I have heard this said many times: "I'm conservative", or also "I'm traditional". This has been said to me by both men and women - though mostly men - in a way to excuse or give an acceptable veneer to behaviors, attitudes and words that are downright misogynistic, aporophobic (fear of poverty or poor people) among other forms of discrimination now widely recognized and denounced. In this occasion, I will talk to you about this traditional or conservative stance regarding women and the veiled, beautified misogyny.
The traditional or conservative being - not all, but in the cases where this is used to excuse misogyny - can take many forms, many of which might be hard to identify. It goes from simple things like letting you know that they like your hair better when it's longer, because then you look more feminine, to things like comments on the line of which career choices are for women or men, or refering to women as if they could all be defined by the same rule: all want to be mothers and wives, all are happier with a husband by their sides, all seek only (romantic) love, and all are happy (only) when they tend their house.
This year, as in previous years, women have been raising their voices stronger and stronger, demanding justice for the ever climbing femicide rates. Crimes against women are particularly hineous because they are not only murdered, they are tortured, and oftentimes, they are revictimized. Nearly no case of rape commited against a woman goes without a part of the society automatically thinking she did something to deserve it. This year a young, lovely woman was killed by her partner, and buried in a backyard. The press and people online said she had it coming for going out with someone belonging to a criminal band. Something kind of like what happened to Breonna Taylor.
These are all acts of violence in greater or lesser level, but acts of violence nonetheless. This is not being "sensitive" or "delicate" or "bitchy". This is calling things by their name. This is not "not being able to take a joke". This is serious and shedding the light on injustice, on discrimination.
When a friend makes a sexist joke and you tell them "that's your daughter. Think of it like than and then laugh. Your daughter will grow up to be humiliated by her partner, because you find it funny and approve of it.", they usually are taken aback and often start thinking about it. But when a person has this mentality so ingrained they actually think this is how the world goes, you can't make them see the light so easily. It doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it "an opinion", but yes, it is harder to make people realize the damage they are causing.
A conservative could react to the greater acts of gender violence with comments like "we care for women" or "we guard women". This goes much in the line of those sugary phrases that says "women are so wonderful, so superior, so strong, that they are the only ones to give life and feed others from their own bodies". The issue? It's a patronizing pat on the head for being genetically capable to become mothers. As if that's the ultimate goal of all women.
Just take a moment to go through a message of this type. Notice that all those superior qualities allegedly exclusive of women (another lie, for it denies that men can be nurturing, and a lot of them are), have to do with motherhood and being housewives. Aside from all the nurturing and caring, there are also exclusive alleged magical powers to cure (so, if a women fails to kiss away a serious illness, she's defective?), sixth sense to know when her loved ones are in trouble (so, if a loved one is kidnapped, hurt, is it her fault for not using her magic?), superhuman strength to deal with stress and household issues (so, is she less if she has a nervoud break down, or can't have an instant solution to a problem that surpasses her?). Not only are these not real qualities of pretty much the average human being, praising unrealistic qualities puts a weight of expectation that can't be fulfilled, on top of reducing all forms of allowed personal development, discovery and expression.
On top of all that, evidently, any woman who either can't or decide not to have children are either not living to their full potential (the nice explanation) or are just flawed (general consensus). So neither the "guarding them like a treasure" (thus reducing women to the status of an object) nor "superior because they are mothers" (reducing all of their goals and aspirations to a utilitarian purpose: produce children) equate women to men, and since they are not equal to men, then there are no grounds to grant them what women do deserve: respect.
I have this friend (unnamed, yes, and they do exist, and some of my penpals know exactly WHO am I talking about), who exhibits a clearly misogynistic attitude, and explain it away as being conservative and having had a conservative upbringing. He is not the kind of person that makes crude misogynistic jokes, and thus he does truly believe he is not misogynistic. Furthermore, he has these impulses to sort of take care of women, or make the attempt to, though more often than not expressed in words rather than actions, and often talks to women in an infantilizing manner.
His conservative attitude makes him automatically place women and men in different worlds. For instance, more than once he has told me that I'm the most intelligent woman he has ever met. (This is supposed to be a compliment). I asked him why woman? If he is somehow gauging my intelligence (however subjective that measurement might be), it should be against the entire portion of the population he has met. If a subcategory should be set, then it would mean that it's a part of my mental capabilities that would be considered. For instance, the most intelligent economist, the most intelligent grad student this year, etc. Subcategories define a scope, a particular form of intelligence (in this case) or a set of variables to be considered, and thus define only a part of the meassured skill or capability.
Kind of like at school when you get your grades, in Math you get your grades based on how you perform in Maths, not how you perfome in everything related to your mental capabilities. Yeah, I know, I would have done so much better with a general grading for math... and physics... and chemistry... and biology...
He said nothing the first time, but then several weeks later repeated the "compliment" a second time. I again told him why "woman", and he said "because you are a woman". So, it seems he does believe that the brain and mental functions of men and women are not only different, but can't be compared. To believe so, you most think men and women can't possible function the same way or do similar things at all. If female and male mental capabilities can't be compared then there is no way they could possible overlap in any area of life. This even though we speak the same language with the same fluidity, we are capable to do the same jobs, studied the same career and our achievements were graded in the same fashion, thus debunking with ample empirical evidence that male and female mental capabilities are not only comparable, but equal, and the differences perceivable are only at the individual level, and not at the gender level. And yet he can't bring himself to say "you are one of the most intelligent people I have met".
A comment such as on the lenght of hair as a qualifying asset, or a comment on physical measures, attractiveness and that being not only a measure of beauty, but a measure of personal worth for a woman, are elements of misogyny. These concepts and their further propagation reduce a part of the population - all the women in the world - to objects, devoid of any humanity, any will or self power. This sort of stance towards life turns humanity into a world of men surrounded by self propelled, willess dolls. And this is not the case.
Admitedly, I am not conservative, though I do have an idea of things that were better in the past - I'm 44, it is natural that I prefer the days when there was no internet and people burrowed in libraries for research, where sometimes old books contained loose leafs with anotations left by an anonymous hand - but even if you are conservative, there should be things that you should be willing to improve as the world grows and learns.
If conservative means that you will keep up with the microviolence, the discrimination, the objetification, the dehumanization of a part of the population, you should strongly consider changing your ways. Yes, there are things that were maybe better, more thoughtful in the old days, such as a stronger sense of community - one could argue, though that it was also in the past when dozens of people were accused of witchcraft and 19 were hanged by their own neighbours, based on the psychotic shreeks of children, and the envy of their peers... in Salem, Mass. - but a lot had to be let behind, improved and illuminated. We understood that slavery is wrong, we understood that all human beings are equal and all religions are valid, and all sexual orientations are perfectly fine.
If conservative means not to be able or willing to learn and adapt, then how long can life be made in a conservative fashion in a progressive, dynamic world, where Nature, people and even the gods constantly show motion and evolution? If conservative is fixed, stuck, unmoving, unlearning, unable to adapt, it will force the conservative person to face each day a world that goes more and more against them, making life and surroundings more and more agressive, engaging the person in a fierce battle, where their place in life will become more and more threatened as days go by. Because the individual goes older, but Nature and the World and the whole of Humanity, just like the Gods, remain eternal, strong and moving in their constant evolution.
But that's not anymore what conservative means. The world has moved, Humanity has moved, and "conservative" has been emptied of most of its elements up to the point where the only things left seem to be the beliefs, among which discrimination is interwoven. Steadily, "conservative" has become a lable to be ashamed of, as it is equated no longer with positive qualities, but with brute, retrograde, ignorant positions and a marked uncapability to move from them, to evolve and recognize the worth of the hard wins many oppressed minorities have managed to carve in the body of an ever evolving Humanity that has been struggling to become more equal, and yet still manages to unfairly oppress a part of it.
If you are conservative, please take stock of your values, of what you really hold dear and please work hard to sift through it, rescue the good, and allow new things in. Adapt. Let's learn from the good of the past, instead of turning the past into something to be ashamed of.
