The Banality of Sexism

On driving the car with my husband in the passenger seat

We were driving out to Stow Lake with our granddaughter, a toddler, in her car seat in the back. I was driving, which I’m doing more often lately. It’s my car, and my husband doesn’t like driving, so that makes sense.

The only problem was, neither one of us was sure exactly how to get to Stow Lake. It’s in the western end of Golden Gate Park, which has closed one of the main through-streets to cars. I thought we should try to enter the park around 25th Avenue on the Richmond District side, but my husband had another idea.

“Turn left here,” he said at 19th.

“No, I think it’s better to enter a little farther down.”

Hannah Arendt and Adolf Eichmann

I should say here that I never read Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), but I’ve read stories discussing her thesis: that you don’t have to be evil to perpetuate it, that Eichmann — who organized the transport of millions of Jews and other “inferiors” to concentration camps to be killed during the Holocaust — was just a boring bureaucrat trying to advance his career.

Some have disputed her conclusion, but I see her point. Much of the harm in the world today is created by regular people, not horrible monsters: people who are easily led, deliberately obtuse (because it’s easier than acuity), or just not paying attention.

And while sexism in the U.S. can’t be described as “evil,” it’s certainly ubiquitous here, and getting evil work done, by convincing the population that one group of people is inferior to another.

That establishes a framework of inequality which affects all people in a negative way, because as soon as one group is considered better than another, it opens the lid on a Pandora’s Box of troubles including racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, injustice, and discrimination based on religion, the very evil we’ve been taught our country was founded to prevent.

Even the rich, white, hetero Christian male who is supposedly at the top of the pyramid suffers when he can’t feel his connection to other people. Because if you’re above other people, you are not with them. If you’re above other people, you are alone.

Great thinkers and leaders value equality

Arendt recognized the importance of equality and human connection to peace on the planet, as did many of our great thinkers and leaders.

“Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other… Therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about.” ~The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt.

“I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. ~Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ~ Galatians 3:28

Still looking for the lake

So anyway, there we were driving down Fulton, and I went past 19th, hoping to get into the park on 25th, but I couldn’t turn left there (of course), so I continued on to 30th, looking for an entry, before making an illegal U-turn.

Meanwhile, my husband had a nervous breakdown.

“Why didn’t you turn left when I told you to!?! This is a nightmare!”

I assume because the baby was in the car that he was reining himself in. I shudder to think what he might have shouted or done if we’d been alone, possibly gone into seizure.

What I don’t shudder to think is how it things have unfolded if our roles had been reversed, and he was driving.

“Turn left here,” I would have suggested at 19th.

“No, I think it’s better to enter a little farther down,” he would have responded. And that would have been that.

Like everything else, sexism exists on a continuum

The problem is his basic assumption that his opinion is superior to mine. Also, his expectation that I hold the same assumption. But surprise, surprise! I‘m inclined to believe my own opinion before other people’s, especially if the other people in question have already admitted they don’t know the way to Stow Lake.

I read an article recently that said patriarchy is dead in America. I can’t find it now or I would link to it here. The author, Adeline Dimond, is a clever and accomplished single woman, a 51-year-old federal attorney and a damn good writer. Yet all I need do is look around at who holds the power in government, business, churches, and elsewhere to see that her viewpoint is demonstrably untrue. Just because some women have good and powerful jobs, that doesn’t mean the patriarchy’s been dismantled and there’s no sexism here.

It’s true women have it worse in some other countries where it’s legal for men to rape or beat or even kill their wife, sister, or daughter for “dishonoring” them by having sex with someone they don’t approve of, wearing clothing they don’t like, saying something they deem embarrassing, not wanting to marry someone they’ve chosen, or otherwise refusing to submit to male authority.

But guess what? Those other countries haven’t always been like that. Iran wasn’t always ruled by an Ayatollah. Before the Supreme Leader was a Shah who encouraged women to discard their veils. In the 1970s, Iranians could dress up and go out dancing.

But governments change. Systems change. Attitudes change. And if you aren’t actively engaged in shaping the zeitgeist, then it’s possible they will change in ways you don’t like.

In fact, the struggle that put a conservative theocracy in power in Iran is not unlike the struggle going on in the United States today: a fight between tradition and modernization, between stasis and change, between people who want to move forward and people who want to go back.

That’s why I tend to take the opposite viewpoint from Adeline Diamond. I see sexism and patriarchy everywhere I look. It may be that my Sexism Meter is overdeveloped. I try to beware of that. But I figure it’s better to overreact now than be told later that I have to wear a burqa and get my husband’s permission if I want to go outside.

Turns out he was right

When we finally got into the park, my husband continued directing. “It’s off of Martin Luther King Drive,” he said.

“No. I think it’s closer to this side of the park, off JFK,” I responded, to my peril. Because there’s something about being in a car that turns my husband into a maniac.

I tried to hand him my phone, which was open to a map of the park showing Stow Lake and the roads leading to it, so he could play the role of navigator with the benefit of information. But he wouldn’t take it, and I couldn’t look at the map closely while driving.

I realized just now, while typing this, that I should have just turned on Siri, and we both could have followed her directions. But that didn’t occur to me at the time. Neither did pulling over to look at the map.

Instead, I continued to look for the lake according to the information I had, and he continued to bully me — You’re just doing this to spite me! This is some feminist bullshit! I don’t want to drive around aimlessly! — until I agreed to follow his directions instead of my own instincts and what little I’d seen on the gd bloody map.

I crossed over to MLK Drive and turned right. We went 10 blocks or so without seeing anything promising, but the atmosphere in the car was calmer now, so no one complained. Then I did a U-turn and drove the other way. Eleven blocks later, we saw the sign for Stow Lake.

Does this mean I should have followed his directions from the outset?

No. It does not.

Because I know from experience that when we’re both guessing, it’s a toss-up as to who will turn out to be right. His opinion is not superior to mine. My opinion is not superior to his. We’re both competent, intelligent people who deserve consideration and respect.

Sure, it’s easier to acquiesce gracefully (like a “good” woman) and avoid conflict. But this is what it takes to dismantle a patriarchy: one little squirrel, with one tiny hammer, tap tap tapping away at the foundation. Issuing a squeak.

You can’t be part of the resistance if you don’t resist.

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