Sexism: definitions, manifestations, and societal impact

Sexism and Identity Construction

The "sexism" section of the text Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Philosophical Issues of Identity and Justice demonstrates that sexism is not merely an issue of discrimination against women. Sex is the physical aspect of our body that makes us 'male' or female' or unclassifiable in the terms of our particular cultural construction, and gender is how culture interprets this sexually focused construction of difference. But racism and racial attitudes, and attitudes towards sexual behavior also affect how the genders are perceived, as does the sexual behavior of male and female bodies.

For instance, in Chapter 6, the essay "Racism, Sexism, and Preferential Treatment" by Richard Wasserstrom shows how sexism and racism cannot be separated, as both privilege hegemonic groups, although at times one form may predominate. Sexual prejudices against Black men have been used to limit the social behavior of white women, and vice versa. Likewise, in the essay "Demarginalizing the Intersection," by Kimberle Crenshaw and "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images," by Patricia Hill Collins demonstrate how gender is often constructed by social constructions of identity in such a fashion to marginalize Black women as neither fully black nor female, neither powerless by virtue of their race, nor powerful because of their gender.

The article "Oppression by Choice," Ann E. Cudd concludes, sameness and liberation is never commensurate, as not all women or racial groups have experienced the same forms of oppression -- heterosexual women experience the privilege of possessing the normal identity of sexuality, according to society, while homosexual women do not accrue the benefits of maleness. Transvestite males may seek what some women consider oppressive trappings of gender in dress to show the constructed nature of gender and sexuality, to express aspects of their identity that constructions of maleness deny. In contras, while transsexuals may seem the most transgressing of all alternative options to maleness and femaleness, quite often transsexual's speaking of their gender as 'truly male' or 'truly female' in a way that transcends the body beyond that of culture is used as 'proof' that gender is not constructed, but essential.

All constructed groups have shown a certain jealousy of the rights and privileges accorded to others. For instance, the legal rational of Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County rested upon the fact that male and female sexuality in cases of statutory rape should be equal, and to make male and female distinctions was unfair to males, and also to male homosexual couples. The case of Rostker v. Goldberg was put forth after a number of men challenged the constitutionality of the draft as discriminatory -- should not both women and men be forced to defend their country, under equal onus of the law.