Recently, I saw a large chuck of Sin City on television. I hadn’t seen it since its theatrical release, which I really enjoyed, so some of my reactions to the movie surprised me. Specifically, I was incredibly offended by its sexist and misogynist slant.

I did enjoy the movie — I simply accepted the sexism as a part of the universe in which the story’s told — but my reaction to the sexism was visceral. And I most certainly didn’t have that reaction when I saw it in the theatre. If anything, I’ve become more aware of sexism. That said, I’m a little bit sexist.

I’ve noticed as my volume of blog reading has increased, I will often find myself reading a blog post and having an assumption challenged. Very deliberately and scholarly written posts I tend to attribute to men unless I know who the author is or there is a reference to the author’s sex in the content of the post. Similarly, light and airy posts are assumed to come from women. Neither of these prejudices are particularly appealing to me. They’re not harmful, I don’t think; when the evidence tells me that my assumption was wrong I make a note of it and move on reading the content just as I did before. But it’s not something I like about me.

Are these quiet assumptions harmful? I’m not really sure. My intuition is that they’re not, so long as you are aware of them and their flaws. Our brains have evolved in a very specific manner, but that sometimes makes them screw up. When we see something in water we know it’s not in the line of sight because of refraction and we adjust accordingly; I see these ongoing corrections I make as a similar adjustment we all must make to override any prejudices we may have, however they come about.