Today, let us start with some truisms. Racism is bad. Sexism is bad. Classism is bad. Any discrimination of this sort is bad. Identifying instances of these things is important. We cannot effect change if we do not know what we have to change.
To this end, we need a definition of these isms. For simplicity and because it is the area I am most familiar with, I will discuss sexism. But these considerations apply to all of them. So, to start, an act or belief is sexist if it treats a person as a member of a sex rather than as a person.
To illustrate, Anne is good at her job, and Barbara, who works on the other side of town, is barely competent and horribly irresponsible. Anne is passed over for a promotion because her boss thinks that women are not fit to lead. Barbara is passed over because her boss knows she is not fit to lead. Anne's boss performed a sexist act because his judgment is based on Anne's being a woman. Barbara's boss did not because his judgment is based on her personal incompetence.
This gives us clear standards that determine whether an act is sexist. But the story is not as simple as it seems on first blush.
Returning to a fellow we are already familiar with, Otto is your average, everyday catcaller. Cammy, seeing her friend act this way, tells him that he is a sexist. Otto defends himself, saying that he is not treating these people this way as women, but as attractive people. He just happens to be attracted to women.
Otto's defense is misguided. Contra my previous piece ("Objectification for fun and profit," Sept. 30), there are societal forces that make it inappropriate and unlikely for people to catcall at men. These factors mean that Otto is able to catcall only because his targets are women. Despite the results of his introspection, Otto's actions are sexist — at least the way the world is now — because they do treat these people as women, rather than people.
It may seem strange that the status of our actions and beliefs is not transparent to introspection. Normally, only I can say what I intended to do or how I feel about something. If I sincerely assert that I am happy, for instance, it is bizarre for you to tell me I am not. Shouldn't the same apply to the isms? That is, if a person were actually treating someone as a woman, wouldn't this be apparent to them?
The isms form a class of biases. Biases are subtle and insidious. A big part of what makes them so dangerous is that we do not always know when we are deploying them. Consider Frank, the Islamophobe. He has a good deal of evidence supporting the idea that Muslims are terrorists — haven't you seen all the news reports? But he is ignoring all the Muslims who do not commit acts of terror. It will not be apparent to Frank that he is not reasoning well. Other isms work analogously.
We should take these lessons to heart. If someone tells you that an act was -ist, you are not in a position to dismiss it out of hand. You are probably deploying the very biases the person is accusing you of.
These considerations give us good reason to defer to the reports of others. Unsurprisingly, things are not as simple as they seem on second blush, either.
How can we know when a person's report of an –ist act is inaccurate? Some people are oversensitive to these issues. For example, telling a stranger to smile can sometimes be sexist — certain standards apply to women that make it appropriate to command them to buck up that do not apply to men. But Chris is a cheerful though aggressive person. He tells every sad person to be happier. When he demands that the crying girl on the train be happier, he is being an insensitive ass. The girl may be justified in thinking Chris is sexist, but he is not. We would be misguided to criticize him on grounds of sexism.
This is not an empty intellectual exercise. Whether someone is sexist, racist, homophobic or whatever else is an important practical issue. These are grounds for ostracism or termination. Who wants to spend time with such a person, either in personal or professional settings? Not acting on these situations, when they arise, implicitly condones them.
I have set out a condition that makes an act or belief –ist. My definition is not perfect. It needs refining. I have not described how we can tell that these conditions are met, so that we can determine with certainty whether something is -ist. It is imperative that we complete these projects, especially the second.
David Hefer '12 urges everyone to pursue this inquiry in a public forum — these very pages. Or there is the private forum of his email address david_hefer@brown.edu.
