power, privilege, and everyday life.
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I am a white, young, female professor with one child. A white, male, older, professor comes up to me and asks me when I’m going to have number two. He says it’s not fair to my child or the world if I just have one. I ask him, how is having more than one, when as I woman I’m responsible for the majority of the childcare, fair for my career?
“No, just stop talking. You keep going on about this sort of stuff and I don’t care, ok?”
My younger sister to me, a closeted bisexual woman, cutting me off when I tried to educate her about biphobia. “This sort of stuff” refers to LGBTQ+ issues, feminism, and general social justice activism. Made me feel silenced, foolish, upset, angry and frustrated. Before this I was pretty sure she’d be the first person I’d come out to. Now I don’t know if I can ever come out to her at all.
My husband and I moved from Spain to Virginia (US) for work reasons. Upon applying for driver licenses at the DMV, the lady that attended us checked our passports multiple times, and took them into an inside office several times. We got worried thinking something was wrong or missing on our papers. She typed our names in the computer with an angry face. When she got back to us, she finally told us: “You know, if you are going to live here, you need to change your names to something more English.” This same lady took both of us for our driving test. Neither of us passed. I had been driving in my country for 10 years.
Made me feel ashamed of my heritage, unwelcomed, and unworthy.
“Smile, gorgeous!”
Living in New York I get this said to me frequently on the street. It is always on a day when I am incredibly stressed or dealing with a serious and troubling emotional problem.
Apparently, because I am a woman, I’m not allowed to be angry or upset. I should just fake happiness. I’m expected to smile and be pretty, even when I’m depressed or full of anxiety. Women are always suppose to be these beaming rays of sunshine! It makes me angry and, unfortunately, can make the different between a bad day and a terrible one.
The woman goes down the line of soon-to-be high school grads she isn’t familiar with, asking them “So, where are you going to college?”.
She gets to me and asks “What are your plans after high school?”
I am the only Black person in the room, graduating in the top of my class, and I am heading to college with an academic full-ride. Made me feel underestimated, belittled.
“I’m not surprised there are so many police around urban, minority-populated schools. I’ve played sports against some of those schools, and those kids are SCARY. I was afraid I’d get stabbed. I like my guts on the inside of me thank you very much.”
Paraphrase of a conversation I had with an acquaintance over lunch when asked to explain how prisons related to public school education (a class I am currently taking). He kept repeating the guts part. Bewildered that in my collegiate learning atmosphere someone would make such sweeping racial assumptions especially when I was asked to elaborate. He said it so absolutely, as if it was the bottom line, as if his “feelings” and stereotypes justified the injustices of the prison system. He just wasn’t hearing me out at all.
I am Caribbean-American with natural hair ( I don’t chemically straighten it). An older Caucasian woman sitting in the booth next to me at the hair salon tonight said my hair was “fascinating.”
Made me feel like I belonged on exhibit in a museum.
My dad is pretty homophobic (i'm a lesbian in the closet)
Me:: Dad what do you think is wrong with homosexuals
Dad:: there is nothing wrong with them its just like dark-skinned people I dont discriminate them, but I wont marry a dark-skinned woman!
(correction homophobic and racist)"
When I was 14, I was rushed to the hospital with intense abdominal pains. I was placed in a wheelchair and whisked away from my parents by a young white nurse to get a CAT scan. She wheeled into an empty hallway and then stopped, put the brakes down, and stood in from of me with her hands on the armrests. Inches away from my face she said, “Listen, I know you’re pregnant. You better admit it now or your baby will die on that cat-scan table!” Since I was already crying from the pain, I just nodded ‘no’. She rolled her eyes and then dropped me off in the room. I ended up having a ruptured ovarian cyst. It was years before I even had my first kiss.
I have a son who is autistic and I have Asperger’s myself, recently self diagnosed.
I was at work with a worker from out of town. I didn’t know her very well, but her personality really resonated with me and I enjoyed being around her the short amount of time she was there. The subject of autism came up and I got interested because I thought that she would have interesting things to say about it. Oh, was I wrong, and how glad I am that I kept my mouth shut about my son and myself, even though I feel like I should have said something.
She constantly complained about how a few students who are autistic acted like they knew everything and are authority opposers. Sure no one likes a know-it-all, but autistics and Asperger’s actually research what they want to know before spouting anything out. How she made it sound was that they were just trying to stir things up and get her angry for no reason. Then she goes off about how they get so angry and “violent” when they can’t “do whatever they want”. No, what’s actually happening is that you are disrupting their patterns and routines and it’s frustrating them because they don’t know how to divert around it and can actually send them into a panic attack. For example, what happens to me when a plan is changed or a spontaneous event occurs that will upset my whole schedule.
Maybe people should do a little research on certain brain types and mental disorders before submerging themselves into their worlds. They already feel alienated enough by people trying to make them “normal”.
“She’s a girl, of course she has mood swings.”
A girl in my philosophy class explaining why yesterdays horoscope was accurate for her, nearly all the males in my class applauded. I felt as if women’s emotions are too be treated with contempt or grossly exaggerated, it really hurt because I am a woman suffering from bipolar disorder and it seemed trivializing of people with actual mood disorders.
Today I met with a prospective landlord to view an apartment. The apartment was 3 rooms plus a kitchen, the perfect size for me and well within my budget. When he asked me how many people it would be, I answered “oh, just me”. His response: “Oh no, I won’t rent to you. It’s unfair, this is too much space for a woman alone, maybe if you had a boyfriend.”
Made me feel angry, powerless, worthless.
“…because ain’t nobody got time to pick all that cotton.”
Spoken by an 18-year-old white male giving a presentation about the 13th Amendment. The class laughed.
“You’re so white.”
