Things Sexist Men and Toxic Institutions have in Common

Coercing you into accepting a reality that's bad for you

Have you ever noticed that being in a relationship with a sexist man and working for a toxic institution kind of feel the same?

This is not a coincidence.

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

A couple weeks ago, I argued that contemporary masculinity and institutional management function in similar ways. I described how this current form of masculinity came into existence, its relationship to corporate image-management, and its effects on individual men that result in the abuse of women.

Sexist men and institutional management are isomorphic: they have the same shape. Of course, a sexist man is an individual whereas an institution is a power system composed of multiple individuals, but their goals, and the moves that they use to obtain those goals, are the same.

That shared goal, in short, is to coerce you into accepting a reality that is bad for you and good for them. But it’s not only the goal that’s shared; it’s the playbook, the moves that sexist men and institutions use to coerce you into accepting your situation and the attitude that underlies the endeavour. For example, both sexist men and the toxic workplace:

• think that providing you with a material benefit (pay check/dinner/a roof over your head) entitles them to ignore your agency and autonomy.

• are not interested in your ideas, but in the hours of labour that your body represents (this is the same attitude to persons of colour that white people have had forever; it’s just coming home to roost).

• do everything they can to avoid reciprocity. The man or institution shows no interest in your well-being or career. You stay and give out of fear.

• set up policies or expectations that you are expected to follow while themselves remaining unaccountable to those same policies or expectations.

• do not use language to describe reality but to conceal reality.

• assume a position of authority about everything, including your experience: “since we say we are transparent, your experience of our lack of transparency must be wrong.”

• favour the strategy of non-engagement: avoiding and sidestepping the things you can see and want to talk about by changing the subject so that you give up and accept your situation.

• keeps attention on the minutiae of your performance. If you’re not getting what you want, it’s not because it’s being withheld, but because you haven’t performed adequately: your tone is too strident or you haven’t crossed all the t’s on your paperwork.

• are not interested in meeting your needs but in getting you to adapt to theirs.

• aim at getting you to accept the conditions in which you find yourself, no matter how dehumanising.

I say that these are features of “toxic” workplaces, but I would venture to guess that more and more institutions under our current form of capitalism behave in these ways. So, you may not have thought of your institution as a “toxic workplace” before, but if it behaves in this way, perhaps you should.

Coercion is no longer an aberrant behaviour, or a trait belonging to isolated individuals. More and more, it’s the air we breathe. It’s becoming normalised.

Succeeding in a system like this contributes to normalising coercive behaviour, which makes us more likely to accept it, or even - and this should scare all of us - to perpetrate it. In a context in which coercion is normal, sexist control doesn’t look so bad. It’s harder to see.

We accept this coercive situation because we think we have nowhere else to turn and, truth be told, I am often not sure where to turn or what to do either. I write because I am looking for ways out, not because I have the answers. But our humanity is going to depend on finding a way to build something different. In the meantime, I’m out here trying not to lose my relationship to truth, to reality, and to myself.

We're Way Past Glass Ceilings