It Defies Logic
Unknown knowns
A friend and I were at her kitchen table, talking.
Could be the start of a mildly sexist joke, or, if you ask me, the way to solve most of what ails the world. No one ever asks me, though, which is a shame, really.
On that particular day, though my friend and I were talking about how frustrating it is to explain what misogyny or sexism look like, when so often, those things are felt, experienced, or observed rather than known—at least in the way we like to define known, in tangibles, solvables, and quantifiables.
My friend works in a male-dominated field. She started at a time when she was often not just the only woman in the room, but the only woman in the building. She’s smart, successful, and sometimes, she confessed, ready to throat punch her husband. Not because he’s not a great guy (he is), but because he wants to use logic to understand her experiences with systemic sexism.
What was happening? Where did it take place? What was said? What actions were taken? What was the intent? How do you know?
Let’s plot the knowns and see what we get.
His instinct is to take her experiences apart like a motor, and lay out the individual pieces to examine them and see how they fit together.
There’s nothing wrong with using logic to figure out mechanics or to solve a problem, of course.
It’s just that you can’t use logic to solve what is known through experience rather than data points.
What kind of evidence can you produce to prove the effect of a lived experience, usually one that’s been compounded over time?
It’s not something you can logic puzzle your way to understanding.
Every year, Gropers, Inc. throws a staff-wide holiday party. This year, five different women said they were harassed in different areas of the event hall.
Sometimes, experiences with sexism and misogyny are as clear as the daylight between Hey pretty baby and how about you come on over and show me how hard you can suck. They’re in your face pussy-grabbing moments that are almost impossible to deny. Almost, because there will always be some who excuse and justify. Locker room talk, blah blah blah.
Sometimes, the experiences are more subtle. Asking a woman team member to make the reservations for the office dinner, assuming the doctor is a he rather than a she or they. The school automatically calls Mom when Jiminy has been projectile vomiting since recess.
And that’s the problem with sexism. It’s insidious. It snakes and slithers, infiltrates and incubates until it’s everywhere, like that cordyceps shit from The Last of Us. Or clover.
Once a thing is everywhere, it’s harder to tell what something is and what it isn’t.
If you’re standing on a hill looking down onto a meadow, you’re going to have more trouble discerning which green is clover and which is blades of grass. But if you’re standing in the meadow, surrounded by it, it’s easier to tell the difference.
The knowns are different.
My friend’s husband is not unsympathetic; he’s just standing on top of the hill.
Neither Susan (who wasn’t at the bar) nor Christine is the person whose ass was grabbed near the restroom.
Some people require evidence of sexism. That’s understandable.
I’m just saying this: the evidence is what a woman is telling you.
Women’s lived experiences are the evidence. They are the knowns.
Janine was propositioned, but not by the bar. The woman who was in the cloak room was sent an anonymous dick pic.
Oh, and then there’s also this. It’s difficult to use logic when the premise itself is illogical.
A system or structure that treats biological sex as destiny and then assigns values and roles based on biological sex is illogical. It’s not even true.
There’s evidence that early Neanderthals worked together, women and men doing the gathering and hunting, grunting “Kumbaya” around the Stig family campfire. There’s cross-cultural evidence of female warriors. There’s evidence that points to Medieval nuns painting manuscripts and Mesopotamian princess poets and women running businesses in ancient Persepolis. We have the names of women, we have fragments and pieces of others, and we have centuries’ worth of anonymous.
If you automatically assume that Anonymous was a man? That’s exactly how systemic sexism and inherent bias work.
Assigning roles based on biological sex makes zero sense, and it’s also one-sided historical bullshit.
Sally, who was cornered, was not fondled.
If a woman feels unsafe around a man, it comes from her lived experiences of feeling unsafe around men. That’s the evidence. Demanding that she use a different set of knowns to explain her experience is kinda bananas. What’s illogical is asking her to prove why she feels unsafe when we all know that women are harmed for a thousand unsplendid reasons.
If a woman explains that a man’s unsolicited comments about her body make her feel gross, that comes from lived experience. That’s the evidence. Demanding she use a different set of evidentiary rules, ones that have often been used against her, is hella batshit. What’s illogical is asking her to prove how she knows it makes her feel gross when we all know that some men say disgusting things to women.
If a woman complains that being interrupted by a man is sexism, that recognition comes from her lived experience. That’s the evidence. Demanding that she debate intentionality using Socratic rules is totally bonkers. What’s illogical is expecting her to illustrate how she knows it was sexism when we all know these things have been studied and documented.
From the information given, determine what happened to whom, where.
My friend and I agree that the frustration is two-fold. There’s the experience itself, which is sometimes compounded by being asked to define or explain the experience using a totally different set of knowns.
It’s the difference between standing on the hill looking at the grass from afar, or standing in the meadow itself, surrounded by it all the time.
You might be able to work out the answers to the puzzle that’s contained here, but even if you figure out which employees were being sexist pigs at the holiday party, the answer will never tell you how the women know what they’ve experienced.
Nor will it tell you why Gropers, Inc. has so many problematic employees on their payroll, what the hell is going on in HR, and what, if anything, they’re going to do about it.
The great news is that you don’t need logic to figure most of that out. Women are right here, giving you the answers.
Dear reader, I was never any good at logic puzzles. Thank you for being here and for your continued support. If you enjoy your time here, you know the drill. Like, comment, share, subscribe, drop a tip in the jar. Reader’s choice. xxx dmh
Here's some hard evidence, if they want evidence. 62 million hits on the Rape Academy website in one month, for starters. We can work backwards from there. Epstein. Trump. Supression of evidence of Trump's involvement, and all of the other implicated perpetrators. Domestic violence statistics. Rape kits stockpiled, untested in evidence lockers all over this country in every police department. Questions about what we were wearing the night the "alleged" assault took place, what were we drinking, were we sober? And the list goes on and on, never-ending. The withdrawal of a women's RIGHT to decide to keep a pregnancy or not. The attempts to take our right to vote away. How's that for evidence.
The Neanderthals? My question is if there may have been women warriors, why the need? Warriors. Patriarchy, already moving in. When the need for warriors in all cultures disappears, then we know we're making change. That's freaking male. Patriarchy is a virus that kills everything in its wake. Who the fuck do they think they are?
Spot on and explains the whole concept of believe women.
The invisible/hard to explain nature of sexism is exactly why I wrote Sexism & Sensibility which takes sexism—from the cumulative psychological paper cuts to full blown assault—and shows how it infiltrates every aspect of our development and sense of self. Sometimes women need to hear it as much as men. Maybe your friend’s husband should read it. He’ll appreciate the hard data :)