The pancontinental multi-sport, the 18th Asian Games 2018 has been running for 11 days. Having exceeded the medal achievement target, up to this midday Indonesia has successfully secured 26 gold medals, 20 silver medals, and 31 bronze medals. One of the most long-awaited match, badminton, contributed to give two gold medals, won by Kevin Sanjaya and Marcus Gideon at men’s doubles and Jonatan Christie at men’s singles.
The later became internet phenomena not only because of his talents, strategies, and determination to win in the field, but also because of his controversial victory celebration. Upon securing a ticket to final, Jonatan Christie (or Jojo, for short) went shirtless and tossed his sweat-soaked shirt to the audience. He then received so many comments—mostly by women—appraising his look and body. While some comments may highlight it in a nice way, some others are perceived as an objectification of Jojo as it expresses sexual tendency, such as the comment “my ovaries are exploding” and other similar remarks.
It then raised a heated debate all around social media upon whether this form of phenomenon is okay to do or not, and can be justified or not. In result, a lot of concepts are then being confused and used in exchange with one another, such as sexism and sexual harassment, when actually each concept has different meaning which makes them should be ideally used wisely regarding to the context.
I, however, believe that Jojo’s case is not sexism. First of all, sexism is the belief that men are superior to women and thus the act of prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination based on said sex or gender is somehow justified. Such a belief can be born out of ignorance or malice, conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional—but it doesn’t make it any less of sexism.
In a society, sexism is both born out of and functions to maintain patriarchy. The concept of patriarchy itself literally translates as ‘rule of fathers’. Society that upholds patriarchy operates in a way which male members have more social, political, material, and ideological power than female members. This oppression towards women, then, can be happened on the level of individuals, collectives, and even institutions.
The question now would be, can’t men be the victim who experienced the disadvantages while the women act as the perpetrator of sexual and gender based discrimination—like in Jojo’s case? Yes, they can. If that is so, isn’t it a reverse sexism—or just sexism in general? No, it is not.
An important, but often overlooked, part of the term is that sexism is basically prejudice/stereotype/discrimination plus power. Jojo is a privileged high-profile gold medalist rising star athlete with more power over his women fans. The way he celebrated his victories by repeatedly went shirtless twice in two different matches proved that at least he didn’t have bad experience with his first attempt to do so, or so we perceived. On a recent interview with The Jakarta Post, Jojo even chuckled and said that he had no particular reason as to why he went shirtless, he just did that because public seemed to favor and are entertained by that act. Most of the times, when men get praised for their bodies, they’d be flattered, because that’s just how superior men are in this world.
Meanwhile, when women get praised for their bodies, most of them will feel uncomfortable because unwanted compliments are not merely scary, but also oftentimes threatening. And that’s because there is power dynamics relation at play. A man teacher pulling a woman student’s bra strap as a form of so-called school punishment, a man manager standing behind a woman staff and pat her on the shoulder longer than necessary, a husband forcing his wife to do sex when she has said she doesn’t want to, a father assaulting his own daughter, a man stranger catcalling, breast-grabbing, bottom-pinching a woman walking down the public road, are just some of the common illustrations. Women are always the ones who are more harshly judged and easily slut-shamed by misogynistic moral police based on their behaviors and appearances. Men feel entitled to objectify women simply because they are women. Sexism can be found everywhere and everytime, it is something women experience routinely on a daily basis. In this case, Jojo has full authority over his body and the way it is presented, while unfortunately most other women do not.
I don’t deny that the power dynamics do shift around (that is why it is called dynamic and not static in the very first place) depending on the culture, time period, the individual aspect, the other privileges that said person has or does not have, and so on. But ultimately the scales remain tipped in favor of men in general. Men can be affected by prejudice, but because of they have privilege in form of power, they don’t experience it the same way that women do. My point is, power is one of the most important parts of the equation here. This is not to say that men cannot be prejudiced or stereotyped or discriminated, because many of them actually are. But without power, they are not actually working within the systemic framework of advantage created by the majority to privilege themselves. Thus, it is only sexism if the person is capable of using that framework. Otherwise, it is prejudice or stereotype or discrimination.
First disclaimer, I’m not saying that a sexual harassment depends on whether or not the victim feel harassed. What I’m saying is that how the victim feels and reacts toward certain phenomenon relates deeply with what relations she or he has with the other party. Sexual harassment is an offensive, uninvited and unwelcomed verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature conducted by a person in authority toward a subordinate—and rarely the other way around.
Second disclaimer, when I say that women can’t be sexist towards men, I don’t mean to say that it’s morally right for women to be prejudiced against men, nor that I think it should be accepted. Prejudice is generally bad, and we should treat people the way we want to be treated. What should be highlighted is that there is a huge distinction between sexism and gender-based prejudice.
The appropriation of the term sexism to men was frustrating to me, as women’s oppression happened through long historical and structural inequalities in a systemic nature. No, it is not double standards, because it is not even apple to apple to reverse the sex to begin with. The power relations have been imbalance for so long, there’s no way the oppression that men experienced nowadays are in the same level as what women have to deal with. Women and their bodies have been commodified for centuries—seen as mere property and second-class citizens. The condition may has been improving over years, but it is undeniable that commodification of women still widely exists. We live in a culture that nurtures patriarchy—it is deeply rooted and manifested to the point that women are mistreated at the individual level as well as at the institutional level. The real-life example would be that a woman who is a victim of rape (the individual level) was told by the judges (the institutional level) that she was culpable because of the way she was dressed. It shows that sexism is institutionalized and systematic, and so I reject the notion that women can be sexist towards men because women lack and even don’t have the access to the institutional power that men have.
As for Jojo’s case, I think it would be a lot wiser if we fans turn our admiration to respect and support. We should praise our nation’s athletes in regard to their talents, hardwork, and achievements for this country, and not merely based on looks and body images that have zero relevance with their performance in the field.
