I have read at least of a couple of the recent diaries on the pie wars and have been trying to figure out why this is such a hard issue. A comment was made in mcjoan's diary that an ad depicting two black women in a fried chicken fight would never have been put up and it was right. Racism is thought of differently than sexism, and for some or many that is a horrible thing. I tend to think that the two are different beasts.
Yes they both can result in horrible actions and both are used as a way of making the other less than oneself. The two, however spring from different sources. There is nothing in being Black, in and of itself, that makes another think that they should have a predilection for fried chicken. Hell, I grew up in South Carolina, I have a predilection for fried chicken (especially when it cooked in lard or Crisco, God awful for you but oh so tasty). The stereotypes and considerations of Blacks are entirely a product of culture and the specific history of America.
Sexism, on the other hand, is tied to the very specific fact that Men and Women, in general, view each other as sexual beings. That fact cannot be untied from anyone's conception of the other. It never occurs to me to think of anyone on the blog as black or white or Hispanic or otherwise unless what is being discussed is specifically something that pertains to it. I almost always have an impression in my mind though, conscious or not, of whether the speaker is male or female. I take it as a general fact that men and women are different. How? I couldn't even begin to know. Every specific example I could come up with has been countermanded by another specific example. All I can say as a hypothesis, is that in general each looks at the other half of the population differently from each other. This makes the issue of sexism very different from racism.
Does it make it better? No. But I think it does change how we need to think and react to it. Should anyone be told that their opinion on an issue is stupid because of one reason or another especially their sex? No. But it happens and it will happen. I can't tell you the number of abortion conversations I've been in where I could tell that my opinion was weighted slightly less by the women because I'm a man. (and I'm willing to bet that at least one person reading that sentence thought, "well it should be") I've also been in conversations about abortions where I haven't gotten the sense that my opinion was being discounted.
So what should happen? Some have said that the real issue became the lack of respect shown on both sides of the debate. I think that's part of the issue but I think also the issue is that a lot of people want to make an issue that springs from the inherently different conceptions that men and women have of each other into an issue like racism and I don't think that will ever work or that we can ever have a productive dialogue if sexism is considered that way.
Thought's?