Women Bound and Gagged... on Holiday Cards?Welcome to "Peace on Earth."

Just in case you thought sexism was behind us

I’d planned to see you in the new year; let you all enjoy your holidays with a little less cultural criticism and a little more carefree joy. But because “I JUST CAN’T WITH THIS!” I’m writing one final time.

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Family holiday cards are ubiquitous in the United States but I just learned about the creepy trend in which the mothers and daughters in the photos are tied up with Christmas lights and their mouths taped shut. Meanwhile, the fathers and sons stand by jubilantly, free and holding signs saying “Peace on Earth.” Am I the only one who didn’t know about this grossness? I get it’s meant as a joke. We ALL get it’s meant as a joke. Women talk too much (actually they speak less than men but you can read about that in another post), they have nothing useful to say, their voices/laughter/crying/anger/singing are shrill and grating, yada yada yada. Are you laughing yet?

Let’s take a closer look at the children in the picture above. One girl is staring blankly off to her right, not looking at the camera, perhaps a tiny act of rebellion. The other one is slouched down with only her eyes looking up at the camera, a posture of humiliation. Their brother, meanwhile, has his hand up in a power fist. Sure, the photographer probably orchestrated the fist but this toddler boy is learning he’s the powerful one in the family, and quite possibly that it’s funny to restrain and silence women. Sadly, this isn’t the only family to hop on this appalling bandwagon. There are many.

Making covert sexism overt

Really, these cards are just taking covert sexism and making it overt, forcing us to see something we’d rather not. We need only pay slightly more attention to see we live in a world that cares far more about what men have to say than women. For example, women have outnumbered men in colleges for decades, but the halls of power are still overflowing with men. Women make up only 28 percent of the U.S. Congress, 13 percent of Hollywood directors, and a mere 11 percent of top-grossing movies in 2022 featured more women than men.

And let’s consider violence. We live in a world where 33 percent of teenage girls—one in three—will experience dating violence (physical, emotional, or verbal); 27 percent (compared with 5 percent of boys) can expect to be sexually abused or assaulted before they turn eighteen; and 14 percent of high school girls report they’ve been physically forced to have sex. So yeah, maybe joking about violence or setting our kids up to think it’s normal isn’t all that hilarious.

Why would the moms in these photos agree to this?

If you read my post about gifting women their correct names this holiday season, you know it’s very possible the mothers in these holiday cards organized the photos, planned the outfits, and sent them out. It’s hard to understand how a woman can find subjugating women funny, and worse, how she could pull her daughters into it. But it’s a perfect example of internalized misogyny.

Being the women who adapt most readily to sexist structures comes with rewards: They’re considered stronger than other women so they get to feel like “one of the boys.” By defensively overidentifying with men, they feel as if they figured out something other women struggle with; they’re chill. In short, by agreeing with the dominant assessment of girls and women—in this case, that women are annoying and need to be controlled—they avoid considerable stress. But they end up participating in their own oppression and then project that onto others who protest, deeming them difficult or weak.

The beauty industry guru, Jessica DeFino, wrote a post about these appalling cards in 2021 and likens them to women’s acceptance of oppressive beauty standards. She writes, “So many of the beauty standards society foists upon on us are products of patriarchy (and white supremacy, and colonialism, and capitalism).” Just as many of us chase unattainable beauty standards because we’ve internalized the male gaze, the women conceiving of or agreeing to these cards have, on some level, accepted men’s views of them as loud, naggy, gossipy, and vapid. Blaming ourselves or laughing it off rather than seeing that the world we live in dislikes women can just feel easier and, at times, safer.

Despite the endless evidence of sexism, people still insist it no longer exists. And when we try to point it out, it’s used as proof we deserve the misogyny directed at us. In response to the anger generated by one of the holiday cards posted on Facebook (now taken down), those who found the card funny accused those upset by the post of being humorless scolds. One poster wrote: "Women really do need to shut up, just look at all the squawking from women on this post alone!"

And they say the the Western world no longer needs feminism.

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Happy holidays everyone. I hope they’re filled with love, respect and actual humor, and, of course, peace on earth.