What is the single most blatantly sexist act/behavior that you have ever witnessed, either anti-female or anti-male?
Thanks.
I knew a guy who was a Foreman for a construction company who flat out said that he would never hire a woman under any circumstances since she would distract the men. It didn’t matter how qualified she was the mere presence of a female was apparently too much for his crew.
A few years back in high school I was within earshot of a doozy.
I am sitting in my desk and to the right of me is another row of desks. There is an attractive girl directly to my right and a ugly brute of a guy in front of her and the ugly brutes friend behind the poor girl.
They are acquaintances or some such and he was always being a general creep, “playfully” touching and tickling her during downtime in the class. It was disgusting.
One day during some down time of course, she stands up and adjusts her clothes or something and the scumbag in front of her compliments her nice hourglass figure. She asks why the hourglass part matters. He informs her that girls are supposed to have an hour glass figure and cited men and women’s magazines as his so reliable source of information.
I remember this day well and every time I do remember it, I wish I had told him to shut his sexist trap. The rest of the class was all engaged with their own neighboring students, so I doubt anyone besides the four us heard what he said. So it would have been a real treat for me to say over the background noise “You sexist fuck!”
Grrrr. :mad:
That’s about as sexist as complementing a man on his broad shoulders 
.
I’ve seen a lot of underhanded sexism, and I’ve heard plenty of “girls should have their heads cut off” from elementary school boys, but I think the one thing that shocked me with its backwards-ness was something that happened in 05. I was at school and a librarian – who was young and female – was looking for someone to help move tables and chairs. I offered, and she frowned. “Your mother wouldn’t want to know her daughter was moving furniture.” “Oh, she wouldn’t care!” I said, but inside I was thinking, um, my mother makes me move furniture all the time.
And telling him that men are supposed to have broad shoulders? A percentage of men do have broad shoulders, but a male is not any less of a man for not having them. Nor is any woman supposed to have any kind of shape.
We all have our own unique shapes and no fashion magazine is going to tell me how I or my girlfriends are supposed to look.
Surreal, I dont know if this is the single most striking sexist example I have ever seen or heard, but it certainly gave me pause.
Just this past week a judge here in Utah (rural Utah, not Salt Lake City) was sentencing a female teacher who had earlier pled guilty to having sex with one of her teenage male students. (I wish I could link this story, but am not sure how to do it)
The judge actually said in court (as he was sending her to jail for 60 days) that if this was a case of a male teacher with a female student victim, that the (hypothetical) male teacher would be going to prison for many years…
This dosent really shock me (that is, the judges’ actual attitude itself, as I think this kind of thinking is common----i.e. underage male student with female teacher=one damn lucky kid) but was blown away that the judge publically admitted that he would be so much severe on a male defendant guilty of the same crime.
(I was going to start a thread last week when I first read this, but your thread was the push I needed.)
Am I off base in thinking that this judge was blatently, openly sexist?
Nope. Totally with you there.
The company I was working for had gotten a contract to make wiring harnesses. This was something new for us and required a lot of sitting at a bench crimping terminals onto tiny little wires. We (young guys) were struggling through the first run. The VP comes out, watches us working for a few minutes and says “We’re going to get some women to do this, it’s too tedious for men to do.” Even in 1982 it seemed pretty sexist to me. That’s exactly what they did, too.
My uncle, a judge, held a female lawyer in contempt because she came into his courtroom wearing a pantsuit.
I have a friend overseas who went to work in an all-male machine shop and for months a group of the employees went to great lengths to viciously harass her. A favorite method of her tormenters was to hang a pair of slashed up panties in her locker with the crotch stained with something that resembled blood. When the threats escalated, she turned all the panties over to the police; the substance was blood. (Presumably from an animal of some sort, but disgusting in any case.) Eventually she won a substantial settlement from the company because they didn’t do anything to end the harassment, her foes were also fired. She still works there now, in a managerial role.
Yep, it was, and highly damaging too, IMO. But we’ve had this discussion here about a zillion times, and there are always a bunch of vocal people saying the kid lucked out.
Just last weekend, I spent the weekend with my extended family (19 in all) in a chalet. My mother was in charge of one of the dinners. Prior to serving, she announced, “We’re short on breadsticks, so the girls can have one and the boys can have two.”
:eek:
About ten years ago, I spent a couple months working in a horse trailer factory. My aunt and I were both starting there at the same time, and on the morning of our first day, before we were handed over to the trainer, the plant manager sat us down in his office and gave us a very lengthy speech concerning appropriate undergarments, the necessity of wearing pants instead of short shorts and miniskirts, and that we were not to flirt with our male coworkers. All of which is fairly good advice, of course, but rather inappropriate when delivered in a condescending, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, “now you girls behave yourselves, and make sure you wear panties” (he totally said panties and called us “girls”) sort of fashion.
Then he followed that up with a tirade concerning a former employee who sued the company because of sexual harassment (and won, by the way), then explained that that’s why he had to tell us this stuff, so us “girls” knew how to conduct ourselves in a factory full of men.
So, that’s like, double sexism. Insulting to both men AND women. Pretty impressive.
Way back in the early 70s I worked for a guy who was a total jerk, including being a sexist pig. He would have prostitutes come in and have sex with him in his office. Once, he invited me to join them; I pointed out that she wasn’t my preferred gender, but that he was. He never made that offer again.
Anyway . . .
His secretary quit, so he hired his girlfriend to replace her. This was when miniskirts were popular. He had her come to work in a miniskirt and no underwear. He had her sit on a chair with a transparent seat, and a mirrored area on the floor, under her seat.
His girlfriend actually agreed to all this.
SWMBO worked for a company for a long time before they were bought out. It was a friendly group, the guys teased the girls, the girls teased the guys, nobody thought anything about it. There was one female bookkeeper who quit after a year and filed an EEOC complaint against them.
Her charge: she was the only one on the workforce who was not being sexually harassed. :eek:
What the hell is “sexist” about that?? Most men weigh a lot more than women. My wife weighs half what I do, and therefore eats about half as many calories. If there are three of anything, she gives me 2 and eats 1. We’re both at fit and healthy weights too.
Actually, in my male, chivalrous, hunter/gatherer provider colored prejudice and way of thinking I would have probably done just the reverse and stipulated 2 breadsticks for the girls and only one for the boys… boys need to develop the discipline to go without or place other needs before their own to become good fathers… but I guess somebody would call me sexist for that as well.
Sexism throughout history and even around the globe today is manifested in women being devalued and men and boys being fed first and fully, even when the caloric needs of developing children are the same. This certainly does not be the case with you and your wife, but I think PunditLisa is expressing her belief that her mother was carrying out that traditional behavior. “The ‘boys’ eat first.” *and best… because they’re more important than we girls. * Not literally first, not literally best, but favored. The italicized bit is unspoken most of the time one would hope, at least in Western nations, although as a child of a poor family, it is still very much an issue. In undeveloped countries, girl children actual die in favor of boy children.
Another thing that’s sexist about it is the assumption that women should always be smaller than their husbands. To a 6’ tall woman with a large frame, that’s going to be a pretty annoying assumption. A big clue that something is -ist is if it follows the pattern “Most A’s are more blank than B’s” therefore we will assume that “all A’s are more blank than B’s.”
I haven’t actually seen this, but it’s been in all the local papers.
There have been a lot of allegations of corruption with the local school board and administration, centered around Steve Raucci, who is now facing arson and terrorist charges for planting an incendiary device at the homes of other employees who didn’t follow his orders. Raucci left a trail of slime wherever he went, covered by the school board because he got out the vote for them.
The most sexist part of this was this memo. It was a letter hiring a women for his department and here are some highlights:
“Take time every day to keep your appearance pleasing to your supervisor.”
“Being attractive, sensitive and classy with a touch of sexiness are crucial to the position”
And the piece de resistance:
“Always remember that your supervisor (Raucci) is a man first and a supervisor second and he should be treated as such in that sequence.”
This wasn’t old time-- the memo was written just over a year ago.
The district is facing a massive sexual harassment suit over this and word has it there will be others now that Raucci is in jail and unable to burn down people’s houses.