Agreed, I had a friend who every time it came up talked about how much he hated Taylor Swift. I kept trying to press him about what he didn’t like about her, like the music, or the tours, or whatever.
And at the bottom of it he just didn’t like the idea of a woman with wealth and power equal to her peers in the music industry
Was it the woman part or the wealth part? For me, it’s dislike of the wealth and power of any of the current radio artists and their label execs, regardless of gender.
One of the… quirks… of humans is that often we’ll feel one thing, but say another. So someone might say “I just don’t like that she’s so rich”, but what’s actually happening under the hood is they don’t like a woman having power. They might not even consciously realize this is happening.
We all do this to some extent. We feel things, and then reach for explanations. Preferably socially acceptable justifications. Someone might say they don’t like a neighborhood, that it feels tacky and unsafe, but you’d have to do some digging to unearth “because black people live there”.
At the same time, there are people who know their belief is socially unacceptable, so they’ll intentionally reach to reasons the other people might accept. So you’ll get someone who hates women saying things like “i just don’t think her music is good”, or “she seems bossy”, or other lightly coded phrases.
This is all really confounding because it’s very difficult to tell the difference between that first category, the second category, and a third category of “legitimately doesn’t like her music.” Sometimes there are signs, like they’ll say “I just don’t like that she has so much money” but then never, ever, comment on similarly rich men. (I’m not saying this is you, specifically. But if it is, maybe give it a think.)
Also most people are, frankly, fragile little cowards that can’t accept a threat to their ego. Faced with admitting “I did a sexism”, they’d rather lash out and blame everyone else instead of giving it a think and trying to be better.
And this is a sort of intellectualized version, but then real life, so you need to add in that you may just happen to be acting contrary because you need to eat or got a shit sleep or you’re taking to Steve and fuck that guy and then it’s even harder to parse.
Wish there was just a print-out sometimes; something that I could check my answers against, see if I’m even on the right track
Agreed, I had a friend who every time it came up talked about how much he hated Taylor Swift. I kept trying to press him about what he didn’t like about her, like the music, or the tours, or whatever.
And at the bottom of it he just didn’t like the idea of a woman with wealth and power equal to her peers in the music industry
Was it the woman part or the wealth part? For me, it’s dislike of the wealth and power of any of the current radio artists and their label execs, regardless of gender.
One of the… quirks… of humans is that often we’ll feel one thing, but say another. So someone might say “I just don’t like that she’s so rich”, but what’s actually happening under the hood is they don’t like a woman having power. They might not even consciously realize this is happening.
We all do this to some extent. We feel things, and then reach for explanations. Preferably socially acceptable justifications. Someone might say they don’t like a neighborhood, that it feels tacky and unsafe, but you’d have to do some digging to unearth “because black people live there”.
At the same time, there are people who know their belief is socially unacceptable, so they’ll intentionally reach to reasons the other people might accept. So you’ll get someone who hates women saying things like “i just don’t think her music is good”, or “she seems bossy”, or other lightly coded phrases.
This is all really confounding because it’s very difficult to tell the difference between that first category, the second category, and a third category of “legitimately doesn’t like her music.” Sometimes there are signs, like they’ll say “I just don’t like that she has so much money” but then never, ever, comment on similarly rich men. (I’m not saying this is you, specifically. But if it is, maybe give it a think.)
Also most people are, frankly, fragile little cowards that can’t accept a threat to their ego. Faced with admitting “I did a sexism”, they’d rather lash out and blame everyone else instead of giving it a think and trying to be better.
The oatmeal did a comic on this, or at least a closely related concept: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
And this is a sort of intellectualized version, but then real life, so you need to add in that you may just happen to be acting contrary because you need to eat or got a shit sleep or you’re taking to Steve and fuck that guy and then it’s even harder to parse.
Wish there was just a print-out sometimes; something that I could check my answers against, see if I’m even on the right track
Yes understood.
But I voted for Kamala so I’m one of the good ones ;-)