But anyway.. benevolent sexism. Let's talk about it.
Benevolent sexism is the sexism that most people don't recognize because it's normalized and not blatant. It's sexist microagressions.
Benevolent sexism is drenched in respectability politics. It's *conditional* respect for women.
Conditional respect for women is often confused as general respect for women. If you can only respect 1 kind of woman, u don't respect women
The "queen vs. hoe" binary is a great example of benevolent sexism. If u think a woman has to fit a "type" to be is deserving of respect +
+ you don't actually respect women as people because once a woman doesn't fit that "type", you no longer see her as deserving of respect.
Most people don't see it that way. The idea of a "respectable" woman being "modest" is a widely accepted standard.
And the idea that a woman who isn't "modest" is a woman w/ no self-respect, morals, and is not deserving of respect is widely accepted too
So to most people, if you "respect" the "respectable, modest" women and disregard the "immodest" women, you aren't seen as sexist.
And that is why most people will call you "fake deep" or get all up in arms when you call men like J. Cole sexist.
If you don't see "immodest" women as humans deserving of respect too then of course you wouldn't see Cole as sexist.
In order for people to recognize benevolent sexism, they have to rid this idea that a woman has to fit this mold to be respected.
For ex: when I initially critiqued "role modelz", people said, "He wasn't talking shit about women. He was talking about hoes." See...
If you see sexually expressive women as a sub-species or not even a human, then yeah, you wouldn't have understood my critique.
They don't even understand that "he was talking about hoes, not women" was misogynistic as hell. Invalidating womanhood and humanity? Phew.
If u compartmentalize women into a binary & only one end of the binary is deserving of human decency, you're still not seeing women as human
One end of the binary is met w/ blatant disrespect & the other half are regarded w/ conditional respect that can go at any min? Still sexist
When u begin to see women as individual humans w/ agency, thoughts, feelings, & emotions, that's when you're heading in the right direction
I get it. It's a long process but if you care for the safety of women, you'll take the 1st step to begin unlearning.
