, a male friend and ally said to me, “wow, you certainly showed HIM, and the fact it was coming from a female is even better!”
Ho hum indeed.
A “tizzy?” Good grief, did they think you were wearing a bonnet and baking a pie while you were typing your comment?
And knitting and swatting away the gophers!
Even stretching my empathy to its limits I doubt I can imagine the weariness you must feel from fighting this battle. Sisyphus had it easy by comparison. But please know that your efforts are not wasted.
If reaching just one person makes the effort worthwhile then you can at least take heart in the knowledge that you have not wasted your energies. And I suspect that you have reached more than just one. If nothing else I have tried to carry the torch further once I finally had my eyes opened, in large part through your efforts. (Hey, just five more degrees of separation and the whole world will be there!)
For what it’s worth, I was swooning earlier tonight when I read Ophelia’s essay “A Deal-breaker”. I felt like I was falling in love. I’m strongly suspect I wouldn’t have had the same emotional response for the exact same prose if I had believed the author was male. Sexism cuts both ways. Mea culpa.
Thanks GD. I agree that such efforts aren’t wasted. That’s part of my disagreement with the ‘it’s disastrous to alienate the mainstream by dissing religion’ crowd – I think people often exaggerate how futile a particular effort may be (especially if they have some agenda that motivates the exaggeration). We can never be sure how futile an effort of that kind is, so we might as well try.
On the other hand futility isn’t the only cost – I’ve alienated at least one erstwhile friend (male) by being so snappish on the subject when commenting on blogs and here. He thinks I’m a bully. I think the men who respond to disagreement with me by lapsing into sexist language are the bullies – and I also think it’s frankly absurd to claim that a woman who snaps back at bullies is the bully. Ho hum…(to steal a phrase from Andy Gilmour! heehee)
Jim – mmmph – well at least it was a cerebral kind of falling in love! So do go right ahead and swoon.
:- )
Can’t help but notice, after visiting the link again, that the closest thing to an explanation so far has been Gurdur’s irrelevant reply. The actual author of the piece hasn’t said word one.
Maybe he’s in a tizzy…
I sympathise! I criticised some pretty glaring examples of sexism – in fact they were more misogynistic than simply sexist – on a blog, and I got told I was ‘hypersensitive’. Sexism is often ignored or approved in internet forums which are appropriately sensitive to racism.
Okay, fair enough Josh, though saying that arguments are silly, unless you’re very very sure, is not a wise thing to do, and while it may not be gendered, and you may not have taken the cue (as I said), your words fit in very nicely to the S&R ethos, which might be a fair warning that, if you use this kind of language, you’ll find yourself yoked with attitudes you do not share. Instead of calling Ophelia’s arguments silly – were they really? – you might have explained what was wrong with them precisely. But I do take your point.
Also, Eric, to be fair, I should probably point out that Josh R (who may have forgotten the fact by now!) was likely echoing me – I think I called Shermer’s claim ‘silly.’ I think Josh was turning the charge back on me.
That may be how S&R got to ‘tizzy,’ actually – an unconscious association of ideas. S&R should have caught itself, if so, but still – perhaps a partial exculpation.
Go, S&R, and sin no more.
Ah, so that explains it. But, of course, Shermer was being silly, wasn’t he? Were you? Anyway, I shan’t throw any more stones!
Hahahaha – well that’s how I see it of course! But we can’t expect Josh to agree.
“Sexism is often ignored or approved in internet forums which are appropriately sensitive to racism.”
A lot. Sexism is somehow hip in a way that racism (appropriately) is not. I find this endlessly depressing.