It is blog against sexism day
Why must we blog against sexism you say?
The fact that when I walked into a classroom to give a presentation
wearing a tee shirt and jeans and I am told afterwards by some lame ass pig
that my presentation was probably good but he “couldn’t stop looking
at my hair”, and he suggests that maybe next time I should “wear it pulled back and wear a baggy sweatshirt”.
is why.
Where does sexism begin?
At the beginning of course
It starts with the parents.
With the pink and the blue.
With the dolls and the trucks.
With the sports and the ballet dancing.
It starts when some girl’s mother tells her that she will find her knight in shining armor instead of telling her she is her own knight in shining armor.
It starts when the little girl’s father tells her she will find a man to take care of her, or when the little boy’s fathers tells him he is expected to find a nice girl settle down and take care of it all.
It starts when you don’t teach your sons to cook, clean the bathroom or make them watch their little brothers and sisters, and when you buy five year olds make-up.
It starts when you blame unacceptable actions of your children on the behavior of others. When one alludes to the fact that a girl is somehow responsible for the sexual misconduct of a boy by virtue of what she drinks or what she wears. It starts when you do not teach your sons that no means no, that the way people dress and the condition they are in has no bearing on the situation.
It starts when you do not teach your sons that they are to respect themselves and others and are therefore expected to exert self control in all situations or it is their fault.
It starts when you teach them to be little girls and little boys before you teach them to be little human beings.
The real question is how to make it go away.
You tell me.
Please check out all the blogs posting for Blog Against Sexism.
Its down to me
The difference in the clothes she wears
Down to me, the change has come,
She’s under my thumb
Under my thumb
The squirmin dog who’s just had her day
Under my thumb
A girl who has just changed her ways
Its down to me, yes it is
The way she does just what she’s told
Down to me, the change has come
She’s under my thumb
” It starts when you teach them to be little girls and little boys before you teach them to be little human beings.”
This is true.
I will never look at that song the same way, you have totally wrecked it for me.
I guess you found the basic question — it’s the same question posed on a larger scale in “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad. When we cross the line and start not to respect others, it all breaks down. There’s a lot to that, learning to respect oneself, before you can respect others. So much of what we see is self-hate turned outwards.
It breaks down because we allow stereotypes even when not aware.
What’s calling a two year old boy “little man” but a stereotype?
The blame is still really put back on girls and women
Feminists would argue that letting a two year old girl play with a Barbie is letting the stereotype flourish
No, a mother or other adult should play with the girl and the Barbie. It’s an almost perfect way of teaching about stereotypes.
Girls and boys are inherently attracted to dolls as dolls enable role playing – teach kids how to play properly and encourage boys to play with the Barbie dolls too
Don’t think of colors as gender specific
It wasn’t until my teens when I lived in Mexico that I began to like colors, specifically pink. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to wear pink. Fuchsia suits can be very empowering – when I was job hunting, I always wore mine to the second or third interview.
It made people think that I was bold, confident and many other things I might or might not have been
I’m going to add my blog, as in my blogging about my sex life when young, I’m truly not ashamed and wish more women my age would as I didn’t exist in a vacuum
I had to work for lower pay than boys because they needed the money more than girls because of dates — in my world girls paid their own way then so that argument was absurd
It wasn’t fun to be chased around an empty office because my boss thought I should put out for him. Those kinds of things happened regularly and I’m glad don’t anymore
Its more subtle now in the workplace but still happens
We can’t respect others until we respect ourselves and teach children to
I am quite thankful that I was taught to take care of myself, to cook, to clean, to sew on a button, and I would really rather do those things for myself. I don’t need someone to do my laundry so I can get on with my role of “being a man” (which seems to include being vulger, drunk, and violent).
If I can’t have an equal partner, I’d rather just stay single.
I think when little girls are told to look for knights in shining armor, lying starts too.
Mama’s don’t let your babies grow-up to be .….….….
sexist.
There will always be “lame ass pigs”.
a guy would never do the same thing to a guy,if a man was giving a presentation, and something about his hair or his clothing caught another mans eye and distracted him he would never mention it to the other guy, and most women wouldn’t give such disrespect to a guy. There is a difference in what some males think they have the right to do or say and what women take as their right.
I have saved my laundry for three month periods of time , driven six hundred miles home with dirty laundry in my car, and sometimes my mother even washes it, but only because it takes up too much room in the laundry room and she wants it off the floor.
Don’t lump us all in the same basket.
I am with the other guy, I will never listen to that Rolling Stone song without thinking twice.
My wife had a some significant issues when she left law school and started to look for her original employment. After going through what she went through no one can ever tell me that sexism doesn’t exist, it does.
Good post, brief and to the point.
How to make it go away?
Stop pretending it doesn’t exist.
We are different, yet we are the same.
You, me, men, women.
We’re all human and that is a good place to start.
Cooper, I made a post in honor of blog against sexism day.
I’m not you, will never be you but I agree with you and did the best i could.
I had some ideas kicking around in my head that never materialized to a full post.
The way I see it when you assess who exactly is working to abolish sexism, you’re looking at Feminism, working for women’s rights, and Masculism (minus the ones who are basically chauvinists with a pedigree), working for men’s rights (father’s rights, etc…). The fact is it seems that even in trying to abolish sexism we’re being adversarial; separating ourselves, causing cycles of blowback and in some cases making the problem worse through gender incrimination.
We as a society need to cast aside the assumption of gender as an absolute either/or binary quality as well as the assumption of the roles that go with it. And that attitude needs to begin with the people who are pushing for equality.
Fuck spite
Fuck hatred
Fuck sexism
Or something.
I don’t know if you can entirely rid the world of sexism as much as point out when it is being employed. Like any individual’s attitudes, it takes constant repetition and immersement to make them realize that their attitudes are inherently biased. If one receives constant reinforcement that sexist attitudes will be tolerated, then one day of brow-beating will not be successful in countering this philosophy. It is only through repeated instances where a sizable majority take offense and voice their concern that progress will be made for that individual.
It’s like paper training, basically. You’re going to have fight hard to correct the behavior in the beginning, but it should get easier as the process wears on.
To All:
My response time is lagging because I have been finishing up papers and packing to head out for a long important job interview Saturday, and a week and a half worth of Grad school interviews and a couple little extraneous job interviews.
You are all very smart and very wise and I know that there are times when you just wish I would shut up and talk about my family, my love life and write bad poetry.Well maybe not write bad poetry but the rest.
I do think of other things. It is just that sometimes it is all going around so fast in my head that I can’t stop it.
Thanks for keepin on keepin on and I will be traveling a bit after tomorrow evening but I will be at your blogs as often as I can.
The bottom line for me starts with treating people like human beings, the differences that are there will then be natural an not constructed by the society in which we live.
Later and sorry I did not do each comment individually this time.
Join the crowd.
That’s a little sick but it doesn’t shock me, I’m not female though.
It does bring date rape drug to mind.