The other inferior sex (J28-F3)

Happy Saturday to you!

“Not to be a misogynist, but nice guys finish last,” my coworker said from the front of the car.

I hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation, but I perked up immediately. My foreman, who was sitting next to him in the passenger seat, immediately launched into a defense of all of the stats on how “nice guys” treat women like objects to be possessed instead of people to know and act like women are an arcade game, where if you push the right buttons and are “nice” then you get the sex.

“You are a misogynist if you think that your ‘niceness’ to a woman deserves a reward,” she growled.

“Maybe,” my coworker said. He and the foreman are cousins, so I wasn’t worried about their accusatory tones, “but you ever notice how there’s not a word for the opposite of misogynist?” He laughed as her jaw dropped, ready to drop his metaphoric mic and win the argument.

“Misandry,” I piped up from the back. “The word you’re looking for is misandrist.”

I didn’t mean to escalate the argument, but fingers immediately flew across the dash as my coworker and foreman pointed and shouted at each other,

“Misogynist!”

“Misandrist!”

As a result of conversations like that one, for a large part of my work last Fall, the most common insult to any and every dumb thing that we did was “misogynist!” (to the boys) or “misandrist!” (to us girls). I teach my coworkers new words fairly often, but this one I’m actually glad they learned.

The misogyny in our line of work is undeniable, mostly from outside of Summit in. My foreman got asked by the sprinkler guy in Texas what she was doing “making decisions outside of the kitchen.” My coworkers don’t even think twice about how to hold their keys when they walk alone, whether they should check in with someone when they buy stuff on Facebook Marketplace, or if they need to bring a drink cover with them to the bar - let alone whether or not they’ve parked under a streetlight or in front of a security camera. 

The only exception to their parking is if they are worried about their catalytic converter or tools (possessions) being stolen.

Which is honestly how I want them to live their lives. I want them to be immune to misandry - from their fellow man and their fellow woman. But sadly, this is not actually the case, the misandry is just more subtle and less heard-of than the misogyny.

I really feel for my coworker because, for no fault he can own, he sometimes “finishes last” in his relationships just for the fact that he’s a conservative, white, nice guy. I imagine it’s the same feeling I feel while I shift my keys between my fingers like Wolverine as I get out of the car I parked in front of a security camera in order to meet someone from Facebook Marketplace.

The misanthropy doesn’t change who we are. It just exacts a lot more effort to successfully be who we are.

When I was in third grade at my private Polish school, the teacher left the classroom for whatever reason. I remember it being a sparse kinda day - maybe most of the kids were sick or we had split the class into two rooms to do group work. 

That said, the teacher left me, Helga, and some boys unsupervised. So we did what, I discovered as a sub, any kids would do in that situation: started a writing-utensil throwing war. The ammunition of choice in our context were the teeny tiny bits of chalk that were left at the blackboard and what started as one “joking” piece of chalk flying through the air turned into all-out war, with half of us hiding behind chairs as the other half dove and slid around the floor grabbing chalk.

The door creaked and all of us froze, half-crouching, chalk still in-hand as our teacher’s jaw dropped. We scrambled back into our seats and snatched our pens and papers back into place, but it was too late: Helga and I were called into the hallway as our teacher berated us all. She shut the door and left us sitting outside as she zipped to the principal’s office.

A stray piece of chalk hit the blackboard inside the room followed by vigorous whispers, but otherwise the only sound were the twin high-heel clicks of our teacher with our principal marching down to the classroom.

The principal gave us a stern look as she entered the classroom. Our teacher remained outside and asked Helga and I for our side of the story - somehow she had assumed we weren’t involved in throwing any chalk, but we confessed to our throwing all the same.

The door opened and the principal held it open as all of the boys filed out, heads hanging, to the office to fill out detention slips, the principal’s heels tapping out a funeral march as she escorted them. My teacher grabbed the door and held it open for me and Helga, telling us to get back to work and not to cause any more trouble. 

I, years later, would commit the same misandry to rowdy kids as I wrote them up and forgave their rowdy co-conspirators for no fault of their own except they were boys and girls. And I don’t know how to apologize for it.

I told you that 9 out of the 10 trans kids I met subbing in Wyoming were girls passing as boys. But I’m told anecdotally that in liberal states, 9 out of 10 trans kids in school are boys passing as girls.

Isn’t that an interesting anecdote to consider?

I don’t share these stories and anecdotes as moralisms so much as reality checks. One of the things I learned in Belonging (Cohen) is that bias and discrimination cannot be fought by teaching about it or telling people to stop doing it. If you tell an employer, “don’t discriminate by race when you’re hiring,” they discriminate more by race when hiring. If you tell a teacher, “make sure to grade students fairly,” they grade students more harshly according to their implicit biases. Trying to be “fair” ¡exacerbates! judgement!

Instead, if you want employers and teachers and coworkers to be less misanthropic, you have to get them to commit to two steps: 

1) Empathize with the feeling of being discriminated against. Everyone knows what it feels like to suffer for no fault of your own - what it feels like to “finish last” - but you have to choose to re-learn which of your behaviors triggers that feeling in others.

2) Learn to notice when you are causing that feeling. Teaching a teacher what kinds of behaviors feel like discrimination allows them to recognize and stop their misandry. Teaching an employer what kinds of behaviors feel like discrimination allows them to recognize and stop their misogyny.

According to the scientific literature I’ve read into, there is no better way to take personal responsibility for misanthropy. But there is, in fact, a better way to take collective responsibility.

Both Belonging and The Tipping Point (Gladwell) make a huge case that human behavior is more influenced by context and social expectations than by individual character. Honest kids cheat when the environment favors cheating. Sketchy neighborhoods produce criminals rather than criminals producing sketchy neighborhoods. If donuts are left on the table and a veggie tray in the fridge, the donuts get eaten and the veggies rot.

No mastermind rigged the school system to be misandrist - but the context of forcing kids to sit still and regurgitate information does it anyways. Andrew Tait is not single-handedly indoctrinating young men to be misogynists, but legally throwing soldiers back into the workforce 75 years ago is doing it anyways.

The chilling reality that faces you when you stand in a Holocaust museum (and is being played out in conflicts all over the world today) is that “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” Only 20-35% of people will stand their ground against contextual pressure.

But the inverse is just as real.

If you hide the donuts and leave the veggies out, the veggies get eaten. If you make it possible and compelling to learn, cheaters do good work. If you physically clean up a neighborhood, crime disappears.

So it seems statistically reasonable that if you create an environment where women are celebrated as persons, not possessions and an environment where men are celebrated as persons, not pocketbooks, that maybe, just maybe we’d have zero kids trying to pass as the opposite sex and misanthropy would become an anachronism.

Thanks for bearing with my unbridled idealism.

—Beth