- Alex; periphery.:
- I've only witnessed one instance of sexism upfront (that is to say, with my own eyes as opposed to in the media) and strangely enough it was by a male teacher, in favour of females.
I don't consider against-male sexist behaviour to be 'sexism' - that sounds like a sexist incident based on a sexist belief, but that doesn't make it 'sexism'. Just as a white person might experience a racist person or circumstance, but is not a victim of 'racism'.
-isms are a lot more structural and involve uses of power and social relations that aren't reversed by one person or situation.
Edit:
while making tea I reconsidered what I'd said. I suppose where there's a system and a dominant group has power (sorry, tautology) if that power is based on the group itself being oppressed in certain (harmful) ways, maybe that would justify -ism. For example, if a man is told he cannot cry because he is a man, he is clearly suffering the effects of a sexist system e.g. of sexism. (But is it enough for these 'oppressions' to merely be the direction to not resemble the subordinate group? Surely - though 'weighing' of suffering is inadvisable - you would still hold the subjugated group as the 'primary' sufferers, and the suffering associated with the dominant group's 'superiority' would merely be 'peripheral' suffering?) Hm. At any rate (in my opinion) it would still 'only' be where gender was invoked to uphold social sexism (which is, undeniably, set against women) not merely any circumstance where a male was unjustly targeted based on his gender.