Racism and sexism can be a matter of individuals
being prejudiced or bigoted.
It can also be a matter of oppressive social
structures, where people get discriminate
and marginalized.
And it's also a matter of prejudice and bigotry
being built into the "common sense", those
things that everybody take for granted.
Racism can happen to any race and people of
any race, and sexism can happen to either
gender or people of either gender.
But this is not evenly distributed: In most
societies, one race is norm and one gender
is norm.
In USA and Europe, one could argue that there's
a white norm and a male norm.
It's considered more "normal", in a way, to
be white and to be male.
This really sucks.
This kind of norms sucks no matter what categories
of people have a little bit to gain, and what
categories of people have a lot to lose.
It's unfair, it sucks.
When such a norm is established, the category
that is the norm is usually made invisible.
A white man is not a white man: He's a person,
period.
A man is not a man, a man is just a person.
It is a woman who is a woman: The man is the
norm, the woman is the exception.
And in the same way, in western society, white
people are not considered white.
They are considered people.
While people of African or Asian heritage
are considered as such, and being stereotyped
and so on.
And this is all really unfair.
One problem here is that no individual belongs
to just one category.
Everybody has a skin-color and a gender.
And we also have all these other categorizations.
With religion or other belief, Sexuality or
sexual orientation, and so on and so on.
This becomes a problem in many ways.
Not least when people are trying to fight
against one oppression while neglecting the
others.
When people fight for the rights of women,
it's very easy to slip into fighting only
for the rights of white women.
And when people fight for the rights of African-Americans
or Asian-Americans, this easily becomes a
struggle actually only for African-American
or Asian-American men.
A struggle for the normative group WITHIN
the marginalized group.
This IS racism and sexism, respectively.
One very creepy form of sexism is sexual entitlement.
People who believe that other people should
have sex with them or relationships with them
because this is something that they are entitled
to.
Something that they deserve or have a right
to.
Or whatever.
This is not a good thing.
Sexuality should be mutual.
If you do something together, romantically
or sexually, it should be because both (or
everybody involved) wants to.
You shouldn't try to coerce or guilt-trip
people into pretending to want it.
You should try to make them actually want
it, in good and just ways.
The reasons some men make up, for why women
would have some kind of obligation or duty
to sleep with them, or not sleep with other
men or women or whatever might be in their
sexual orientation...
Well, these reasons are plentiful, very diverse,
and they all suck.
Sometimes, they are about race.
There are two main versions here.
One is to demand racial loyalty.
Demand that women sleep with men of the same
skin-color.
And the other is to accuse the women of being
racists.
"If you don't sleep with me, it's because
you are a racist who hate my skin-color, blah
blah blah, blah."
These reasons are both extremely much bullshit,
and they really drag the real struggle against
racism into the dirt.
Yet another way to despise it, another reason.
Some people take this both ways.
They argue that "Hey, I'm not white.
An I live in a white-dominated society.
Therefore, I have a right to women who share
my skin-color.
If they don't sleep with me, the they are
BOTH racists AND race-traitors."
Totally dishonest argument.
My own experience with this kind of bullshit
is mostly limited to white racists.
But I have also encountered some really whiny
Asian-American men.
I can understand that they are upset with
certain injustices in American society, I
really do.
But it doesn't give them any right or reason
to pick on women.
Much less demand racial segregation.
It's bad enough when openly racist supremacists
demand racial segregation.
But it's totally pathetic when people who
pretend to be against racism want men to be
free while they want women to be oppressed.
And they don't even understand that this is
what they're talking about.
Probably because they see the man of skin-color
as a person of skin-color, while seeing women
as some kind of special case, some kind of
extension of the men, some kind of property
of the men.
And this all really sucks.
Racism and sexism always suck, in all its
forms.
Racism is not a valid excuse for sexism, or
vice versa.
Wel all need to learn to see and respect each
others as individuals.
And overcome and break down oppressive social
structures.
Without building up new ones.
And for the record, since someone asked: No,
I don't live in America.
Those skyscrapers over there are Jakarta,
not New York.
I currently live in Indonesia, a country where
being white is not the norm.
We are some kind of exotic creatures that
people find very interesting and amusing,
and love to stereotype.
