Women who begin to use the Internet -- especially women of older generations -- are often shocked to find how much sexism truly exists on what everyone says is a great equalizer or the last true egalitarian culture. Once the connection is made, it is easy to point out "the biggies" as far as sexism on the Internet goes. But perhaps the most day-to-day frustrating part of being a woman in this word of blogs and bytes are the little itches of sexism that seem to fester.
Samantha Miller, writing for The Daily Iowan, points specifically to one such nuisance:
A very handy tool on everyone's favorite search engine, Google, will fill in subsequent words in your inquiry you may be intending to search for. For instance, if you begin to type "Brad," it will anticipate you are searching for "Brad Pitt." Google does this because Brad Pitt is the most searched Brad. Voilà. Time saved.
As handy as it is, it can also highlight the most popular beliefs and interests of those who use the search engine. Let me elaborate: Google "women should" and just see what it recommends based on previous searches.
No, it doesn't suggest "run for president" or "have equal pay." Instead, the top three searches will tell you women should "wear white like all other domestic appliances," "not wear pants," and "not speak in church" (oh, and if for the latter you were hoping to alternatively search for "be silent in church," fret not, that's Google's following recommendation.) As you read further down the list, you get other helpful search ideas such as "stay at home," "not be in combat," and "not preach."
Thank God for Google. It reads my mind ... or someone's mind, at least...
Miller uses this "helpful" Google phenomenon to point to the ways humor, even those little off-hand one-liners we all use occasionally, can be rebuilding and reinforcing stereotypes that many want to believe are behind us.
I can't disagree with her opinion on the pitfalls of such comedic attempts, so I'm letting that stand without question.
I do, however, have a theory about the Google searches. I think many who want to hold and continue to enforce sexist beliefs are being confronted more and more often about the true necessity and reasoning behind such beliefs. That is, I don't think that some in today's society are willing to hear a minister say that women should not speak out in church and take that statement at face value. People want to know why this is and what purpose it serves. Once the reasoning is out in the open, it is up to those involved to decide if this is still an edict of value.
Google, and really all Internet search engines, offer individuals access to a wide assortment of opinions. What better place to go if a person wanted to challenge something based on long-standing tradition or to defend the same.
At 52 years of age and having attended a Methodist Church in each community I have lived in (for most of my life), the notion that women should not speak in church has never come up... until this week. I have seen/heard it twice this week. Once in this article (and the Daily Iowan this article refers to). I can't remember the source of the other one... obviously did not have much impact. I am not suggesting that we don't need to challenge the stereotypes we find in daily life, I am merely noting that in some spheres, some stereotypes no longer apply.
Secondly, how many of the readers of the original article googled the term "women should"... and then clicked on what came up to see where the ... uninformed, hmmm... , okay, sexist jerks are? In so doing, those folks made those links even more likely to head the list. Had they merely scanned down the list to find something more palatable that women should do to click on, they would have increased the liklihood that there would be a different list next time.
I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes in looking for where we need to put our efforts to equalize the genders in our society, we sometimes inadvertantly make the situation appear worse than it may be.
Note to self: write positive article about what women SHOULD do...
Samantha Miller is 100% right