Hostile Sexism By Suzannah Weiss: Article Analysis

To begin, I appreciated learning about hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. I had understood the concept of these types before reading about them, but I didn’t have the language to articulate them. The article “7 Examples Of Benevolent Sexism That Are Just As Harmful As Hostile Sexism” by Suzannah Weiss helped to open my eyes to the ways benevolent sexism is a part of everyday life. It especially helped me understand my frustrations in some of my conversations with my mom. I talked about this briefly in my first reflection, but with all of the sexual assault allegations in the news, my mom and I have had many conversations about why this is happening and what this means about our society. Usually, I fall more on the side of, these numerous …show more content…
I was immediately uncomfortable as I thought through whether or not this was the “right” way to raise a child, and I kept thinking about how the child and their parents would be perceived by others — the amount of prejudice and antagonism the child would face as they grow up in our world. Would they grow up disliking their parents for raising them so differently? Would people respect the child’s pronouns? Would the child ever feel inclined toward one gender? In a way, it seems almost cruel for Myers to raise her child gender-neutrally in a world that still has suched a warped, binary understanding of gender. But at the same time, this child has the luck of being raised by parents that will always love and accept them for who they are — and really, this is a style of parenting that I hypothetically support. If I ever have a child, I would like to allow them to be gender creative and use whatever pronouns they feel comfortable with — so why then was I so uncomfortable with Myers’ story?
On one hand, I think my discomfort stemmed from my fear of the discrimination the child will face as they grow up, but on the other, I have to accept that as aware as I am of gender and socialization, I am still ingrained with the biases of our …show more content…
Once again, I had some understanding of these concepts from the exercises we’ve done throughout the semester, but I didn’t have the words for them. I think that I’ve gotten better with sociological imagination (though I still need to work on my stubbornness), but I especially want to focus on mindfulness, particularly on the aspect that Professor Sechler (2017) describes as “being tuned into the idea that each of us is a participant in a society. We all affect the social world, even in little ways” (p.