Prejudice
Prejudice is fascinating, in all its forms. Over twenty years of posting political commentary online using my own, unmistakably feminine name, for instance, has been an object lesson in how some guys respond to the female voice.

I’m not saying that every man who argues with me is guilty of sexism, but there are cases where responders seem to be struggling to figure out exactly how and where I’m being “irrational” and working themselves into quite a dudgeon about it. This comes not so much from people who disagree with me politically as from people presumably on my own side of the political aisle, guys who refer to themselves as liberals or leftists or anything other than “conservative”

For instance, there was one guy I used to debate online who, after a few messages, invariably went into what I call “therapist” mode. In discussions relating to women’s issues he’d start asking me personal questions about my relationship with my husband, or whether I like the way I look, or how I felt about the whopping psychic trauma I presumably endured from that professor I once cited in passing as an example of casual sexism. I don’t want to do this guy an injustice. I never got the sense he was stalking me, and he certainly wasn’t one of those Slobbering Yahoos who, when they sense they’re losing ground in a debate with a woman, unzip themselves and start waving it at her.

But his approach always included the apparently unshakeable assumption that my disagreement with him had to be rooted in my emotions. After a while I began to suspect that he was reacting not to what I’d actually posted, but to the fact that I was the person posting it.

I think women as a rule are aware of this undercurrent, this assumption by so many men, even those who consider themselves liberal and broad-minded, who call themselves “feminists,” that someone posting under a female name must be on some level incompetent, illogical. Almost certainly women of a certain age are aware of it. We don’t speak up about it every time we encounter it because if we did we’d end up giving ourselves ulcers, but we do know it’s there, and there’s a lot we don’t say to our male friends and acquaintances about it.

When I consider this, and I think about how African Americans or other racial minorities must perceive whites, all the things they have probably noticed about assumptions held by me and other WASPs, assumptions we’re barely aware of – when I think of all the things my black friends, acquaintances and co-workers have probably noticed but left unsaid… It makes me shudder.