The Choreography of Everyday Sexism: Reworking Sexism in Interaction

Abstract

For some time, the successes and freedoms of women, especially young, white, heterosexual and upwardly-mobile women, have been proclaimed and celebrated across the 'advanced democracies' of the west.1 While evidence documenting the persistence of sexism abounds, a mundane counter-rhetoric suggests otherwise. Sexism is an/Other's problem; in western democracies it is commonly supposed that sexism is no longer a serious concern and we ought not to take it seriously.2 In this milieu, the gendered constraints western women encounter are considered a matter for personal rather than political management. If structural gendered inequalities are overcome, all that remains is for individual women to 'lean in' and grab their dues.3 Should a particular practice achieve recognition as sexist (generally instances related to cultural pressure points of sexuality and sexual violence) discussion is compartmentalised and does little to trouble the broad consensus that gender equality is achieved - or close enough.Ironically, it is the apparent extinction of sexism that allows gendered inequalities to thrive. Over the past decade, various feminist scholars have shown how, through repetition, narratives of women's economic, social and sexual liberation come to stand in for the real thing, sheltering sexism while appearing to expunge it.4 Judith Williamson, for example, has tracked this dynamic through contemporary visual culture, where the persistence of sexism, she argues, is simply 'airbrushed away'.5 As Williamson explains, this disappearing-act is not simply aspirational. It works to secure sexism by eclipsing or downplaying ongoing inequalities: the problem of sexism is hidden in plain sight.This sleight of hand is the signature move of 'postfeminism' or the 'postfeminist sensibility'.6 Postfeminism is a contested term, one I use as shorthand for the network of common-sense discourses that claim gender equality has been achieved, that sexism is vanquished and, consequently, that gender no longer has any determining power in women's lives. The apparent pastness of sexism against women lends it a quasi-nostalgic aesthetic. Sexism sounds 'almost quaint', and popular culture invites us to revive and indulge in 'ironic', 'hipster' and 'retro-sexism'.7 Reformulated as a practice of pleasure rather than power, sexism colonises new spaces while maintaining its purchase in familiar ones.8 Following Sara Ahmed, we might understand postfeminism as a 'non-performative': rather than bringing about the effect it names (as a performative does), postfeminist discourse functions as a non-performative in its repetitive citation of a gender equality that has not come to pass.9When sexism is routinely presented as harmless, its harms become difficult to see and speak of, even as they accumulate around us. Rosalind Gill has suggested that the postfeminist disavowal of gender inequality has removed an accessible vocabulary for naming and resisting sexism, leaving sexism virtually 'unspeakable' (Sexism Reloaded, p.62). Others have reached similar conclusions: Pomerantz, Raby and Stefanik were struck by the absence of a critical language with which to 'name...sexism as sexism' in their interviews with Canadian girls.10 Naming sexism matters because language and action go together: sexism is open to challenge only insofar as it is visible and representable.11 Indeed, this premise animates this special issue: we must continue to think and to write about sexism; most of all, we must find ways to talk about it. The pressing question, then, is how best to expand our capacity to speak of and, then, to contest sexism under these stifling conditions. Sexism is, after all, a problem with a name - how might we put that name to work?One thing is certain: any efforts along these lines must grapple with more than a missing vocabulary. The act of naming sexism exposes injustices that some might wish to forget. Recognising systems, ideas and practices as sexist disturbs and threatens many of those imbricated within them. …