I once applied for a job to replace the outgoing member of a small all-female professional group. The head of the group did her best to be “honest” about the downsides of the job to a somewhat ridiculous degree (gotta say, the prospect of moving into a city with the biggest nuclear waste reprocessing plant in the nation and being part of an ongoing feud with hospital administration was appealing). I got the distinct impression that an XX candidate would’ve received a different pitch.
When I was in high school I worked as a cashier at a (now defunct) grocery store.
We got a male manager and he had a meeting with all us female cashiers about how hard it was to manage womenfolk, because we just didn’t get along.
I’ve had a a chief engineer at a work meeting start to go off about how women didn’t understand things. All the women in the room turned on him and he slunk back under his rock pretty quickly.
Both my sex and my age got me laid off from a systems analyst job. I had a fantastic resume, and was looked on very favorably by several potential employers until I came for the interview and they realized that not only am I female, but over 50.
Fortunately, there are age discrimination laws, and when my lawyer politely reminded my former employer that I was the oldest and the ONLY female in the department, and that I had excellent employee reviews for almost a decade, they chose to substantially improve the severance package.
Daily. In my department, four of us have the same role. I’m second in seniority; another woman is first in seniority.
We women are continually asked to do things outside of our job scope, such as planning parties and outings, or booking conference rooms for our boss. None of my male coworkers are ever asked to do this. Even if I’m swamped, and my male coworkers are (literally) browsing the internet, my boss will ask either me or my female coworker.
Most of us also play the lottery in an office pool. The male coworkers will come by and plop their $2 onto either my desk or my (female) coworker’s desk. The mean apparently think it’s beneath them to walk it up to the organizer.
I said something to my boss the other day and he asked me why I was so grumpy.
When I graduated from college way back in the 70’s I inquired about a high-visibility job and was told by the manager, “Frankly, we’re looking for a woman.”
FWIW, my former college TA was also in the job market. I called her and told her about the opening, they hired her and everything worked out for everyone.
I think one of the most painful moments for me was when I accompanied my first husband (he of the poor health) to a new doctor. The doctor said that I was responsible for my husband’s eating habits and she blamed me because he was a picky eater who would rather eat junk food than vegetables. “It’s your job to make him eat right and cook what he’ll want to eat.”
Steve told her that he actually did most of the cooking (he did at that point) and she obviously didn’t believe him. I ended up leaving the room and she told him that she disapproved of me.
That feeling has never left me.
So while most of what I’ve encountered is minor, and just makes me think less of the person doing it, this was an example of something that made me think less of myself. I felt guilty and ashamed and judged.
You have failed to notice that large numbers of men have been enacting laws all over the US in a bizarre effort to control women’s uteruses. They are apparently intended to force women to become pregnant and get STDs and develop preventable cancers? That a woman in the US has been imprisoned for having an abortion, which she has a legal right to? That in the state I live in, it’s ok to force women to undergo unnecessary and life-threatening anesthesia during an abortion? All of these laws were enacted by men oddly interested in women’s health. I contacted every single Utah senator and representative while they were deliberating the forcing women to undergo anesthesia law and the few women lawmakers were just as appalled as I about it but the universal male response was “you bitch how dare you speak up” but often in much worse language than that. The “few women” part gives you a hint. My government does not represent me.
Women are basically slaves in certain parts of the world and many men in all parts of the world seem to think they still are and should be treated as such. AKA a certain political party and a lot of religions.
I’m not even getting into rape kit thing.
I was molested by two stepfathers. In the first case, he confessed, went to prison and all was right with the world. In the second case I was a 17 year old legally emancipated minor when the disclosure happened, I was blamed and turned into a social pariah and he suffered zero consequences and is probably happily molesting some other young teen as we speak. While abuse is a terrible thing that happens to both girls and boys, the response to my abuse in the latter case was absolutely grounded in society’s inherent mistrust in the experiences of women. And while the abuse itself was damaging, it was society’s response to the abuse that really fucked me up. It was being put on trial by my loved ones for the most humiliating experience of my life. I try to be fair about the real suffering men go through as a result of bullshit heteronormative gender standards, but I honestly don’t think many men have a fucking clue how demoralizing it can be to be a woman, nor do they seem to care.
I honestly didn’t think about sexism much until I started using the internet on a regular basis. I am appalled by what people apparently feel free to say when they are anonymous. I am more appalled that they don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with it. I have never in my life seen more consistently terrible attitudes toward women than on the Straight Dope. It’s a minority of folks but it’s so casual and virulent it can really set the tone for the board, and ruin my day.
It really goes to show how the internet can distort things, though. I hang out with men a lot, and I recently joined this writer’s group and have become close with a lot of older men. Sometimes they say things that are ignorant as fuck, but I tell them, ‘‘That’s ignorant as fuck,’’ and they appreciate being told. There is an emotional honesty and intimacy there that can’t happen on a message board. One of my favorite friends spent the evening tonight needling me with sexist comments even though he’s not sexist, he just likes causing trouble. He laughed that I took the bait even knowing he was doing it on purpose, I told him to go fuck himself, and all was well.
At men in general, no. Take into account that those attitudes don’t always involve the opposite sex/gender: the ingenieroooo idiot listed above was a woman; my first encounter with sexism involved a female teacher who had higher expectations/requirements for girls than boys and I’ve encountered male teachers who were the opposite; the airlines people behind those idiotic policies are highly likely to be male. But some of the specific people involved, I wouldn’t mind being able to hit them many times with a large plush baseball bat… you know, violent but not harmful?
Most of them are bad in multiple ways, like that boss I had who hated:
women,
people with Master’s degrees,
foreigners,
people from a religion different from his,
and I’m drawing a blank on what the fifth thing was, but well, the only group he didn’t seem to hate was ass-kissers. Dude would have been poison pretty much anywhere.
One of the bosses told me he thought I had a problem with men. I told him no, I have no problem with men, it’s the imitations I can’t stand.
That is how I viewed my asshole bosses, they weren’t men, they were little piss ass punks, and I had absolutely no respect for them. Real men aren’t threatened by women.
I will admit I smiled a little when I read the assholes’ obituaries.
I also cringe when I see women who are so sensitive to sexism they see it where none exists. I worked with a woman that was so bad that the men at work were literally afraid to say anything beyond good morning to her. One day she came in a little dressed up and one of the nicest, most non-sexist guys in the department told her she looked nice and she went off on him. If a man complimented her work she took that as meaning he was surprised a woman could get the job done. She also made the male programmer who worked with her get her coffee, run her errands, etc. He was a nice guy and rolled with it, but she treated him like dirt.
Everybody was happy when she quit.
I’m so sorry for that. And a similar thing happened with Jaceson, both with female doctors of various sorts, who gave dissenting opinions about his treatment like I could control his behavior. It hurt my feelings, but eventually, I chalked it up to one of them being at a loss for anything that would help, and the other for having recently lost her husband as well.
There’s only so much we can do in situations like ours. I hope you’ve put all that behind you now and understand that in no way was any of that your fault, certainly not because it was your responsibility as the woman. Gah.
Nope, haven’t missed any of it, as I keep up with current events. I just see those things as separate from being personally victimized, which I mostly don’t ever feel. But thanks for the assumption.
Working in retail and fast food the males were always picked out to do the dirty work. taking out the trash, collecting shopping carts, cleaning the grill. I was always told the same thing about why I was always assigned these tasks when there were plenty of other staff with the same job description and training who never were asked to do them once. I was told, “You’re a guy.”
I know you mean to leave this out, but this comment suggests opposition to rape-kit testing. How else do you think the forensic evidence would be gathered for prosecution purposes? (Unless you mean some law requiring mandatory rape-kit testing whether the victim wants it or not.)
(Unless you mean some law requiring mandatory rape-kit testing whether the victim wants it or not.)