LISTEN · EPISODE 1
"Are Women Human?"
In 1938, the crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers gave a speech with a question that sounds absurd: "Are women human?" Of course they are. But listen to the words we use for women: the b*tch, the sl*t, the witch, the gold digger, the crazy ex. Every one of them takes a complicated person and shrinks her down to a warning label.
That's the question behind the first episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts: who gets treated as a full, messy human being, and who gets turned into a label as soon as she steps out of line?
Labels rewrite the story
Sociologists call it labeling theory: behavior becomes "deviant" partly because of what someone did, and partly because people with power decide what to call it. Once a label sticks, it changes which facts people remember. I watched it happen in my own divorce. Once people decided I was the villain, everything that fit that story got remembered, and everything that didn't got forgotten.
There's no neutral version of "sl*t"
Most insults have a neutral version. "Pig" and "police officer" point to the same people. But what's the neutral version of sl*t? It isn't "a woman who has sex." Plenty of women have sex and never get called that, and men who do the same thing get called studs. I was called a sl*t before I'd ever been kissed. The word was never describing what a woman did. It was a judgment from the start.
The sexism that sounds like a compliment
Psychologists Peter Glick and Susan Fiske call it ambivalent sexism. Hostile sexism is the kind you'd recognize right away. Benevolent sexism sounds nicer: it puts women on a pedestal as pure, warm and deserving of protection. But the admiration comes with conditions. You get the pedestal, and you give up your independence. Research also shows that women who come across as confident and ambitious get rated as competent and still get penalized for not being "nice" enough. It's why so many of us put smiley faces on our work emails.
So, are women human?
Yes. But we can't just say it. We have to treat women as human, which means letting women be as complicated as anyone else. The next time you hear a woman called difficult, crazy, bossy or unlikeable, ask what she actually did, and who benefits if you stop listening to her.
Sources behind the episode
Read or download the Episode 1 source list (PDF).