Was it sexist?
I saw, as did James, the mini-controversy that popped up last week about Obama calling a female reporter “sweetie.” He apologized whole-heartedly, noting it’s a term he often uses for women, presumably when he doesn’t know their name. The feminists, of course, were outraged saying that, regardless of how he uses the phrase, “it’s still sexist.” But is it really? Doesn’t there have to be some level of intended denigration for it to be sexist?
A personal example: we all use broad terms like that to identify people from time to time. For me, it’s “chief.” It’s a term I use regularly for guys I know well and guys I don’t know at all. It can be used in both a friendly manner (“Hey chief, what’s up?”) or a less than friendly manner (“Hey chief, why don’t we calm down before this gets ugly?”). But it’s kind of a catch-all.
I found out a few years back, however, that this term could get me in a fair bit of trouble. Reading a piece in Sports Illustrated, I came to understand that “chief” is an insulting term for Native Americans. It had honestly never occurred to me before then that the term could be viewed as a grievous insult. The key paragraph:
Mills is sitting in first class. A flight attendant — the words steward and stewardess are frowned upon today — checks on him every so often. The man is African-American, the preferred designation for his racial background; before that, society called him black or colored or Negro. The man is friendly, doing his job. Each time he addresses Mills, he calls him Chief. Mills doesn’t know if the flight attendant realizes that he is Lakota. Maybe he calls everyone Chief. Maybe he means it as a compliment.
Needless to say, Mills didn’t take it as a compliment. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the flight attendant in question (assuming he uses the word as I do) is a dyed-in-the-wool racist, bringing me back to my over-arching point: if “sweetie” is simply a generic term of endearment without any denigrating intention, is it still sexist? I would argue not, and I think Obama should be given the benefit of the doubt, just as I would hope to be given the benefit of the doubt if I accidentally insulted a member of an Indian tribe by calling him chief.
All of this is a long way of saying: Quit being so sensitive. Not everything is a slight.