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"With what you know it should be easy"
Dec. 23rd, 2007 02:59 pmI come from a family of sexists. Last night was my local, fucked up nuclear family holiday thing, and if I ever had much doubt that I'm deeply xenogenetic, this would have pointed me in the right direction.
My mom, who is terrified of cooking (she's a horrible cook), asked me to teach my twenty year old step brother how to carve a turkey. Why I have this rep as a reputable carver is beyond me; I'm self taught, and honestly never give it much thought. But my stepbrother lacks a lot of self confidence, so I thought I'd see if I could help. When I went to collect him, my stepsister said something stupid like, "Good, it's something all men should know how to do" and my sister almost tripped over herself (metaphorically; she's pretty inert) in agreeing in an unnecessarily smug, distancing way.
It would have made much more sense for my mom to have asked fairyhead for help; she's the best cook/kitchen helper of anyone I know, but she demurred. We made it through, explaining it to my stepbrother in terms of tangents and conic sections (he's just finished calculus and is pretty visual/tactile), but I was stunned at the sheer, unthinkingly prejudiced commentary.
They're not the brightest bunch of people in the world, my sort of nuclear family, and the scope of their lives is pretty narrow. They're a short, round bunch of couch and mouse potatoes who want to take credit for being much more liberal, educated and intelligent than they actually are, and I suspect they know that their options are limited, though probably not by the choices they've made (it's probably someone else's fault; that would be in character). Still, it strikes me as odd that my sister and stepsister are the most actively sexist. It's not just that there are two totally separate, exclusive domains (man/woman), but that it's perfectly acceptable to be honestly and openly disparaging about the group of which they're not a member (though, come to think of it, they engage in slut shaming with the best of them, too). My current stepfather and step brother in law are happy to rise to the bait and engage as the "other" side, and the whole thing is both gross and offensive.
Based on past experience, it's useless to try and engage the topic, either aggressively or calmly critically (to be honest, I've engaged in more of the former than the latter); as is often the case with willful blindness, the one who points out the problem becomes the source of disharmony. Honestly, I don't enjoy being an actively acknowledged Other against which familial identity can be validated. It makes me very focused, angry and aggressive, and that feeds into the problematizing narrative way too easily. It's complicated by my own position on the whole subject of sex/gender, which is (or was) pretty common knowledge, but willful ignorance and blindness is where my family collectively are Vikings. While I expect them to always fuck up on my pronouns (because in their minds, they're not wrong), I was unpleasantly surprised at how often I was addressed by a name I haven't used in at least four years, and how wide the 'mistake' spread.
This might not be the last time, but it's getting a hell of a lot closer if not.
My mom, who is terrified of cooking (she's a horrible cook), asked me to teach my twenty year old step brother how to carve a turkey. Why I have this rep as a reputable carver is beyond me; I'm self taught, and honestly never give it much thought. But my stepbrother lacks a lot of self confidence, so I thought I'd see if I could help. When I went to collect him, my stepsister said something stupid like, "Good, it's something all men should know how to do" and my sister almost tripped over herself (metaphorically; she's pretty inert) in agreeing in an unnecessarily smug, distancing way.
It would have made much more sense for my mom to have asked fairyhead for help; she's the best cook/kitchen helper of anyone I know, but she demurred. We made it through, explaining it to my stepbrother in terms of tangents and conic sections (he's just finished calculus and is pretty visual/tactile), but I was stunned at the sheer, unthinkingly prejudiced commentary.
They're not the brightest bunch of people in the world, my sort of nuclear family, and the scope of their lives is pretty narrow. They're a short, round bunch of couch and mouse potatoes who want to take credit for being much more liberal, educated and intelligent than they actually are, and I suspect they know that their options are limited, though probably not by the choices they've made (it's probably someone else's fault; that would be in character). Still, it strikes me as odd that my sister and stepsister are the most actively sexist. It's not just that there are two totally separate, exclusive domains (man/woman), but that it's perfectly acceptable to be honestly and openly disparaging about the group of which they're not a member (though, come to think of it, they engage in slut shaming with the best of them, too). My current stepfather and step brother in law are happy to rise to the bait and engage as the "other" side, and the whole thing is both gross and offensive.
Based on past experience, it's useless to try and engage the topic, either aggressively or calmly critically (to be honest, I've engaged in more of the former than the latter); as is often the case with willful blindness, the one who points out the problem becomes the source of disharmony. Honestly, I don't enjoy being an actively acknowledged Other against which familial identity can be validated. It makes me very focused, angry and aggressive, and that feeds into the problematizing narrative way too easily. It's complicated by my own position on the whole subject of sex/gender, which is (or was) pretty common knowledge, but willful ignorance and blindness is where my family collectively are Vikings. While I expect them to always fuck up on my pronouns (because in their minds, they're not wrong), I was unpleasantly surprised at how often I was addressed by a name I haven't used in at least four years, and how wide the 'mistake' spread.
This might not be the last time, but it's getting a hell of a lot closer if not.
