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After years of not getting along with women, I both despise sexism, and at once am sexist.
Here I am, a female, trying my best to break all of the sterotypes: I'm a student of Mathematics, I'm athletic, I swear like a sailor, I drink beer, and I even wear men's deodorant (although, to be fair, I had no idea it was men's deodorant until yesterday, when I noticed the label read "Long-lasting odour control with the clean, masculine scent"). I hate being a female so much, that I cringe when people refer to me with the words "she" or "her".
I am regularly a victim of sexism. This year, I wanted nothing more than to play hardball. All of the teams I found, however, were legally obliged to allow women to tryout, but the coaches would clearly never let me play, regardless of my abilities. They would say things like "You'd be too much of a distraction to the men." and "Well, honey, you can tryout, but we take this game seriously; it's not at all like women's softball.". So here I am, for the first year of my life, not playing a single game all because I have two X chromosomes.
My having a vagina, has nothing to do with my capabilities, but it does have something to do with my upbringing. It means, that when I walk into a room, people are going to hold the door for me, get me a chair, offer to open my beer for me, and then avoid swearing or lewd conversation. Does that mean that when a man walks in, I should do my best to fart to make him feel at home?
Yet I treat women exactly as I hate to be treated. If I'm going to a party, and I know there are going to be females there, I already expect less of them. I expect them to be boring, without humour, stupid, unmotivated, etc. I do acknowledge that I should be judging these women as individuals, because it doesn't make sense to say "women are intrinsically like this", but for some reason, I just don't.
The saddest part is, the vast majority of the females I've met, are exactly as the stereotypes go; I suppose, after, that's why the stereotypes exist in the first place. The women I know gossip tremendously, hold grudges, don't get jokes, have no aspirations, and most importantly, they relish it.
Perhaps, when women stop acting like victims, I'll stop treating them like victims. In the meantime, don't treat me like a victim!!!
2 comments:
Hi there! Stumbled onto your blog ...
If I'm going to a party, and I know there are going to be females there, I already expect less of them. I expect them to be boring, without humour, stupid, unmotivated, etc.
A couple of questions :
(a) Is that a statistical expectation? If so, is it based on a posteriori probabilities?
(b) "I expect less of them" : compared to whom? Men? Are a majority of men interesting, funny, intelligent, motivated etc.?
The saddest part is, the vast majority of the females I've met, are exactly as the stereotypes go; I suppose, after, that's why the stereotypes exist in the first place.
You might find this interesting : the study points to a link between prejudice and perception.
http://www.physorg.com/news132231278.html
On a tangential note, I personally do not believe that adjectives make much sense in the absence of a context ... for example, when can a person be labeled stupid? What is a valid measure of intelligence? And what about different types of intelligence : analytical, emotional or social?
I mention this because one specific adjective, unmotivated, reminded me of the following passage from Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman :
"Women are versatile, tough and contain within their variability all that falls within the range of normal; men are freaks of nature, fragile, fantastic, bizarre. To be male is to be a kind of idiot savant, full of queer obsessions about fetishistic activities and fantasy goals, single-minded in pursuit of arbitrary objectives, doomed to competition and injustice not merely towards females, but towards children, animals and other men. What the cliche that men know what they want and women don't know what they want really means is that women are conscious of all kinds of conditions that affect the desirability of any particular option at a particular time and in particular circumstances, while men formulate goals and pursue them in a single-minded manner. Single-mindedness is generally assumed to be better than multiple-mindedness because single-mindedness leads to success in a highly competitive world. In a competitive world that imposes higher and higher standards of achievement, failures infinitely outnumber successes as more and more is sacrificed for less and less. Single-mindedness, which blinds an individual to the costs and risks associated with any course of action, is mostly maladaptive. Single-mindedness produces hideously anti-social behaviours, from paedophile rings to waging war. If the male is doomed to competitiveness by his Y-chromosome, his hyper-fertility makes him expendable; his enemies are not the females, whose co-operation he needs to encompass his aims, but other males, all other males. The phenomenon of men aggregating themselves into hierarchies which both acknowledge and threaten the rule of the alpha male is explicable in these terms. Perhaps it is appropriate to see females as programmed to seek a way to live together rather than fight, not by enforced subservience but by the low fertility that ensures their survival."
The point is that stereotypes, to the limited extent of their meaningfulness, come attached with value judgments. In the case of gender stereotypes, these value judgments, as with 'unmotivated', are rooted in a masculine social order.
Cheers
Hello Icarus! Firstly, thanks for reading and leaving such a great comment! Secondly, sorry it took me so long to respond... I kinda suck at this "upkeep" thing.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that my expectations and findings are nearly all a posteriori. I've thought a great deal about my article, and I offer these reasonings:
1) My personality predisposes me to be more like males than females. Obviously there are all sorts of exceptions, but I am generally a rowdy, unreserved, punk, and that definitely puts me on the testosterone-ruled side of things.
2) I don't just think less of women, I simply notice I think less of them. This is in regards to my disappointment of women meeting the stereotypes set for them. You're right to point this out: it's really not women I'm disappointed with, but humankind in general. I am truly a misanthrope through and through, and I'm more than tired of meeting sheepish people, who want nothing more than to conform for comfort's sake; they have no interests, no hobbies, and worse yet, feel this awful need to point out to others (like myself, perhaps?) that they're weird, strange, crazy, etc. Yes, it's certainly a personal issue. In hindsight, throughout grade school and high school, I always fit in with a few males (although few and far between) and then females not only hated me, but felt the need to tell me so, and make my life miserable as they picked fights, slung mud, gossiped, and alienated me. So I really feel that I have unreasonable expectations of all people, and am simply reserving my disappoinment for women, due to personal experiences that cause me to keep a look-out on their behaviour.
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