Subtle sexism shouldn’t go unnoticed

“No doesn’t mean maybe.”

“This isn’t what love looks like.”

If you’ve walked down Trousdale Parkway this week, you’ve probably seen statements like these on rows of colorful T-shirts.

The display is a part of USC Take Back the Night, a week “dedicated to promoting awareness of and protesting against sexual violence,” according to the event’s Facebook page. The week highlights one of the most egregious displays of sexism: rape.

Sexual assault is shockingly common throughout the United States, especially on college campuses. Those involved with Take Back the Night are brave for facing the problem head-on.

But we can’t just tackle sexism at its worst. We have to make note of when it crops up subtly in our everyday behavior.

At its core, sexism is about letting your view of someone as male or female cloud your view of him or her as a human being.

Can you come up with an example or two? I can come up with too many.

Disclaimer: The story that follows isn’t a description of a particular night so much as a multi-night mash-up.

I was talking to a friend at a party when a guy approached us. On the surface, he was polite. He didn’t leer, he didn’t invade our personal space and he made the effort to carry on an actual conversation — no small feat, as the DJ was blasting Skrillex.

Then, I put on my sweatshirt. The guy smirked and came up with this gem: “Man, when a girl puts on a hoodie, she’s totally out of commission for the night.”

Oh, really? Did it occur to you that I might be cold? Cool.

In this guy’s mind, the fact that we were women overrode everything else about us. But I’m willing to bet that if he had talked to us as fellow students first, he would have been met with less eye-roll.

Let it be said that women are perfectly capable of the same kind of sexism. From time to time, I fall into the trap of thinking, “God, what now?” when I get approached by men at parties.

But just as not all men are sexual predators, not all men are jerks. To make that assumption is to screen out plenty of decent people.

In the grand scheme of things, do the categories “male” and “female” have to matter this much? Biological differences between the sexes exist, but we’re all basically hairless apes. We share more than 99 percent of the same genes and most of the same needs. Still, we’re surrounded by reminders of the supposedly rigid split between men and women.

Before we’re even born, parents buy bedding, clothes and toys that correspond to our sex; blue or pink, toy trucks or toy ovens. When we get older, the media bombards us with similar messages. Cosmopolitan is full of titles like “4 Things Guys Keep Private” and “Why Guys Dump Girls They Dig.” AskMen.com publishes countless guidelines on talking to women — not all people, just women.

Do we really have to reinforce these divides again and again?

Think about handbooks that teach you how to interact with natives in a foreign country. Sure, basic guidelines are helpful, but taking them too literally is a bad idea.

What if you went to Europe and people assumed you’re loudmouth because of a bullet point they read somewhere about Americans? That’s how I feel when people make assumptions about me because I happen to have the capacity to give birth.

Sexist assumptions aren’t as dramatic as sexist violence, but that’s no excuse to let them slide.

I won’t launch into a feminist tirade if a guy holds a door open for me. All the same, I hope he’s holding it open for men, too.

 

Maya Itah is a senior majoring in communication. Her column, “Tackling the ‘-Isms,’” runs every other Thursday.