Eugenia, the sexist
Last night I was accused of sexism for one of my articles. Originally, the author of the comment thought that I was a “he”, but even after I told him that I am a “she”, he continued to advocate that I am a sexist. The sentence in my article that led to his comment was this: “I am a power user and so this phone would never satisfy me. But probably it would the average housewife who wants to show off to her also desperate housewife girlfriend.”
Obviously, I tried to make the article a bit funny at that point, and the guy just doesn’t seem to have any sense of humor. But here’s the thing: I truly believe that this phone that I reviewed in the article, the LG Chocolate, can only attract people who are in need of flashy stuff, to give some color to their boring lives. Like desperate housewives and the like, indeed. How is that sexism, when it’s also so true? Patronizing a bit, yes. But not sexism (how could I be discriminating against my own sex?). I know of no person in the Bay Area or power user friend of mine who would actually buy this phone for what it really is. It’s a mediocre phone hardware-wise, it has a terribly old and buggy software stack in it, and as long as you are not some sort of an idiot or bored to death, you would never, ever, buy it. In fact, I would advocate you buy my long-standing enemy, the Motorola RAZR, instead of the LG Chocolate.
And please don’t confuse the CDMA version of the LG Chocolate with the GSM version that I reviewed. They are not the same phone at all, except the external shell.
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What, a girl on the Internet?
I’m quite interested in gender politics myself and I’m gathering notes for a probably-never-to-be-finished (or even properly started) book in the subject.
I think that it is quite possible for a person to discriminate against one’s own sex. In my conversations with people on the subject of male rights, I find that there is not much of a correlation between a person’s gender politics and their sex. Many a man will happily defend feminism and espouse a view about ‘what us blokes are really like’.
On the specific point, I think that it perfectly fair to identify housewives as a group of people with similar outlooks and interest. Of course there will be exceptions and variation within that group as there would with any other. I wouldn’t consider it sexist if the phone had been packed with technical features causing you to remark ‘this phone would appeal to teenage boys’. I wonder if the person you encountered takes issue with such statements?
The term ‘chauvinism’ arose from a French army officer’s unreasonable assertions of the superiority French soldiers. His name was something like ‘Chauvan’. The term ‘chauvinist’ came to refer to any person who holds an unreasonable belief in the superiority of any group of people. At some point during the rise of women’s rights movements of the 20th century, feminists adopted the term to refer to men who felt that males were innately superior. I have, in my life, encountered many chauvinistic women and I reclaim the original meaning of the term and often use it in every-day debate.
I mis-read the headline at first glance.
Eugenia, the sexiest.
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“Eugenia, the sexiest.”
Is what I read too
, too bad there is only one 
BTW chauvinism is not the same as sexism: 1 , 2
Sorry about the html link
>BTW chauvinism is not the same as sexism
It is, according to one definition. It is also discussed on Wikipedia’s sexism article.
“I am a power user and so this phone would never satisfy me. But probably it would the average housewife who wants to show off to her also desperate housewife girlfriend”
awesome! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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