We need to bring back the term “benevolent sexism” into widespread use for real. It’s a major mechanism in how bioessentialist Girlboss Radfems can be turned into bioessentialist conservative Tradwives.
I’m not actually interested in the bad faith radfem readings of this post where I get called an incel pervert (????). But I will be donating a lot of money to trans organizations and blocking all the radfems in the notes, because I don’t think it’s worth speaking to people whose position is that their politics are incorruptible and anyone who critiques them is wrong (and having incel fantasies???? What???)
I do want to talk about how there’s a lot of radical feminists in the notes acting like men doing small nice things for women like opening doors is what benevolent sexism is. It’s not, and I don’t want anyone who’s new to the term getting confused.
“Benevolent sexism” refers to sexism that masks itself as complimentary and beneficial to women. That might include holding open doors, but that’s a tiny and useless example. The bigger part is putting women on a pedestal as kind, innocent, safe, pure, etc, often in contrast to the roughness and violence of men. That used to be a major argument against women voting and engaging in politics, that they needed to be protected from something so rough, dirty, and corrupt. That’s where the similarities to radical feminism comes in.
Let me expand on my original thought:
Gender/sex essentialist radical feminists/TERFs and traditional sexism conservatives share many of the same basic beliefs about the world. Men are inherently rough, violent, and sexually aggressive where women are kinder, gentler, and inherently safer to be around. That’s benevolent sexism. Traditional sexists turn this into a belief that women must be protected by men from the world, so women must have husbands to shelter them from the world (ie control them). There’s also strands of outright misogyny that come with traditional sexism, but this post is long enough. Radfems turn this into a belief of separatism from men, which is interesting because many sexist and misogynistic societies do practice many kinds of separation between men and women.
Any radfem who’s insecure or unsure in her beliefs, who’s attracted to men, or who thinks she knows a good man is vulnerable to traditional sexist beliefs because she’s already accepted the same base premise. She just needs to change her mind about rejecting men entirely (which can be a struggle when you’re attracted to men or have men close to you in your life) to the idea that she can pick a Good Man(tm) to protect her. A person who jumps out of one set of radical beliefs can easily overcorrect in the other direction, as well. This is what sets up radfems who do become tradfems.
It’s a lot easier for benevolent sexism to slip into queer and feminist spaces in general, which is part of why it’s important to talk about it. The traditional sexist role for women is posed as subservient to that of men, but it’s still often posed as good, honorable, necessary, etc. If you’re willing to accept anything that paints women in a positive light into your feminist spaces, then it becomes easy to let benevolent sexism slip in.
The fundamental belief of feminism about women should be the women are human beings, people, not that women are inherently good. Any type of feminism that rejects that (as transphobic and separatist strands tend to) becomes vulnerable to benevolent sexism.
Bringing back this post in the context of 52% of white women who voted doing so for Trump. Benevolent sexism, the promises and pedestals patriarchy offers as its bait, is definitely a part of some of that.
In my area, I only heard "benevolent sexism" as "if you are a special kind of woman, you'll be able to to join the lower ranks of men, who are required to trample upon other men and women. E.g. upper-middle class women trampling on the poor men and women and the minorities.", so your part is absolutely going to be my new usage of the term! Thank you.
Good to know! I first ran into it while learning about the suffrage movement and the paternalistic framing of keeping women from voting as protecting their “goodness” by keeping them away from dirty politics, so it’s interesting to hear about other contexts.
I do think that benevolent sexism tends to come into the Madonna-Whore complex where there are good, wonderful, perfect, pure women and then tainted, fallen women, so it certainly can enable certain women to become enforcers of sexism and other -isms from their pedestal of being seen as Pure, Angelic creatures. But to get pedestal treatment, they still do have to be middle class, white, cishet, etc, and perform feminine gender roles that put them as subservient to men.
This also goes for things like 'divine femininity' and 'women are mystical creatures that need herbs based on their menstruation and not western medicine' etc etc.
Yes medicine has large gaps regarding qualitative treatment of bodily systems generally associated with women. No that doesn't make women ~mystical aliens~ that need completely different things than regular humans (men).
