I hate hip-hop and high heels.
I suppose many Oxonians are sick of hearing about feminism. When I showed the article entitled “Feminist Future” from the Oxford Forum to my male friend the other day, he skimmed through it (or so he said) in the space of about 7 seconds.
In response to the dejected look I shot him, he defensively retorted “Henny, I’ve heard it all before – there’s nothing new here” and got on with his work. Still, just because sexism isn’t anything “new” doesn’t mean that it’s not worthy of attention and reflection, if not action.
Sadly, the sexism that exists in our society has become so normalised that we hardly recognise it. It is so subtle, so cunning that it fools women into mistaking subjugation for liberation. It leaves those who are unknowingly subject to its charms in blissful ignorance, or, more poignantly, in a state of false consciousness.
My friend was acutely annoyed at me when I refused to attend her pole-dancing 18th birthday party for which she had hired a professional pole-dancer. She said pole-dancing was symbolic of female emancipation. How ignorant she was of the social pressures that led women to compromise their dignity for the animalistic pleasures of the male!
Women think they are free. I beg to differ. Hip-hop and high-heels are (but two) symbols of female subjugation. Yes, women have formal equality – that is, legal and political equality. The type of sexism to which I refer is not legally or politically instituted, but the type of sexism that prevents true equality from being put into practice. Specifically, the sexism that continues to pervade all aspects of our culture – a cultural sexism.
Let’s take a look at hip-hop. I ask of you – you open-minded, Oxonian liberals –would you dance to racist music? I sincerely hope that you would be disgusted at the thought; I assume most of you would boycott clubs that played it. No? So then why is it that so many of us willingly dance to music of the overtly sexist variety?
Some will argue that it is the beat or tune to which they dance and not the lyrics, but would you dance to Nazi lyrics if the song had a good beat? I think not. I hope not. Why we are selectively deaf when it is women who are being dehumanised is beyond me.
In dancing to the disrespectful lyrics “I want to f*** you, you already know” and “Move b****, get out the way” (courtesy of Snoop Dogg and Ludacris respectively) are we not colluders in the sexual objectification of women? Aren’t women who dance to these songs not themselves colluding in their own oppression? And aren’t liberal, open-minded men perpetuating it?
If silence is consent then, baby, grinding is collusion. No male would ever approve of reference to his mother or sister in such vile terms. Are “I want to f*** you” really the sort of lyrics to which students at Oxford University dance and grind in the 21st century? Say it isn’t so!
Next: high heels. Why wear them? They are uncomfortable, frequently painful, and categorically impractical. Fair enough, you will tell me: it is only natural for women to want to look attractive just as men do. But why should female attractiveness entail discomfort?
While attractiveness in men usually involves wearing a suit, the occasional haircut and shave, and good hygiene (all of which are perfectly practical), women are constantly torturing themselves for the sake of beauty – straightening, dying and highlighting hair, plucking eyebrows, shaving legs, plastering faces with coloured chemicals, and so on.
The Oxford Union President wears an impractical and uncomfortable ball-gown – not a warm, practical and comfortable suit. This is quite indefensible, serving nothing other than to perpetuate the perception of women as first and foremost objects of beauty.
So what if we focus on female beauty? And so what if women are habitually depicted as sex objects? Well, surely there is a correlation between society’s attitude to women and the success of women in society. The depiction of women as sex objects operates at the expense of each woman’s personhood and individuality.
This sexual objectification and dehumanisation does two things. It allows men to accept socially imposed notions of femininity crafting the female as the weaker, emotional, irrational sex, leading to discrimination in the public sphere.
The attitude of women to themselves is often distorted as they internalize these socially imposed notions of femininity. I have often found that arrogance, self-assurance, outspokenness and confidence are all characteristics that are found to be attractive in men. Such characteristics in his female counterpart, however, are considered repugnant.
Hip-hop and high-heels are symbolic of the overarching cultural pressures to which women are subject, pressurising them to be more concerned with sexiness than self-assurance, loveliness than intellectual ferocity, and beauty than comfort and practicality.
Cultural sexism is pernicious precisely because it is so difficult to legislate against without infringing upon freedom of expression. We need self-awakening with regard to the normalized superstructure that governs the attitude of society towards women and of women towards themselves.
I’m a self-confessed colluder in my own oppression, but at least I am conscious of it. What scares me is the number of women who go about self-oppressing in ignorance.By Henny Ziai.
