How to Address Sexism in Collective Public Discourse

The media plays a big role in influencing public discourse. The role of the media is to work as a mechanism to give the public the information it needs to form opinions, and that, in turn, is supposed to carry up the chain of command back into public policy: since “democracy” is typically defined as government by the people and for the people, public opinion and discourse should automatically influence government.

This means the good and the bad make their way to the top, and one such bad thing that we constantly engage with in American society is sexism. The internationally agreed upon definition for sexism says it is “a manifestation of ‘historically unequal power relations’ between women and men, which leads to discrimination and prevents the full advancement of women in society.” These unequal power relations manifest in the obvious; such as how discourse around women is highly skewed toward objectivity (appearance, if she’s nice to men, etc) all the way to the insidious, with the underhanded perpetuation of long-held stereotypes about women.

How can the media stay away from contributing to sexism as a power structure?

MAKE WOMEN’S VOICES HEARD

Women and people who identify as female have much less of a voice at the federal and state level than men and people who identify as male do. This power structure usually repeats itself in corporate settings: even in newsrooms, only about 31 percent of working journalists identify as female. Foregrounding marginalized voices in your work is a best practice in general to thwart other intersectional power structures (such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.).

DON’T PLAY INTO EXISTING NARRATIVES

The idea that women are more emotional than men has been proven bogus on numerous occasions, and journalists must be especially careful when choosing the language surrounding a story. The idea that people who identify as female are more ruled by their feelings than those who do as male hurts everybody: choosing language specifically to break the idea that men have no feelings and women have all of them is very important. Nor is it a journalist’s job to qualify the feelings of the subjects in their pieces and give them weight or praise — feelings are feelings, not signifiers of character.

NO VICTIM BLAMING

A sad number of stories a journalist may need to write in their lifetime involve the perpetration of crimes against people who identify as female. Be careful to lay out the details of the crime and the perpetrator and take great care not to perpetuate some of the more victim blaming talking points such as how the subject of violence was dressed, whether there was sexual tension within the situation with the perpetrator, if the victim was walking home alone at night, etc. Victim blaming, despite the gender of the victim, is usually rooted in misogyny and suggests that if the person did not want to have their rights violated then they should have done something different or been something different.

USE INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE

The use of “people who identify as…” throughout this article is not accidental. Sexism is, like all societal issues, intersectional. Therefore, intersectional language is necessary, because sexism affects every gender and sexual expression in the world–not just the commonly accepted binary of male/female. 

DON’T SWEEP THE ISSUE UNDER THE RUG

Fighting against sexism comes with a serious temptation to pretend it doesn’t exist. The truth is, pretending it doesn’t exist erases the struggle and identity of the people who have been working in a system where they are maligned for their identity. Calling out the issue and noting how it impacts the issue you are specifically reporting on is much better, because it helps the public learn how to connect the dots on societal issues at large, not just sexism.

Society is so constantly plagued by issues such as sexism that it can feel overwhelming or even futile to engage with each issue every single step of the way. But not only is that what we should be doing. That is the only way to make progress on challenging these power structures and to understand where and how they oppress all of us. By highlighting each other’s struggles through our roles as journalists, we can encourage each other to succeed and create a better and more equitable society for all.