SEXISM, DOUBLE DISCRIMINATION AND MORE THAN ONE KIND OF PREJUDICE

Since the Everyday Sexism Project started, many of the stories we have catalogued have described not just sexism, but sexism intermingled with other forms of prejudice – racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ageism, disableism, stigma around mental health problems, and more. Again and again, we’ve heard from women in same-sex relationships being fetishized and asked for threesomes when they’re just trying to walk down the street, trans women mocked and belittled and hounded from public spaces, Asian women being labelled as ‘easy’ or ‘obedient’, sex workers accused of being complicit in their own assaults, disabled women infantilized and patronized, and countless similar stories.

‘Double discrimination’ (or, indeed, triple or quadruple) has proved to be a major recurring theme within the project and is a crucial focus for modern feminism. Intersectionality means being aware of and acting on the fact that different forms of prejudice are connected, because they all stem from the same root of being other, different or somehow secondary to the ‘normal’, ‘ideal’ status quo. So just as women suffer from sexism because our society is set up to favour and automatically take men as the norm from which women deviate, so the same is true for people who are different from other dominant norms – such as being heterosexual, white, cisgendered and non-disabled. People also often face prejudice as a result of other characteristics, such as age, class and religious belief.

If we are to tackle the fact that women have been historically oppressed because of characteristics that are seen to be different from the male norm, how can we protest such treatment while simultaneously excluding from our own movement the needs and agendas of those with other stigmatized characteristics? This is particularly true in the case of our trans sisters, who some feminists believe should be excluded from some areas of the movement by virtue of not fulfilling required characteristics of womanhood – a deep irony for a group fighting for equality regardless of sex.

There were huge numbers of project entries that clearly demonstrate two or more kinds of prejudice combined. Many women of colour, for example, have described suffering not only from both racism and sexism but also from a particular brand of racist sexism that conflates and exacerbates the two.

‘I am Japanese. Frequently told by white men that Japanese, Chinese, Filipina, Asian women are “better” than the “feminazis”, “femicunts” in the West and “know how to treat men”; we will cook and clean.’

‘I was walking on my university campus with my boyfriend, when we walked past a group of guys, one of whom shouted out “What did you pay for her then? Is she a mail order?” My boyfriend is Chinese and I’m half Indian.’

Writer Reni Eddo-Lodge says that not all women experience incidents like street harassment in the same way: ‘There’s particular fascination with African women’s bodies and because of the likes of hip-hop videos – the production of which is controlled by black men in a heavily male-dominated industry – our bodies are rarely equated with innocence and piety and instead are deemed as permanently sexually available.’ This idea of black women as exotic, hyper-sexualized creatures can be seen again and again in cultural stereotypes. Try typing ‘pretty’ into Google image search and you are greeted with pages and pages of white women’s faces (the fashion industry is notoriously white: of the seventy-five British Vogue covers since the beginning of 2008, black women have featured on just three, while Kate Moss alone has graced nine); but type in ‘sexy’ and suddenly far more women of colour appear – though they remain far less represented than white women. Sexism impacts hugely on women’s lives, careers and success. When prejudices intersect, the same is doubly true.

And, as demonstrated by accounts of other forms of sexism, these combined prejudices become evident at a tragically young age. ‘I reported a boy at school who had been making racial and sexual remarks to me and other girls of ethnic minorities for about a year. Because, even though teachers and other students could hear the disgusting comments he was making about me being a “black whore who he wanted to put in a cage”, a Pakistani girl being a “bomber” and stating the only attractive females were white, it was dismissed and nobody said a word.’

The huge effect of media stereotypes on the treatment of particular groups of people – especially those suffering various forms of double discrimination – is a vital part of the problem. According to new figures released in May 2013, just 18 per cent of television presenters over the age of fifty are women. The percentage for disabled women, LGBTQIA women and women of colour is likely to be even lower.

The problem is exacerbated and inflamed by two key factors. First, such women are so rarely portrayed on screen as to be considered strange and unusual. Second, when they are present they have generally been moulded into hackneyed caricatures that play to every stereotype in the book and exist solely to satisfy a specific storyline.

‘The dearth of any women in the media anywhere near my size (I’m a UK 18) who isn’t a) a pathetic lonely loser or b) the “before” shot on a weight-loss show.’

‘As a physically disabled woman, I feel invisible, both in the media and in real life. No one seems to think that I have a sexuality or even sensuality. There seem to be very few characters in films and TV shows who are incidentally disabled and/or queer.’

‘Next to no programmes portray lesbians as just one of the double-discrimination characters, without being a story feature and portrayed to meet (hetero male?) viewer expectations. I’d note that we are a diverse bunch and don’t have a “look” so much!’

‘The media’s complete failure to be able to cover trans folk in any way that considers them as people first and trans second – instead, it is always made to be their entire identity, whether in the rare television shows when a trans person features or in the papers, where they insist on referring to people like Chelsea Manning as “Bradley” and “he” irrespective of her own wishes.’

‘Working-class women are rarely portrayed in a good light in the media, and equality of opportunity rather than focusing on women at the top is something feminism needs more of.’

The battle can feel endless – because it is a far more complex issue than just achieving representation in itself. Before trans people can even begin to fight for equality, for instance, they first have to overcome enormous ignorance and lack of understanding about their experience.

‘A close friend of mine is a trans man and has been told many times by people who knew him before his transition (which began towards the end of his time at high school) or have seen pictures of him as a child that “it’s a shame such a pretty girl wants to look like a guy”, implying that his gender identity is a choice and deliberately neglecting the duty of anyone born with female organs to look feminine.’

One of the reasons why it is so important to let members of oppressed groups tell their own stories in their own ways is that it’s so easy to think you’re getting it when you’re not. In much the same way as many of the men writing to the project said they thought they knew about sexism when they imagined a catcall or a wolf whistle but had no concept of how it actually impacted on women’s lives, living it every day, influencing every choice and thought. Because it isn’t just about the individual incidents; it’s about the collective impact on everything else – the way you think about yourself, the way you approach public spaces and human interaction, the limits you place on your own aspirations and the things you stop yourself from doing before you even try because of bitter learned experience.

As the writer John Scalzi brilliantly and simply put it on his blog, Whatever: ‘In the role-playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.’ Of course, this is not to discount the difficulties faced by, for example, heterosexual white men from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds but it’s a ballpark starting point that helps us get the general idea.

This sense of instantly being judged and condemned purely as a result of others’ preconceptions also comes across painfully clearly in the entries we have received from disabled women.

‘Strangers saying: “You’re hot . . . for a girl in a wheelchair.” ’

‘I was once assaulted by an older man twice my size getting onto a bus because he thought I looked too young to be using a walking stick so I had to be a “scrounging lazy little bitch”.’

Feminists need to include these varied priorities and experiences within the movement for equality. As blogger Dee Emm Elms, who writes Four-Color Princesses, says: ‘That person on the bus being harassed is still being harassed whether he’s being harassed for being religious or for being an atheist or being black or being a woman or because of her clothing or because of her body language or because of her appearance or because of her handbag or because of her accent. That’s all the same problem. It’s not recognizing the basic humanity of a person.’

Originally published 31 March 2014