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Sexism and the Nuances of Libertarianism
Jun. 8th, 2009 12:02 pmToday I stumbled across a post called "Where the men are" that got my hackles up a bit. As I'm sure many of you know, mention the phrase "gender role" and I'm likely to go on a rant, because I've spent a good chunk of my life feeling remarkably ill-suited to the roles generally attributed to my gender. Likewise, I've met a remarkable number of men whom I respect and like who would never fit the typical "manly" roles and struggled with the same issue growing up.
I generally expect a certain amount of sexism from conservative people. I grew up among such people, and as a result I have a lot of maladaptive conditioning that I've been trying to break for years -- reflexes like feeling uncomfortable in the presence of nudity, even though it doesn't ideologically bother me, or feeling rude for winning at a competitive game, even though I enjoy winning. (That last one has a funny story behind it. I used to play soccer on a team that was almost entirely boys because there weren't enough girls in the league to form a girls' team. I was more aggressive than many of the boys on my team and a good player because of it, but I took a lot of flack for it because I was a girl, and girls aren't supposed to be aggressive. So to make up for my "non girly" behaviour, I adopted the habit of saying "I'm sorry" every time I took the ball from someone -- this was when I was about 10 years old. :D )
But I've noticed that sexism in the form of advocating gender roles is also fairly prevalent among strong libertarians, which seems a huge surprise to me. I've always thought of libertarianism as the ultimate "I can choose to do/be what I want and I respect your right to do/be what you want", but today I realized that there is a nuance in libertarianism I've been missing for quite some time. ( Insights from an unexpected source... )
I generally expect a certain amount of sexism from conservative people. I grew up among such people, and as a result I have a lot of maladaptive conditioning that I've been trying to break for years -- reflexes like feeling uncomfortable in the presence of nudity, even though it doesn't ideologically bother me, or feeling rude for winning at a competitive game, even though I enjoy winning. (That last one has a funny story behind it. I used to play soccer on a team that was almost entirely boys because there weren't enough girls in the league to form a girls' team. I was more aggressive than many of the boys on my team and a good player because of it, but I took a lot of flack for it because I was a girl, and girls aren't supposed to be aggressive. So to make up for my "non girly" behaviour, I adopted the habit of saying "I'm sorry" every time I took the ball from someone -- this was when I was about 10 years old. :D )
But I've noticed that sexism in the form of advocating gender roles is also fairly prevalent among strong libertarians, which seems a huge surprise to me. I've always thought of libertarianism as the ultimate "I can choose to do/be what I want and I respect your right to do/be what you want", but today I realized that there is a nuance in libertarianism I've been missing for quite some time. ( Insights from an unexpected source... )
