Why Don't We Care About Misogyny?
In the New York Times yesterday, Linda Greenhouse published an important essay wondering why corporate America is so unwilling to protest anti-abortion laws, even as those same companies threaten to pull their business from states that push anti-gay, anti-trans, and racist legislation. Bills that would have allowed discrimination against same-sex couples and transgender people were met with swift condemnation from the NCAA, the NBA, and others; a Georgia bill to curtail voting rights led Major League Baseball to move its all-star game from Atlanta to Colorado, and Will Smith to cancel a movie shoot in the state. All of this is good. But as Greenhouse notes, corporate objections to discrimination dont seem to extend to womens rights. When it comes to abortion, she writes, Its possible Ive missed something, but Ive been listening hard, and so far all Ive heard is the sound of silence.  Her whole piece is worth a read. And what strikes me is that the acceptance of discrimination against women (and government intrusion into the most intimate aspects of womens lives) isnt just something corporate America accepts; its something corporate America itself does. And the acceptance of misogyny isnt limited to cynical corporations not wanting to get involved in the abortion wars. It extends into nearly all reaches of life, including progressive politics and choices made by ostensibly progressive people. The big, obvious examples are mostly religious. Catholic colleges and universities, for example, often limit speech on womens rights; their student health centers typically do not provide or refer for abortions, and often will not provide contraception for the prevention of pregnancy. That kind of flat-out misogynist discrimination is tolerated and justified because, well, theyre private Catholic schools. Other forms of discrimination at private religious schools, though, have rightly engendered huge backlash  like when Bob Jones University enforced its (now repealed) ban on interracial dating. Religious traditions like Mormonism got lots of heat for their racist policies  the LDS church long barred Black men from being priests, a rule that was changed in the 1970s, although the church didnt repudiate the teachings behind it until 2013. Rightly, a lot of folks found it outrageous that the LDS church discriminated so clearly on the basis of race, saying that a mans skin color made him ineligible for leadership. And yet, the Mormon and Catholic churches, along with plenty of Muslim, Jewish, and Evangelical congregations, continue to formally bar women from religious leadership, reserving all of the authority for men in explicit patriarchies. And plenty of liberals, leftists, and progressive folks who I imagine would say they would never support discriminatory institutions not only sit their butts in those pews (or enter those doors), but financially support and defend those institutions. A lot of liberals, leftists, and progressive folks who dont offer financial or in-person support nevertheless defend those who do, putting religion in its own category of safe space for misogyny. The same folks who would be (rightly) outraged over someone being a member of a golf club that excluded religious minorities or who were (wrongly) outraged by actress Ellie Kemper participating in a debutante ball of an organization with racist roots simply accept that discrimination against women is ok as long as you put a religious gloss on it. This isnt to say that sexism is more acceptable than racism, or that discrimination against women is worse than discrimination against other marginalized groups. Its not to say we care about racism but we dont care about sexism (lots of people dont care about racism, either, and racism remains endemic). It is to say that discrimination is impossible to stack up on a neat vertical hierarchy  x group has it worse than y group in all cases, or people always care more about z than v or tk is the last acceptable form of discrimination  but is more like a web of intertwining threads, where some corners are stickier than others, and where some of the traps are obvious while others are so widely accepted theyre barely visible. In 2021 America, many forms of discrimination have been outlawed, and laws that wrote discrimination into the books have been overturned. Discrimination persists, and is often obvious, pernicious, and intentional. But when it comes to the kind of discrimination that involves explicit and formal rules that say If you are a member of this group, you are deemed unfit have a whole set of jobs or be in any position of power, most of what even progressives continue to accept involves discriminating against women. It would be great if folks on the left were invested in combatting misogyny, but its pretty obvious that, feminists aside, they generally arent. They arent as dedicated to preserving and expanding it as conservatives are, so thats something, but its a sad fact that even folks who pride themselves on their progressive politics simply accept as inevitable that women will be treated as second-class citizens in some of the worlds most revered, influential, and important institutions and establishments. I mean, the Democratic President of the United States attends a church that does not allow women in its leadership  and virtually no one bats an eye, even though the misogyny is not just baked in and egregious, but formalized and explicit. It feels unfair, somehow, to criticize it  saying that Joe Biden is devoted to a misogynist gender-segregated institution where men hold all of the power and authority while women are banned from positions of power solely because of their gender would, Im sure, be seen as an attack on his faith, even though its a factual statement about how his church operates. Yes, faith, culture, and history are complicated things. But its part of our culture has been used to justify all kinds of abuse and ill treatment, including sexism and racism. Faith traditions, too, shift and adjust: A great many Christian denominations have brutally racist pasts; the Catholic Church has had to reckon with its centuries of anti-Semitism and has changed its teachings about Jews; the LDS church changed its racially discriminatory criteria for priesthood. So its not quite the case that faith is faith and the rules are set in stone. Institutions are created by humans, and humans change them. People on the left could choose differently. We could say that treating women like second-class citizens  whether thats barring us from leadership positions or refusing our access to healthcare  is unacceptable no matter the justification, and that folks who engage in or enable misogyny have put themselves outside of the big tent of the left. We could ask why it is that religious institutions get a pass when it comes to discriminating on the basis of sex if we would be outraged to learn those same institutions discriminated on other grounds. We can ask if wed vote for a politician who was a member of a men-only golf club  and if not, why wed vote for one who is a member of a church with a men-only leadership structure. These questions are uncomfortable. But theyre necessary. xx Jill