5 ms·

'benevolent sexism'??? It sounds like newspeak to me. Surely this should just be called 'female privilege'.

ajuc 4y ago
The definition of benevolent sexism makes no sense. If "women are cooler than men" is benevolent sexism, then either you admit sexism is defined subjectively from the female POV, or you have to admit that "men are better at math" is also "benevolent sexism".
- socialismisok 4y ago
  That's probably because you haven't spent enough time trying to understand the intent of the expression. Benevolent here refers to the intent, not the outcome. If I say "women are so caring" and then use that as a justification for why I shouldn't hire them, the result is a sexist policy with a benevolent origin. You see this all the time with stereotypes - queer men are so good at fashion, Asians are so good at math, Black folks are such good athletes, etc. We might think these are compliments, but when they are used to deny opportunities they can be as harmful as any other stereotype.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    If we are talking about a highly competitive situation, like hiring, then going by this line of thinking there can be no "benevolent sexism". Any sexist or racist prejudice will either be against one group (women are so weak), leading to a disadvantage for them; or benefit one group (Asians are so good at math), leading to a disadvantage for everyone else. Both are leading to discrimination based on gender or race. Calling one of the two benevolent is just a bad name.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      You are misinterpreting the expression. It's about disambiguation in the source of the sexism, not the outcome. The whole point is that the outcome is not benevolent. But it's useful to have a nominative difference between sexism that has roots in hate ("women are hysterical") and sexism that has roots in a "positive" stereotype ("women are nurturing"). Those are two different types of sexism with two different root causes and need to different solutions.
- tchaffee 4y ago
  > then either you admit sexism is defined subjectively That is indeed right in the definition, which you should read: Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender (e.g., the ideas that women are incompetent and inferior to men). Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating) but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism
delecti 4y ago
Considering the term "privilege" (in that sense) was coined specifically in regard to male (and white) privilege, it is definitionally not "female privilege", though clearly that on its own isn't a very convincing argument. The phrase "benevolent sexism" is not an oxymoron though. "Women should stay at home with the kids because they're so nurturing" is a belief that leads to reduced opportunities for women, despite ostensibly being praise of their inherent characteristics. At its simplest definition, "privilege" just means that a particular trait won't be the cause of things being harder for you, and by the example of women being nurturing, that's clearly not an example of privilege.
- solids 4y ago
  Sorry but common ideas like "privilege" cannot be coined by anyone.
  - delecti 4y ago
    Leaving aside the discussion about privilege, if you go back far enough, any commonly used term/idea will be entirely unused. For any term, there's someone who used it first, and for some of those terms we can identify who that person was, and some of those people are responsible for popularizing the term in question. It's one thing to say that we don't know who coined the term "privilege" in the context being discussed, but to dismiss the possibility of knowing who coined any common term is just clearly false.
- oaktrout 4y ago
  It looks like the term "privilege" was used in the 1200s, and even earlier in Latin, so restricting its use to male white privilege in the 2000s seems silly to me.
- chucksta 4y ago
  So its a bad argument you disagree with but don't present an alternative? And doesn't women being viewed as more nurturing doesn't deny opportunities to nurturing men or men who would like to stay at home and raise their kids?
xwolfi 4y ago
No it's a well known phenomenon. It's like opening the door only to women to simplify, but it will impact for instance a vote decision: "women are too precious to be dragged into political fights". Another analogy I've seen used is that in countries where men violently force wifes, daughters and sisters to veil their entire body, they are all very surprised to be accused of misogyny: they love and admire women like we do dogs, and only aim at protecting them from dirty cavemen as much as possible. But, just like them, you wont ask you dog to vote and you ll give it a slap if it disobeys. Women in turn can then accept this fact of life and embrace their newfound respect for a masculine God protecting them from base men and would show proud humility and obedience, while men burn cars and foreign effigies at the first sign of minuscule disrespect.
- tsol 4y ago
  >Another analogy I've seen used is that in countries where men violently force wifes, daughters and sisters to veil their entire body, they are all very surprised to be accused of misogyny: they love and admire women like we do dogs, and only aim at protecting them from dirty cavemen as much as possible. This is just a thinly veiled criticism of Iran(?) that has almost nothing to do with the parent comment.
thowaway11qwe1 4y ago
Maybe they are borrowing from the defintion that: racism = prejudice plus power [1] I quite like the idea that prejudice becomes race/sex/whateverism when used to cause harm. Thus benevolent sexism (i.e. just prejudice and no power) and prejudice based on sex would essentially be synonyms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power Edit: this comment examplains it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177570
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  I don't like when people muddy the water here. *ism is judging people based on their inherent features they cannot change, be that ableism, sexism, or racism. I hold everyone, no matter their sex, color, or ability to the same standard of decency, and if I failed to do otherwise, I'd consider that, itself a form of *ism.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  > I quite like the idea that prejudice becomes race/sex/whateverism when used to cause harm. That's bit icky, because "causes harm" is extremely relative. Any negative attitude (or the shadow of a positive one) causes harm to some degree. Wasn't "microagression" a buzzword not long ago? Everyone has some degree of power, and ignoring that feels like just another kind of marginalization. What's so wrong with leaving those words with their current meaning, and if you mean X + power, just say the extra word. Otherwise we wind up with heated arguments over nothing more than the sounds our throats make.
  - Manu40 4y ago
    > That's bit icky, because "causes harm" is extremely relative. Any negative attitude (or the shadow of a positive one) causes harm to some degree. Wasn't "microagression" a buzzword not long ago? Just want to chime in on this bit here, since it's a bone I have to pick with society on some level, and your comment is providing a good way to maybe hopefully explain it. (I agree with you btw, just to be clear) Though to start off first, I want to make clear that I don't intend harm or any sort of 'flamewar' with this comment, though I can see how some people might take it out of hand. Sure, there may be degrees to which harm is caused depending on the situation and context at hand, but we (logically, as I see it) should not be concerning ourselves with the lesser degrees overly much; as it creates a societal numbness to the more important things when rallied against too fiercely. It's like the old "Boy who cried wolf" story. Sure, there WAS a wolf eventually, and so the villagers should have just listened to the boy anyways perhaps, but because the boy fooled them so many times at lesser levels of potential harm, they failed to believe him at higher levels of potential harm. And yes, I realize that old story is about lying, but sometimes there are similar parallels in life that fit the stories narrative to some degree. Claiming that something is harming you, when there is no immediately understandable effect beyond getting emotional about whatever that thing is, is basically in and of itself, a lie. Example: If you insult me, have you harmed me in any way beyond possibly injuring my ego? My answer is no, because the ego is a personal psychological construct. It sucks, sure, but it's not hurting you in any way unless you are already in a mental state where such things become magnified. (I.E. some type of psychosis for example.) Anyways. The reason why I bring this up, is because I've seen similar arguments about harm being used in the past to try to degrade and reduce the liberty of others, all because someone feels they have right to be more 'equal' than those others all due to the supposed harm being caused. I don't agree with the notion that one should be able to constitute small infractions against another as 'harm'. I think this is why some people here are quibbling over the differences between 'benevolant sexism' and what they see as 'real sexism'. It's all ultimately some sort of ism, but some have different connotations depending on how they are applied. Ultimately, it's all stereotyping of some degree or another.
tchaffee 4y ago
Or you haven't educated yourself on what the technical term actually means. tl;dr: Benevolent sexism towards women is considered harmful to women. Benevolent sexism towards men is considered harmful to men. You can read more about what it really means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism

ajuc 4y ago

The definition of benevolent sexism makes no sense. If "women are cooler than men" is benevolent sexism, then either you admit sexism is defined subjectively from the female POV, or you have to admit that "men are better at math" is also "benevolent sexism".

socialismisok 4y ago
That's probably because you haven't spent enough time trying to understand the intent of the expression. Benevolent here refers to the intent, not the outcome. If I say "women are so caring" and then use that as a justification for why I shouldn't hire them, the result is a sexist policy with a benevolent origin. You see this all the time with stereotypes - queer men are so good at fashion, Asians are so good at math, Black folks are such good athletes, etc. We might think these are compliments, but when they are used to deny opportunities they can be as harmful as any other stereotype.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  If we are talking about a highly competitive situation, like hiring, then going by this line of thinking there can be no "benevolent sexism". Any sexist or racist prejudice will either be against one group (women are so weak), leading to a disadvantage for them; or benefit one group (Asians are so good at math), leading to a disadvantage for everyone else. Both are leading to discrimination based on gender or race. Calling one of the two benevolent is just a bad name.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    You are misinterpreting the expression. It's about disambiguation in the source of the sexism, not the outcome. The whole point is that the outcome is not benevolent. But it's useful to have a nominative difference between sexism that has roots in hate ("women are hysterical") and sexism that has roots in a "positive" stereotype ("women are nurturing"). Those are two different types of sexism with two different root causes and need to different solutions.
tchaffee 4y ago
> then either you admit sexism is defined subjectively That is indeed right in the definition, which you should read: Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender (e.g., the ideas that women are incompetent and inferior to men). Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating) but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism

delecti 4y ago

Considering the term "privilege" (in that sense) was coined specifically in regard to male (and white) privilege, it is definitionally not "female privilege", though clearly that on its own isn't a very convincing argument. The phrase "benevolent sexism" is not an oxymoron though. "Women should stay at home with the kids because they're so nurturing" is a belief that leads to reduced opportunities for women, despite ostensibly being praise of their inherent characteristics. At its simplest definition, "privilege" just means that a particular trait won't be the cause of things being harder for you, and by the example of women being nurturing, that's clearly not an example of privilege.

solids 4y ago
Sorry but common ideas like "privilege" cannot be coined by anyone.
- delecti 4y ago
  Leaving aside the discussion about privilege, if you go back far enough, any commonly used term/idea will be entirely unused. For any term, there's someone who used it first, and for some of those terms we can identify who that person was, and some of those people are responsible for popularizing the term in question. It's one thing to say that we don't know who coined the term "privilege" in the context being discussed, but to dismiss the possibility of knowing who coined any common term is just clearly false.
oaktrout 4y ago
It looks like the term "privilege" was used in the 1200s, and even earlier in Latin, so restricting its use to male white privilege in the 2000s seems silly to me.
chucksta 4y ago
So its a bad argument you disagree with but don't present an alternative? And doesn't women being viewed as more nurturing doesn't deny opportunities to nurturing men or men who would like to stay at home and raise their kids?

xwolfi 4y ago

No it's a well known phenomenon. It's like opening the door only to women to simplify, but it will impact for instance a vote decision: "women are too precious to be dragged into political fights". Another analogy I've seen used is that in countries where men violently force wifes, daughters and sisters to veil their entire body, they are all very surprised to be accused of misogyny: they love and admire women like we do dogs, and only aim at protecting them from dirty cavemen as much as possible. But, just like them, you wont ask you dog to vote and you ll give it a slap if it disobeys. Women in turn can then accept this fact of life and embrace their newfound respect for a masculine God protecting them from base men and would show proud humility and obedience, while men burn cars and foreign effigies at the first sign of minuscule disrespect.

tsol 4y ago
>Another analogy I've seen used is that in countries where men violently force wifes, daughters and sisters to veil their entire body, they are all very surprised to be accused of misogyny: they love and admire women like we do dogs, and only aim at protecting them from dirty cavemen as much as possible. This is just a thinly veiled criticism of Iran(?) that has almost nothing to do with the parent comment.

thowaway11qwe1 4y ago

Maybe they are borrowing from the defintion that: racism = prejudice plus power [1] I quite like the idea that prejudice becomes race/sex/whateverism when used to cause harm. Thus benevolent sexism (i.e. just prejudice and no power) and prejudice based on sex would essentially be synonyms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power Edit: this comment examplains it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177570

wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I don't like when people muddy the water here. *ism is judging people based on their inherent features they cannot change, be that ableism, sexism, or racism. I hold everyone, no matter their sex, color, or ability to the same standard of decency, and if I failed to do otherwise, I'd consider that, itself a form of *ism.
BobbyJo 4y ago
> I quite like the idea that prejudice becomes race/sex/whateverism when used to cause harm. That's bit icky, because "causes harm" is extremely relative. Any negative attitude (or the shadow of a positive one) causes harm to some degree. Wasn't "microagression" a buzzword not long ago? Everyone has some degree of power, and ignoring that feels like just another kind of marginalization. What's so wrong with leaving those words with their current meaning, and if you mean X + power, just say the extra word. Otherwise we wind up with heated arguments over nothing more than the sounds our throats make.
- Manu40 4y ago
  > That's bit icky, because "causes harm" is extremely relative. Any negative attitude (or the shadow of a positive one) causes harm to some degree. Wasn't "microagression" a buzzword not long ago? Just want to chime in on this bit here, since it's a bone I have to pick with society on some level, and your comment is providing a good way to maybe hopefully explain it. (I agree with you btw, just to be clear) Though to start off first, I want to make clear that I don't intend harm or any sort of 'flamewar' with this comment, though I can see how some people might take it out of hand. Sure, there may be degrees to which harm is caused depending on the situation and context at hand, but we (logically, as I see it) should not be concerning ourselves with the lesser degrees overly much; as it creates a societal numbness to the more important things when rallied against too fiercely. It's like the old "Boy who cried wolf" story. Sure, there WAS a wolf eventually, and so the villagers should have just listened to the boy anyways perhaps, but because the boy fooled them so many times at lesser levels of potential harm, they failed to believe him at higher levels of potential harm. And yes, I realize that old story is about lying, but sometimes there are similar parallels in life that fit the stories narrative to some degree. Claiming that something is harming you, when there is no immediately understandable effect beyond getting emotional about whatever that thing is, is basically in and of itself, a lie. Example: If you insult me, have you harmed me in any way beyond possibly injuring my ego? My answer is no, because the ego is a personal psychological construct. It sucks, sure, but it's not hurting you in any way unless you are already in a mental state where such things become magnified. (I.E. some type of psychosis for example.) Anyways. The reason why I bring this up, is because I've seen similar arguments about harm being used in the past to try to degrade and reduce the liberty of others, all because someone feels they have right to be more 'equal' than those others all due to the supposed harm being caused. I don't agree with the notion that one should be able to constitute small infractions against another as 'harm'. I think this is why some people here are quibbling over the differences between 'benevolant sexism' and what they see as 'real sexism'. It's all ultimately some sort of ism, but some have different connotations depending on how they are applied. Ultimately, it's all stereotyping of some degree or another.

tchaffee 4y ago

Or you haven't educated yourself on what the technical term actually means. tl;dr: Benevolent sexism towards women is considered harmful to women. Benevolent sexism towards men is considered harmful to men. You can read more about what it really means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism