A few weeks ago, I was railing indignant on White Noise about the new line of Disney Princess dresses, when one of the other participants in the discussion asked me, “Why do you object?”

I was forced to slow down and think about it, and as a result, able to articulate something that’s been bouncing around in my head for a long time.

I will paraphrase here.

I don’t believe sexism is all epic battles over glass ceilings and reproductive rights. I think that there are also billions of tiny, little battles women fight every single day, some of them without even realizing it. Stuff like wondering, in passing, if your co-worker would respect you more if you were a man, and what you can do about it. Your daughter excels at baseball, but everyone is pushing her towards softball. Service at the convenience store is taking forever because the jerk behind the counter is so busy staring at your rack and he thinks it’s funny. You find yourself listening to some stupid morning show on the radio where all women are pigs, stupid, whores or some combination, and anyone who disagrees “doesn’t have a sense of humor,” so other women actually call up to chime in on their own gender’s degredation, I mean really, who the hell ARE these people?

I don’t think most of us lie awake thinking about this stuff, but I believe it’s there, and I believe the decisions we make about the little things contribute to the total shape of everyone’s attitudes towards women. I think of it as “The Noise.”

Normally, I wouldn’t repeat myself – I’d leave The Noise as a passing forum post and move on.

But I read something today that makes me want to say it again. Louder.

That’s an essay by Joss Whedon, in resonse to the horrific murder of Dua Khalil, and in response to so much more. It makes me think I’m not the only one out there who believes The Noise exists.

I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence—is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I hope everyone reads the entire thing, but I know that this is the kind of essay that uses powerful language, evokes shocking imagery, and inspires outrage, all without telling us anything new. I guarantee Joss’s piece will be posted all over the web, and then there will be a critical analysis with the central point of… so what? It’s the same old shit.

Well, so what? Let’s keep repeating it until something finally happens, how about that? Because right now, I keep thinking about Khalil (big battle) and all the little battles and it seems like too much. I don’t know what to do, and I hate that.

I’m just so, so tired of The Noise. I feel this urge to make some noise of my own. I’m over being inferior, sick of the malevolence. And there’s one more direct quote I can pull from Whedon’s essay, because it’s another sentence I agree with, 100%:

“It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.