Blog Against Sexism

In honor of International Women's Day, Vegankid is hosting Blog Against Sexism Day. This is my offering.

Whenever I went out to eat with a male friend, it was inevitable that the waiter or waitress would set the check down in front of my friend. Sure, occasionally it would occur that the server decided to put it in a neutral position in the middle of the table, but for the most part the check ended up in front of my male companion. This action is rather benign, all things considered, but it works well to illustrate the sexism that runs rampant in American society, among men and women. A non-sexist society would always opt for the neutral placement of the check, but nope, not in America. People still assume the man is paying.

This example, of course, is not a blatant example of discrimination between the sexes. It is rather trivial, something easily corrected, although I always had to laugh if I used my credit card with my name on it and the resulting credit slip was still placed before the man.

Growing up, I would have barely recognized the difference between boys and girls if it weren’t for the common “games” kids play at a young age, revealing the physiological aspects of their different gender. My parents raised me to think that no matter what, I could do or be whatever I wanted. They didn’t force feed feminist ways or ideals into my head, they just ignored normal distinctions between the sexes. Sure, my mother wanted me to wear pretty dresses now and then, but she didn’t argue too much when I preferred pants and tshirts. So when I said I wanted to grow up to be Carl Sagan, neither of them said “but you can’t, because he is a male” or “wouldn’t you prefer to be a teacher, or a nurse?” No, instead my parents said, “well, then go be Carl Sagan.”

Ok, so I didn’t end up anything like Carl Sagan, aside from a propensity for science fiction, the search for intelligent life and a love of χορτo. It is irrelevant, however, because in my mind, had I followed that path, there would have been nothing that could stop me. While I am glad that parents raised me without seeing my gender as a limiting force, I blame them for not preparing me for what I would meet in the “real world”.

I wrote before, in a post on racism, about one of my first jobs, and my misogynistic boss. This was perhaps my first real encounter with sexism.

In my sophomore year of college I started working as a dispatcher for my college security department. The department was crawling with current and ex-military men, most of them misogynistic, several of them racist, and only a couple of them well educated. The director of security at the time (he is no longer the director and is now in fact, deceased) was himself ex-military and ignorant of mind. One of his favorite “jokes” was to laugh and say “a woman can become a patrol officer when she can piss in a cup from 6 feet away”. Now, how he actually thought a man could piss in a cup from 6 feet away is beyond me, because most of the patrol officers couldn’t even seem to aim for the toilet in the single department bathroom. This was not the only “limitation” he saw in a woman’s abilities. This man was misogynistic to the core, and felt that a woman could either be a housewife, a secretary (his assistant director was female, but she did all his dirty work, and ended up essentially a well paid secretary), a teacher or a nurse. He’d occasionally joke that women could be prostitutes and strippers as well but only if they were “stacked” and had nice bodies. He’d scoff at women students, saying he didn’t know why they bothered going to school. He was a real piece of work.

There were times that I couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth. Not only that, I couldn’t believe that the other officials found him amusing and even provided their own sexist comments. At one point there were only three women working there, and while I wouldn’t say anything stooped as low as sexual harassment, we certainly had to deal with a bevy of jokes in poor taste and other insults towards women. Why did we take it? I suppose because we knew that in the end, we were better than these men. We were educated, intelligent women and we weren’t going to let insensitive comments from troglodytes get us down.

In theory, I understand why women are considered the “weaker” sex, not able to do all the same things men can do. It boils down to one thing – pregnancy. Men have to protect their progeny, and the women carrying their progeny. But when you consider that most of us are only pregnant for a fraction of our life span, it just doesn’t add up. Sure, some women aren’t as strong as men. But some are stronger. Intelligence is a grab bag, based on many factors such as genetics, education, environment. I can’t think of anything that men can do that a woman can’t, aside from producing sperm. Yet still some women are paid less than men for doing the same job. Women are underrepresented in the sciences. Women lose out on law partnerships, corporate executive positions, and tenured professorships. Women are still traded as sex slaves in countries all over the world. And women are increasingly losing their right to choose an abortion.

This is not to say that sexism against men does not exist. Male nurses are often laughed at, male secretaries ridiculed. Men still bear the pressure of providing, and ignominy if they can’t provide, even if their wives provide well enough. The bottom line is that until we start to look past the lines that delineate male and female and start accepting the strengths and weaknesses of individuals rather than genders, we can hardly call ourselves civilized people. As long as we continue working towards civilization, there is hope.