10 Words to Use When Talking About Sexism in Hollywood

Drawn from Maureen Dowd's New York Times Magazine article, "The Women of Hollywood Speak Out."

Want more vocabulary to describe sexist power structures in the workplace? Go to "What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech."
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. sexism
    discriminatory behavior towards the opposite gender
    What will it take to dismantle the pervasive sexism that keeps them from doing it?
  2. dismissive
    showing indifference or disregard
    When I phoned another powerful Hollywood player to ask about the issue, he said dismissively, ‘‘Call some chicks.’’
  3. trajectory
    the path followed by an object moving through space
    For buzzy first films by a white male, the trajectory is a 90-degree angle.
  4. categorize
    place into or assign to a class
    I felt like, unfortunately, I was being categorized, that I could only make this one kind of movie, and it wasn’t going to make the kind of money that people wanted.
  5. amnesia
    partial or total loss of memory
    ‘‘The world of movies is fascinating to me because everyone has amnesia all the time,’’ Rhimes told me.
  6. misogyny
    hatred of women
    ‘‘There’s this ickiness associated with women that I think is the real misogyny always at the edge of things,’’ she said, looking off into space.
  7. paradigm
    a standard or typical example
    In the ’80s, the paradigm that ‘‘Jaws’’ helped create shifted yet again.
  8. template
    a model or standard for making comparisons
    ‘‘It’s kind of like the church,’’ notes the actress Anjelica Huston, whose father, John Huston, helped set the template for macho directors.
  9. indecisive
    characterized by lack of firmness in purpose or belief
    Even if she doesn’t cry, studio heads ask, what if the woman in charge turns out to be some dizzy dame who is indecisive?
  10. messianic
    of or relating to a savior promising deliverance
    Soloway has become a gleeful militant with a ‘‘messianic, feminist, patriarchy-toppling dream.’’
Created on Mon Nov 23 09:49:25 EST 2015 (updated Mon Nov 23 10:38:49 EST 2015)

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