Have you ever found yourself needing to refute a claim that someone is sexist? Here’s a useful compilation of familiar excuses.
He wrote it, but he didn’t mean it. (Poor dear.)
He wrote it, but he’s just repeating what he’s heard elsewhere. (Just give him time!)
He wrote it, but now this is just a reverse-sexist lynch mob. (So I’m on his side now.)
He wrote it, but he was a product of his time. (Everyone was like this back then. There was no feminism.)
He wrote it, but it’s not like he has any influence. (Just ignore him, he’ll go away.)
He wrote it, but he didn’t realise it was offensive. (So why are you taking offence?)
He wrote it, but he’s an anomaly. (#notallmen)
The older I get, the more I detest the “product of his time” excuse. Human beings are capable of learning over the course of their entire life, you know, and age is not a reason to be refractory to change. It’s you young whippersnappers who generally have enough slack in your physiology that you can do whatever you want, while we oldsters are constantly trying to adapt to expanding limitations.
The dismissal for lack of influence is also annoying. The great galumphing herd of ignorant racists might not be individually powerful, but when they find a leader with no shame, like Donald Trump, they can trample a lot of people.
It’s part of the “boys will be boys” excuse wagon for bad behavior. Basically shifting the script so calling out bad behavior in the direction of marginalized group member against more privileged member is now the bad thing. Oh hey, what? You’re speaking out against one of your “betters”, well then actually you are being the rude one now because their transparent misconduct is actually them being horny and insecure or them trying to pay a compliment or them getting upset because of something you did or them just (being a product of their times/not really meaning it/just criticizing).
The exact excuse doesn’t even matter, cause it’s more about reinforcing hierarchy and making it unseemly or wrong for the person speaking out about it to do so. And making it more about that supposed misdeed of calling it out than the actual initial offense. Because the original misconduct is in the “proper” direction against those with no power but the opposite is out of place and unfamiliar and “wrong”.
And it’s stupid and wrong and dangerous and keeps us from fixing a lot of bad behavior and habits that have no place in any society.
I always thought the “product of his time” excuse was reserved for those who are already dead. Do people who are still alive and undemented get to use the excuse “I can’t help being sexist. I’m a product of my times?”
They missed “Yes he wrote this, but it was just a joke (can’t you take a joke?)”
and “Yes, he wrote it, but is was quoted out of context”
Also missed the “… just his opinion” excuse.
As if something being an “opinion” magically protects it from critique.
The format looks very very familiar.
I see the original post acknowledges the source in the image description:
A rectangle roughly the shape of a book cover, with a sepia background. It is covered with red and black text in the style of the text of the cover of Joanna Russ’s “How To Suppress Women’s Writing”
The easiest refutation of “he was just a product of his time” is to point out one of the person’s contemporaries who was not { racist | sexist | whatever repulsive behavior is being handwaved away }.
The “he was a product of his time” excuse is only valid if he can prove he is working to better himself. Even then, like dianne said, it’s most useful for people who are dead, and it still doesn’t always apply because you can probably find examples of people with more progressive ideas that were contemporary with the person.
I’ll disagree about the ‘product of his time’ excuse because almost no one outgrows given social norms if those norms remain the same.
So I’m an HPL fan, deal with it.
struck me as well.
However, in addition to being offensive aparenthetically, I’m very disappointed in the creator’s/creators’ use of “There was no feminism.”
Which came first, the feminists or the feminism? Obviously this is being reported as a bad thing to say, the creator/s aren’t encouraging use of “There was no feminism”. But since obviously the graphic is meant to educate and spark a few brainwaves, I’d really, really like to see it re-written:
PZ ably writes:
Well, sure, but even beyond that…
How the fuck are my times different than their times if everybody that shaped my times was a product of their times?
Logic: work how it does? *
The “their time” is the worst one for me too.
If it was “their time” then who was responsible for bringing “our time” along? And then why do we criticize misogynists of the present when they can just be excused as being a product of their time?
*And now I have INXS running through my brain:
That’s how it goes, right?
Saad, I really like your argument. You have a spectacularly intelligent mind, have I ever told you that? ;-)
PZ:
As do I. That is a favourite with the Dawkins Defense League, and every time I see it, I want to yell “that’s no excuse!”
That list is an almost exact paraphrase of the cover of a book titled “How to Suppress Women’s Writing”. It’s a great book. People should read it. It’s written by Joanna Russ.
The “it’s just a joke” excuse is such a pet-peeve of mine, possibly followed by “didn’t mean it”.
I’m currently in the middle of dealing with a “friend” who for years has excused his shitty behaviour by saying “it’s just a joke” (he does it A LOT). It sucks because we’ve known each other since we were toddlers and he obviously is not a bad person in every respect, but i’m at a point where i can no longer pretend that it’s just his weird sense of humour, when it’s obvious that he is just an inexcusable arsehole. If you have to make excuses for someone every time they open their mouths in front of people, maybe they are just really shitty people…
CD, #12
You have, and I’m positively flattered. :)
Yes, this “product of his time” nonsense is bullshit. It assumes that older people can’t learn, can’t adapt, can’t be decent human beings.
Back in the 90s, my 93 year old grandmother didn’t bat an eyelash at my friends who were an interracial couple. (She was confused by gay couples, but not offended, and basically said, “Whatever. Not my business.”) She managed to adjust her strong Catholic beliefs to deal with the fact that one of her kids married a divorced Protestant. My Catholic, 80YO mother happily attended a gay wedding last year.
If an old person isn’t keeping up with increased social understanding, they’re not trying.
Yeah, my great grandmother was a feminst back when Germany still had an emperor and was arrested for protesting in favour of abortion rights. So, when were those “products of their time” actually produced?
That Joanna Russ cover. A classic.
@Giliell:
Oh, sure, she might have been awesome on women’s rights and an activist feminist to boot, but if she’d been born @8:17am Pluto would have been rising and she would have been a product of THAT time….
And the book on Amazon. Damn, that’s expensive. Why hasn’t this been reprinted recently?
20 bucks isn’t bad. I thought you were looking at one of those 490 dollar books for no foreseeable reason (which has something to do with weird amazon algorithms based on number of views vs stock vs how long the stock has been present, but doesn’t actually expect a sale at that price)
busterggi@8: I’m an HPL fan too, but there’s no escaping the fact that he was horrifically (in this case literally horrifically) racist not just in his private life but also in his published work. And I don’t think his racism should be excused just because he was a stunning and hugely influential writer.
The “product of their time” argument only works IMHO as an explanation for why someone held noxious beliefs, and only a partial explanation at that since it’s clearly not the entire reason someone holds beliefs (if it were, there would be no such thing as social change).
There’s an excellent opinion piece by Nicole Cushing on the subject. Good reading — and she makes a point that I’d never seen raised before. If HPL was such a product of his time, how come he was a late-married atheist who hung out with anarchists and wrote pulpy horror stories that sometimes hinted at necrophilia? That’s not exactly following social norms.
The interesting thing is how common these defenses are, and how they explode each other to smithereens when they contact each other.
The first’s “Just Jesting” gently jabs at the sixth’s “Meant No Offense” defense.
There is a frantic melee between the second’s “Everyone Else Was Doing It”, the seventh’s “#NotAllMen”, and the fourth’s “It’s Just An Old People Thing”.
The second and fourth, reflective of the power culture has all over us all, occasionally clatter blades with the fifth’s declaration of “This Man Is Actually An Island”.
The only one not in combat is the Reverse-Sexist Lynch Mob, the Evil Matriarchal Queen of all of the arguments. She just watches and bathes in the blood, ready to show all of the other arguments that they are inferior and unnecessary, if she is ever summoned.
You’re not really asking whether they get to use that excuse, right? Just whether it has been used?
I’ve definitely been reassured that (e.g.) grandpa was not really being racist/sexist/whatever, just old-fashioned, stubborn, uneducated, something like that. People in my generation or my parents’ generation do say bullshit like that about previous generations (including ones that are still around) quite a lot in my experience. When I’ve talked with my parents about what life was like when they were growing up (and how terrible it often was), it’s understandable that (as children/teenagers) they were very much influenced to think in ways that they now (as adults) recognize are harmful and/or mistaken. And they had no power back then to do much about it, even if they did resist being influenced that way. I can see how that applies to myself as well, or anybody else in any generation.
Oh, Reagan’s economic policies, you ask? Or any other bad thing in living memory? It’s like that was many lifetimes ago. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and so it was. You really had to be there to get it. If only you knew what it was like to drink the specific flavor of Kool Aid which was fashionable at the time. But since you weren’t there, that’s why I’m not responsible for any mistakes that were made (made by somebody else, as far as you know), so you don’t get to criticize me…. How unfortunate for you.
Does it make sense either way? The times and places people have lived in have never been so different from this one that really bad ideas were good or reasonable or anything like that. Things change, but not that much.
NelC: It’s $20 in the USA, and still in print. It’s published by a university press, which explains the slightly higher than usual cover price. But it’s not an unreasonable price.
More annoying is that it isn’t available as an ebook. That’s a rights issue. (As I heard it, the person who has to give permission is not in a condition to do so. That is unsourced publishing scuttlebutt.)
————–
I suspect a lot of the “They’re just old, they can’t change” nonsense comes from our cultural biases about old people. On the one hand, they’re assumed to be half-senile and/or stupid (doubly so for older women), so what good would it do to explain to them how they’re wrong? OTOH, there’s also a concept of not disagreeing with one’s elders because it’s “disrespectful”; which means not calling them out on their bullshit.
NONE of that is respectful toward older people. But I know a lot of older people who get very upset when people disagree with them or tell them they’re wrong. This may stem from how often people dismiss them as being mentally incompetent because they’re old. Must be frustrating. And so the cycle becomes self-reinforcing. :-/
Yeah, it’s good to consider the dominant discourses during someone’s lifetime when evaluating their positions, but it’s not a “get out of jail free” card. As mentioned before, most of them suck when compared to their progressive contemporaries.
CR
That doesn’t even make any sense. That’s like saying that the people who thought that the world was flat weren’t really wrong, they were just uneducated.
There may be a debate about moral responsibility, but not about whether “women belong in the kitchen” is sexist.
Crip Dyke @ 9,
Maybe I’m just a product of my upbringing, but I very much took “There was no feminism.” to be sarcastic.
Lovecraft has the the great excuse of being more dead than undead.
Feminism and anti-racism have both been around for well over a century now, so the “product of his time” excuse is bullshit.
Chiming in to encourage anyone who hasn’t already, to read Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing.
Hi Sili, #28!
For what it’s worth, I agree with you that there’s at least some sarcasm in the statement.
I’m disappointed in the statement, however, in part because if we’re right about the sarcasm, then it seems to be presuming that sexism before organized feminism really was more okay than sexism after organized feminism.
With “critical thinking” we do not offer such an excuse and need not fuss over dividing lines and whether we hold Sir Walter Scott accountable for sexism in the same way as we hold F Scott Fitzgerald or in the same way as James Scott I or neither. With “critical thinking” men are not off the hook because they have been sufficiently successful in oppressing women. They are responsible for their own choices, observations, deductions, and conclusions. In turn, their sisters, mothers, daughters, wives, aunts, nieces, cousins and friends are not responsible for failing to stir feminism into their brandy to cure what ailed them.
This is a significant part of my argument for “critical thinking” as opposed to “feminism”, thus I rely on the perceived sarcasm for my conclusions as much (or more) than you. I don’t know if that makes my conclusions any better than yours, but I’m not neglecting the sarcasm aspect, if that’s what you were afraid of.
They forgot “…but he’s too great a thinker to be held to mere mortal standards.”
CD @31,
I don’t think you’re neglecting it. You just weight it differently than I do, and you’re in a better position to be right.
It may be that I’m just ignorant or too tolerant of discrimination (because it rarely affects me). I can’t say that it was my original reading, but perhaps I unconsciously worked from the little-eff feminism rather than capital-Eff Feminism.
Shorter: It doesn’t matter if “(Everyone was like this back then. There was no feminism.)”, the same way it doesn’t matter if there were no Geneva Conventions when the Amalekites were slaughtered (ignoring for the moment the fictitiousness of that story). Prejudice is prejudice whether society recognises it as such or not.
“They missed “Yes he wrote this, but it was just a joke (can’t you take a joke?)””
“Can’t you take a joke?” is the free centre square on my antifeminist bingo card, so I was trying not to repeat myself too much.
(Also: It’s “feminism”, not “organised twentieth-century feminism”, for (brainwave-sparking) reasons.)