power, privilege, and everyday life.
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1323 posts tagged gender
At a very loud party, I spell a word with the phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie,…) A guy says: “Wow, was your dad a pilot?” I’m a woman engineer, with an amateur radio license :) Made me feel frustrated, like my achievements and abilities were written off.
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?
“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.
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.
“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.
A “dress for success” bulletin board in my dorm suggests clothing for a professional appearance. Pantyhose are listed for women, specified as being “Natural, beige or tan.” Implying only beige or tan are “natural” skin colors for women.
I am sickened by the fact that I feel an automatic surge of gratitude when I have to deal with a sexist. I am not a conventionally beautiful woman, nor a conventionally feminine one. I am overweight, don’t wear makeup, keep my hair short, and prefer gender neutral clothing like jeans and baggy tee-shirts, but none of that makes me any less of a woman. It feels sometimes like the people who belittle me for being female are the only ones who acknowledge that I’m female at all.
I work at a restaurant, and while my (male) boss thanks all of us by saying “thanks kid,” the women also get “thanks hun” and “thanks dear.” Dude, I’m not your daughter or your girlfriend. You can just say thank you or compliment my good work.
One of my anthropology professors claimed that science had proven that the #1 thing women look for in a man is “resource gathering potential” (i.e. ability to make money) and then said, “Isn’t that right ladies? I know you’re all dating fellow undergrads!”
Because not only are we all dating, but all of our partners are male undergrads right? “
I was working on a group project with three other women. When I mentioned offhandedly that I didn’t want children, one of them turned to me and said, “you wouldn’t give one to your husband if he wanted one?!” in this horrified voice.
I am not straight, and do not ever plan on getting married.
“Hey ladies - do you want to be successful at work? Here’s the secret - marry a man who is twenty years older than you!”
The news.
At the restaurant where I work, a man comes in and kisses my hand (I thought he was going to shake it) and then keeps telling me things like, “I’ve got just what you need” and “I’d kill for something like that” and saying we were going to hook up, and that he would be back to check on me. He tries to touch my hands and arms. The other people he is with laugh.
Made me feel so uncomfortable I went to the bathroom through the kitchen so he wouldn’t see that I was going anywhere alone. Made me feel powerless as a woman, and made me consider changing the way I dress to avoid attention from men.
At a restaurant, the waiter comes over multiple times and asks the one man, “How is everything, sir?” seemingly ignoring the women at the table. The other women and I are left answering a question that hasn’t been directed to us, because we think the food is great. The waiter hands the bill to the man when we are done.
My boyfriend is not really a gamer, but after watching me fool around on my DS he decided to buy one as well. We went to Game Stop together and the male employee refused to acknowledge me the entire time we were there despite the fact that, again, I was the knowledgeable one in this scenario. I guess having boobs excludes me from knowing anything about games.
