Sexism you deal with in everyday life? ***Mod Note in first post. Please read***

Siuin

clairefontaine wrote: »

So these men are trained to go into combat but cant handle seeing womens' legs?

What a bunch of pussies.

Yeah, it was very bizarre... I really felt though that if they were going to enforce a dress code on the base they should have made it applicable to both genders. Of course, the assumption is that women can't possibly be visually stimulated...!

clairefontaine

Siuin wrote: »

Yeah, it was very bizarre... I really felt though that if they were going to enforce a dress code on the base they should have made it applicable to both genders. Of course, the assumption is that women can't possibly be visually stimulated...!

You should have all shown up in burkhas to make a point.

midlandsmissus

Siuin wrote: »

Yeah, it was very bizarre... I really felt though that if they were going to enforce a dress code on the base they should have made it applicable to both genders. Of course, the assumption is that women can't possibly be visually stimulated...!

How come the women didnt rebel or insist the men wear full clothes?

I certainly would have done.

That's ridiculous!

Siuin

midlandsmissus wrote: »

How come the women didnt rebel or insist the men wear full clothes?

I certainly would have done.

That's ridiculous!

The army isn't the best play to rebel or try to make a statement :P

midlandsmissus

true-or-false wrote: »

I don't think taking down the article would make much difference, they've been asked to take things down before and they just take down the picture/article in question and nothing else changes. Here's another lovely piece:
http://www.unilad.com/a-medley-of-minge.html

Yes but if they do get a deluge of complaint emails,believe me some-one at the website will take note.

SO ladies,maybe send a complaint email to that website in the 'contact us' section, if you think the material is despicable. Every little helps.

midlandsmissus

Siuin wrote: »

The army isn't the best play to rebel or try to make a statement :P

Yes but:

One gender insisting the other gender wear more clothes, jesus heads would roll if that happened in any other workforce! Its hard to imagine!

Wibbs

Siuin wrote: »

Unfortunately, when there are people ranging from 18 to their mid 20s heaped in together, there will always be behaviour issues

Especially in such an historically "macho" environment. Never mind an exclusive and very traditional one. The military may yet find the path though. Why do I think they might? Combat and contact with the enemy makes for pragmatism unlike pretty much any other field of human experience. If they of all sections of society can navigate this, then the rest of society should be able to follow, or at least the excuses will look all the more hollow.

Stheno

Siuin wrote: »

I've gotten that one twice, and it doesn't getting any less obnoxious the second time... who the hell walks around the city grinning?

I encountered quite a lot of sexism in the army, along with the other female soldiers. Really, really blatant stuff too. Just a few examples off the top of my head:
- we were running around the track and my commander sidled up beside me, slapped my bottom and whispered "cute ass" before running on and leaving me completely shocked
- one of the soldiers had quite big boobs and when she was walking into the dining hall one of the young male soldiers called after her "wah! what tits!"
- if we were doing physical work (especially which involved a lot of crouching and lifting) the religious head of the base would pull up a chair and watch us
- because of the intense heat, all soldiers had been allowed to wear what they wanted on the base when they weren't working. However, some religious soldiers declared that the girls' shorts and tank tops were too immodest so all of the girls were forced to wear our uniforms all the time, which included t-shirts, overshirts with long sleeves, full length pants and boots. In 35-40 degree weather. Meanwhile, the guys wore whatever they wanted.

What religious and what base?

Why didn't you report all the other issues on the basis of bullying/harrassment?

Lucyfur

All posts mentioning another forum have been deleted. Mentioning other forums will result in infractions or bans

LittleBook

Roam wrote: »

A woman mimicking anything "masculine" would not receive the same negative response that the little boy's mother revealed. A boy acting in any way "feminine" is highly frowned upon because all things "feminine" are considered inferior.

Time for me to roll out quote from "The Cement Garden" again

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.

username123

I dont know if I just had a bad one or if it was a common thing across VEC schools but our career guidence counseller at school was a disaster and sexist with it.

If you told him you wanted to do a degree he laughed and dismissed you, and told you only the lucky lads from private christian brothers schools would be going to university and then, if you were female he told you to get into hairdressing and if you were male he wanted you to get into plastic engineering (whatever that is).

They were the only two suggestions he had for people. Occasionally someone would go to him with an idea of their own - and he dismissed or encouraged based on traditional gender roles.

I never went to visit with him myself, he wasnt interested in anyone who wanted to further their education - so he was of no use to me.

Death and Taxes

My own view is that sexism is always and everywhere wrong. In the same way that racism is. As a father of two daughters I have always tried to instil in them a sense of natural equality, that is an instinctive feeling that they are as good as anyone else regardless of colour,creed or gender.
However, western society is inherently sexist, from gendering children right through to the glass ceiling. Look at the way some many judges treat sexual crimes against women in this country, or how marketing and adverstising is aimed at specifically gendering women (The fairy liqued ads currently running with the woman and her daughter washing up).
The Australian Sociologist Raewyn Connell has done a lot of work on this issue and what she refers to as the "The Male Hegemony" and the "Patriarchal Dividend", for those interested in the subject her work is well worth looking at.

Honey-ec

Shelga wrote: »

I'm the only woman in an office of around 10. I experience sexist remarks all the time. Daily. Some examples:

A colleague asks what engine does my car have. Before I can respond, another colleague says "A metal one" followed by a laugh. I walked by his desk a couple of minutes later and he said something like "It's ok, keep being pretty!" and laughed again.

In the kitchen at work, slammed the microwave door by accident, 60 year old guy says "Oh must be PMT!" (Made a thread about that one as I was so taken aback by it at the time!)

Someone brought in eclairs for a birthday. As I'm eating one, male colleague says "Bet we know what you use that technique for!"

I genuinely don't know how to take these comments. The only one I feel properly offended by was the PMT one, as I don't know that guy. However, I know the others pretty well and sometimes I think that they wouldn't dream of saying these things they didn't know me, and know that I would take them as the jokes they are clearly intended to be.

But it does get repetitive, so much so that I wonder about the reasons behind it all. It's also boring and not really very funny.

I'm not negating how uncomfortable these comments make you, but do they slag eachother off in a comparable way? It's very possible that they're not being sexist intentionally; that they see it as banter, but because you're the only girl in the office, it's extremely noticeable that it's all based on gender difference.

Again, I'm not condoning anything, just genuinely curious about whether they slag eachother off too.

clairefontaine

Honey-ec wrote: »

I'm not negating how uncomfortable these comments make you, but do they slag eachother off in a comparable way? It's very possible that they're not being sexist intentionally; that they see it as banter, but because you're the only girl in the office, it's extremely noticeable that it's all based on gender difference.

Again, I'm not condoning anything, just genuinely curious about whether they slag eachother off too.

Honestly, the nature of those comments would suggest to me a low opinion of women, but with low opinions come low expectations.

Low expectations are easy to violate and hard to disappoint. If this is the baseline you are working with than you can try to find an angle where you abilities can be underscored by their low expectations.

For example, if the perception is that women aren't so great at bargaining or haggling a good deal, then when you good at it [equal to your male counterpart] when you do do it, you will get more praise and attention than if your male counterpart does it [kind of like what custodial dads and widowers get].

Obviously this is cynical but if you can't change it, make it work for you.

newport2

clairefontaine wrote: »

So these men are trained to go into combat but cant handle seeing womens' legs?

What a bunch of pussies.

Freudian slip......:eek::eek:

clairefontaine

newport2 wrote: »

Freudian slip......:eek::eek:

No slip. I was well aware of the intentional irony.

Fizzlesque

Even though, these days, I don't notice sexism that I have to deal with, in my everyday life, I have recognised a lot of the examples on this thread as being part of my experience in the past.

Many years ago I lived in Scotland, and while there I did a course in Imports and Exports; a Fas-like course, designed mostly to get people on the dole back into training and then, hopefully work, and off the dole. I'd gone to Scotland to live with my then-boyfriend and had been finding it difficult to get a job, so when this course was offered to me, I was absolutely delighted. Partly because at that time I had no computer knowledge, and this was a great opportunity to learn, and partly because there was an optional extra - Business German. Having learned German in school, I was thrilled to be able to continue to learn more German.

When the course ended, there was still three weeks before its official end, so a lot of the people were just filling time, playing games on the computers, waiting for the completion date. Except for the few of us who had chosen to do the Business German module. That continued till the end, and there was an exam to be done. Without asking my permission, the course leader sent my CV to a company looking for a receptionist. She sent mine and one other girls, and didn't send any of the men's. Even though there were men playing computer games all day, while I was continuing my German lessons. When the time came to attend the interview, I explained to the woman interviewing me that I wished to complete my course, and wouldn't be finished for three more weeks. She said she understood, but when I'd left, she rang my course tutor and asked why people who weren't yet available for work were being sent to her.

I was called to the office to explain myself. I explained that I was offended that (a) no permission had been sought with regard to sending my CV for a job, and (b) I felt sexism was responsible for me being sent for a receptionist job, even though I was still studying, while there were men who were free to take up work but because it was a receptionist job, it wasn't considered to be a 'man's job'.

My tutor reluctantly agreed to let me continue the course and do my exam, and apologised for not having consulted with me first, but my friend (who wasn't doing German) was told she'd have to leave. The boys playing computer games weren't told to leave. It was only the beginning of my growing awareness of the sexist nature of the society I was living in at the time. Another job I had, while living there, had no female supervisors because one woman had turned up still drunk, and was loud and bolshy, and it was decided that women weren't suitable for supervisory roles :eek:. All women were unsuitable because one woman had behaved badly, apparently.

Another day, in a shop, I overheard a woman tell her granddaughter she couldn't have the football she wanted because it was 'a boy's toy' and redirected her to the kitchen sets and dolls and 'girl's toys'. I said nothing, though I really wanted to say something, and when I told my boyfriend about it he told me I was being oversensitive and overreacting.

It brought back loads of bad memories of my own childhood and adolescence, growing up the only girl in a house of boys (my 4 brothers and my dad - my mother died when I was a baby and my stepmother had legged it when I was about 10 <---- but that's a whole other story) and all the subtle sexism that entailed. Being the only girl, my grandmother (the most sexist women I've ever known) expected me to take on the role of 'little mother' and we used fight a lot because of this. My father, who considered himself to be anything but sexist, didn't encourage the 'little mother' role but he damaged my self esteem enormously with his ingrained ideas that women were emotional, not logical and therefore were unsuitable for a myriad of things. One time, in all seriousness, he said "I have no idea how lesbian relationships work because women aren't good at making decisions, so surely a relationship with two women is fraught with difficulties when it comes to making decisions that require logical thinking instead of emotional thinking".

My sister (who lived with her mother, my stepmother) told me last year, that she too was affected by his 'women aren't as clever as men' way of thinking. She has just completed her masters in Software Engineering, and told me that even up to when she began her course, she noticed she was having niggling doubts with regard to her abilities, because somewhere along the line she'd absorbed the idea that being a woman meant she wouldn't have what it takes to succeed. My father has changed a lot, over the years, thanks to his two daughters (and his sons) showing him the error of his old ways, but, unfortunately for me, I know I will never reach my full potential because it took me till I was 40 years old to begin to have faith in my own worth and abilities. Just because all my brothers learned how to cook and clean, doesn't mean there was no sexism in the house I grew up in, which my father foolishly thought was the case.

Oftentimes it's the subtle sexism that does most damage - the gentle and slowly absorbed false belief that (as has been correctly identified on this thread) to be a man = strong, capable and powerful, and to be a woman = weak, passive and in need of protection. All of which is neatly surmised in the insult 'you're such a girl' that I've heard said all too often during my life when a man shows his emotions and expresses hurt. My brother said it once to my nephew and I had to take him aside and tell him he was damaging both my nephew and my niece by, unwittingly, telling them both that to be a girl is a negative thing.

newport2

clairefontaine wrote: »

No slip. I was well aware of the intentional irony.

Clever so, you made me laugh. Always a good thing on a Friday

Honey-ec

Fizzlesque wrote: »

Even though, these days, I don't notice sexism that I have to deal with, in my everyday life, I have recognised a lot of the examples on this thread as being part of my experience in the past.

I don't know, though. While some of the examples are appalling, I think women can be just as casually sexist towards men, but it's either not seen as sexism or just not seen as "as bad".

Only the other day someone posted a thread asking for advice on living with a "smelly boy" for the first time. Is that not as sexist in its own way as a man referring to "silly girls"?

Again, I'm not negating any specific person's experience on here, more thinking out loud.

jaffacakesyum

Honey-ec wrote: »

I don't know, though. While some of the examples are appalling, I think women can be just as casually sexist towards men, but it's either not seen as sexism or just not seen as "as bad".

Only the other day someone posted a thread asking for advice on living with a "smelly boy" for the first time. Is that not as sexist in its own way as a man referring to "silly girls"?

Again, I'm not negating any specific person's experience on here, more thinking out loud.

I agree that's definitely sexist. Recently enough there was a thread about roommates with an overwhelming "don't live with girls" response. I don't think these men meant to be sexist; they're probably everyday decent blokes, but the fact that they did not realise how sexist blanket statements about women being messy, using so much toilet paper, getting emotional/annoying etc. was ridiculous.

The same should be said for generalisations about living with "smelly boys"

Fizzlesque

Fizzlesque wrote: »

Even though, these days, I don't notice sexism that I have to deal with, in my everyday life, I have recognised a lot of the examples on this thread as being part of my experience in the past.

Honey-ec wrote: »

I don't know, though. While some of the examples are appalling, I think women can be just as casually sexist towards men, but it's either not seen as sexism or just not seen as "as bad".

Only the other day someone posted a thread asking for advice on living with a "smelly boy" for the first time. Is that not as sexist in its own way as a man referring to "silly girls"?

Again, I'm not negating any specific person's experience on here, more thinking out loud.

I agree, Honey-ec, another one that I've often noticed is "men can't multitask". I know men who can multitask perfectly well, and women who can't. I have no doubt casual sexism towards men exists too - and I would be just as vocal expressing my distaste for it as I would be with regard to sexism towards women.

Honey-ec

Fizzlesque wrote: »

I agree, Honey-ec, another one that I've often noticed is "men can't multitask". I know men who can multitask perfectly well, and women who can't.

But there's a difference between acknowledging that the male and female brain are wired differently and being sexist. Women are *generally* better at multi-tasking than men. Just as men *generally* have better spatial ability than women. Obviously, there are always exceptions, but I don't think it's inherently wrong to accept that there are differences in the way the genders are hard-wired.

I've no idea where I'm going with this. I think what I'm really trying to say is that it's generalisations that are the problem.

Jelly2

Shelga wrote: »

I'm the only woman in an office of around 10. I experience sexist remarks all the time. Daily. Some examples:

A colleague asks what engine does my car have. Before I can respond, another colleague says "A metal one" followed by a laugh. I walked by his desk a couple of minutes later and he said something like "It's ok, keep being pretty!" and laughed again.

In the kitchen at work, slammed the microwave door by accident, 60 year old guy says "Oh must be PMT!" (Made a thread about that one as I was so taken aback by it at the time!)

Someone brought in eclairs for a birthday. As I'm eating one, male colleague says "Bet we know what you use that technique for!"

I genuinely don't know how to take these comments. The only one I feel properly offended by was the PMT one, as I don't know that guy. However, I know the others pretty well and sometimes I think that they wouldn't dream of saying these things they didn't know me, and know that I would take them as the jokes they are clearly intended to be.

But it does get repetitive, so much so that I wonder about the reasons behind it all. It's also boring and not really very funny.

I'm really shocked by what you have to put up with - I wouldn't mind the engine comment as I suppose a man might say this to another man for a laugh, to present him as silly or ignorant - but the other three are awful: two were made specifically on the basis of your sex's supposed qualities, ie. pretty but silly, emotional and irrational; the third was sexual in nature, and pretty crude at that.
I work with plenty of men, and am friends with some of them as well as work mates. But they would never make comments to me like these and if they did I'd be pretty unimpressed. I think that you are in the classic position of not wanting to cause trouble about it because you need to be able to fit into the majority group, but it really isn't right that they demean you like this. You shouldn't have to endure it.

Fizzlesque

Honey-ec wrote: »

But there's a difference between acknowledging that the male and female brain are wired differently and being sexist. Women are *generally* better at multi-tasking than men. Just as men *generally* have better spatial ability than women. Obviously, there are always exceptions, but I don't think it's inherently wrong to accept that there are differences in the way the genders are hard-wired.

I've no idea where I'm going with this. I think what I'm really trying to say is that it's generalisations that are the problem.

Generalisations are very dangerous, and sometimes become set in stone in people's ideas. The differences with regard to hard-wiring is exactly what caused my father to believe women weren't capable of logical, calm reasoning, because women are generally considered to be more emotional, nurturing, soft etc.

The 'men can't multitask' one irritates me because I've witnessed men/boys begin to believe that of themselves with no reason to other than they've been told that's the way men are.

circular motion

Roam wrote: »

I think that society in general has been conditioned to view male and female experiences differently and that's why both men and women tend to subscribe to the double standard.

I find it bizarre, judging identical behaviour in an opposing way.

It's not identical behaviour though. Women are heinously selective with their sexual partners, men aren't.

Fizzlesque

circular motion wrote: »

It's not identical behaviour though. Women are heinously selective with their sexual partners, men aren't.

Heinously?

Scarinae

circular motion wrote: »

It's not identical behaviour though. Women are heinously selective with their sexual partners, men aren't.

How are men not selective about sexual partners?

shoos

Just want to say - this has been a brilliant thread and thanks to the OP for posting!

There's been so many critiques of how women are perceived in society, that have been said in such eloquent and articulate ways. These thoughts have been floating about my brain for years now, but if I ever came to say anything aloud on the matter, I could never express myself in the way some of the ladies on here have done.

I'm taking notes and hopefully the next time I encounter casual sexism myself, I'll be able to stand up for myself much better.

Unfortunately, that opportunity will probably come much quicker than I'd like to think it will, and I'm 100% guilty of being one of those women who lose their voice when something degrading is said for fear of being made fun of, or look like an over-sensitive fool.

Really is a genius way to silence us. Degrade, degrade, degrade and you'll have half a global population feeling less worthy, less valuable.

I'd like to leave this TEDTalk here also. It's by a man called Tony Porter, not sure who he is exactly, but he's speaking about how female oppression hurts both boys and girls. Really lovely talk, definitely worth a watch.

http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_porter_a_call_to_men.html

"If it would destroy [a 12-year-old boy] to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?” (Tony Porter)

circular motion

circular motion wrote: »

It's not identical behaviour though. Women are heinously selective with their sexual partners, men aren't.

I'd love this statement explained in detail.

clairefontaine

Honey-ec wrote: »

But there's a difference between acknowledging that the male and female brain are wired differently and being sexist. Women are *generally* better at multi-tasking than men. Just as men *generally* have better spatial ability than women. Obviously, there are always exceptions, but I don't think it's inherently wrong to accept that there are differences in the way the genders are hard-wired.

I've no idea where I'm going with this. I think what I'm really trying to say is that it's generalisations that are the problem.

Yes and no. The problem is when they can up prejudicial expectations.

I suck at multi-tasking for example. Am much better at tunnel vision focusing on one thing very intensely and getting it done. In fact, doing several things at a time, chances are I will fail at all of them.

So...because I'm a woman am I just expected to be good at that and therefore get handed five or six things to do at the same time? And then when I fail, am judged more harshly than a man would be?