Actually, you’re way wrong there. The men that I work with are all treated like buddies by my boss, and he never questions anything they do. They all think he’s wonderful. Yet me and 3 other girls I work with feel like a sack of shit because of the way he talks down to us…coincidence? I don’t think so.
And how you said women with jobs need men as a safety net? Also wrong. I live with my fiance and I’m the breadwinner. I have a full-time job, he has part time. I was the one that got us our apartment. I manage our finances. His contribution is some help with the housework and the money he makes goes towards the nice things in life: dinner out, movies, music, etc. (Every cent I make goes to rent, bills, food, medicine). My job isn’t a bowl of cherries but I like some aspects of it and I stick with it because we need it to survive. I stray pretty far outside of your concepts of females in the workforce, and I think there are a lot more women who do, too. So be careful before you make generalizations.
“…It may just be because it’s work and that’s what bosses do - act like assholes. If you are upset that he isn’t fawning over you like some drunk frat guy at a kegger, …” msmith
You haven’t had much workforce experience have you?
Wow. To think that I’ve been deleting all the subtle ironic social commentaries that show up in my inbox every day. I thought they were just ads for penis enlargement pills and lists of lawyer jokes, but now I realize they were actually carefully worded critiques on the sociological roles that gender and career play in our society. Boy, is my face red!
I was job hunting for a year before I finally got the job I have now. Full-time with enough pay to live on is very hard to find right now, at least where I live.
I look for better options all the time. So far, I’ve seen nothing but McJobs or work-from-home-folding-envelopes jobs posted. It’s not easy.
a.) Your previous “I was just jokin’” slams against various groups are what people are reacting to, not necessarily just THIS OP’s subject matter.
b.) The OP didn’t contain “jokes” or “just kiddings” of any sort. They were merely thinly disguised insults that you were attempting to pass off as jokes. And they simply weren’t funny. At all. And the “not funniness” of them wasn’t caused just because of the insulting nature.
In fact, the insulting nature was the least of the reasons they weren’t funny. Most of the reason they aren’t funny is because they aren’t clever, they contained no good plays on words, or sense of surprise (as another poster mentioned), or originality, and most of all, a sense of fun and camaraderie with one’s audience.
[Simon Cowell voice on] In all, a dysmal performance, TOTally lacking in creativity. What I would expect from a second grade play, WRITTEN by a second grader. I give it a -3 on a scale of 1-10 [SCV off]
I think she may have read (or possibly ingested whole) “The Myth of Male Power” and has now become a convert to men’s lib or “gender empowerment” (or whatever the hell that nutball author called it).
Basically a “backlash” book claiming wrongs done to men throughout history via society’s “brainwashing” and 'forcing" men (by withholding our beauty and sexual power) to be warriors on both the battlefield and on the workforce front.
Because God knows the poor helpless things have no egos or minds of their own and couldn’t POSSIBLY have come up with evils like football and rock stardom on their own.
OH no, it’s not for GLORY, power, fame or MONEY that they do these things. Those things are merely means for them to get at what we’re keeping from them (our beauty and sexual gifts), so that we CAN “use” them as unpaid protectors and providers etc, and really it’s WOMEN’S fault that society, and men are the way they are now.
Women never Reaaaallly were mistreated or held back, they were being waited on, and protected and put on a pedestal.
Sorry I digress, the “Myth of Male Power” (and followers of the movement which spawned that “book” and others like it), are basically using the same nutso format as the feminazi lunatic fringe and thinking that they’re being original and worse, effective at helping ease the problems in the gender wars.
That concept, and ones like that which the OP displayed DON’T help.
As far as I know, I’ve never known ANYONE who went to college looking for a husband. Here are some reasons:
(n.b. these reasons are wholly based on the people I know. YMMV):
–Why would you look for a husband in college? Nobody gets married until at least their mid-twenties, and usually later. I only knew a very few girls that were engaged by the end of their senior year. In a couple of cases, they were looked at as being lucky to have found a great match so early in life. In most cases, they were looked upon with a bit of pity because it was assumed that they settled for the first guy that proposed to them because they were scared of being alone. Quite a few girls did marry guys that they had met in college. Quite often it was someone that they hadn’t dated in college, or even knew well, but got to know after college because they were in the same city. If it was someone that they had dated in college, they dated for a few years more before they got engaged. Everyone know that a guy that seems like Prince Charming in the cloisters of the university can seem like a real lout in the real world.
–Related to the above–if you want to get hitched, college age guys aren’t a very good population to target. How many guys want to “settle down” at 21?
–Why would you go through all the pain and suffering required to get a degree from Carnegie Mellon if all you wanted to do was find a husband? Zoinks.
–Most importantly: College age women have seen plenty of older women put into the position of having to earn a living. They know from life experience that you can marry a rich guy and think you’re set for life, only to have the guy divorce you and leave you penniless. Or become penniless himself. Of die. Or become abusive, causing you to have to leave.
When you say that women like to have men to fall back on in case their jobs don’t work out, I think you have it backwards. Women like to have careers in case the MEN don’t work out!
Again, this idea seems to be based on your circle. In mine, there are many men who have significantly less income than their wives. Sometimes it’s because they’re in a “creative” field with an uncertain income while the wife is a banker or something. Sometimes it’s just because he happens to earn less at his job.
If your girlfriend expects you to maintain her in a lifestyle that exceeds what she can provide for herself, that only speaks to your girlfriends motives and values. You have made comments like this before about your girlfriend and/or friends’ girlfriends and wives. I assure you, there are countless women out there who are not like this. Unfortunately for you, these women come with features that you probably would not like. And they probably wouldn’t like you. So, unless you drastically change yourself, it’s unlikely that you’ll find a women to be your sugar-momma.
If you wanted to discuss some nuance of how sexism functions subtly, then you should have constructed a MUCH clearer OP and put it in a forum devoted to such discussion. Again, since you are a poster known for being misogynist, I think we can be forgiven for assuming that your OP was a rant against the women that it described.
We did grasp the underlying message. It’s just not the one you wished to send.
[hijack]Our A/C recently broke. I called several places to get a replacement A/C. I’m a woman. Every fucking time I called one of these A/C places, I was asked by the male service technician if “the man of the family” or “my husband” was around for the A/C guy to talk to about this, as though, because I am female, I couldn’t possibly handle it myself. So I decided to do a small experiment. I handed the phone over to my husband in a couple of cases, asking him to make the appointment because I was more than a little disgusted. As for the other two, I made the appointment for these guys to come over to give me a quote myself. Guess which guys failed to show up? Yep, the ones I made the appointment with. They didn’t bother calling me - they just didn’t bother showing up. The other two, the ones my husband made appointments with, showed up exactly when they said they would, one even a little early (and, of course, when I answered the door he asked to speak with the man in the family, but I figured that was OK because it was my husband he made the appointment with anyway).
Is it possible that the two A/C technicians didn’t show up just because they’re assholes and not just because I’m female? Yes, quite possible. However, I asked a few of my female friends about this, and they told me that they usually just had their husbands, and if they weren’t married a male friend, handle it, because they couldn’t trust that these guys would actually show up and take them seriously if they called because they’re female and after a while, it’s tiring to deal with having people blow you off, possibly just because of your sex. I think that’s totally shitty. And that people who claim that sexism is dead are kidding themselves.[/hijack]
Reasonable people whose bosses are assholes and who have no chance of advancement at their current job tend to look for another one.
As for the rest of the straw-man crap being thrown at me, I’m not answering it. Everyone here already knows I don’t buy into the idea that women are the prepetual victims of the all-powerful patriarchy, and apparently around here, that’s an unwelcome viewpoint.
There are still sexist people in this world, and those people come from both sexes.
And what the hell is wrong with becoming an elementary school teacher? I realize in msmithworld people only people who highly-paid and “hip” deserve to breathe, but here on Planet Earth elementary school teachers are providing a valuable service to society. It’s hardly a waste of a college education.
I agree that reasonable people will look for a different job if they have no chance of advancement in their current one and their bosses are assholes.
Strong people without defeatest attitudes however, will work to get that boss booted from the position of authority he obviously doesn’t deserve.
I find it odd that you don’t appear to even consider this an option and instead look to the victim of the obvious sexism here to “run away” from the problem. Or, in your case, pretend it doesn’t exist.
Why is it that the asshole boss voluntarily (yeah right) or being forced to change his ways isn’t even an option for you? How come the only “solution” you espouse is for the woman to just “get another job.”
Racist boss? Well, look for another job! Being sexually harassed? Look for another job! Call them strawmen all you want, they’re entirely reasonable comparisons.
No one has claimed women are “perpetual victims”. You’re making an unreasonably large leap from “sexism exists” to “women are perpetual victims of the all powerful patriarchy.”
Although, since you’re apparently refusing to discuss your position and are seemingly hell-bent on tossing out a few drive-bys (that you know damn well will get a reaction) followed up with little to no explanation but merely a cop-out (wah wah, my viewpoint isn’t popular so I’m just gonna fly around the thread like a little gnat popping off random little comments that I won’t really even defend) it appears as if I’m wasting my keystrokes.
Man, now you’re making me regret defending you in some past threads. Dammit.
For one, I think it’s impossible to force someone else’s attitude to change. For another, unless there’s some kind of blatant violation of anti-discrimination laws, I also think it would take far, far more effort to get that one boss fired than it would to find another job. Another is that I see looking for another job as a way to advance, and changing jobs has (at least for me) also meant increase in salary.
When you’ve stopped telling me what I believe or why I believe it, we can have a discussion on the rest of the topic.
catsix, the SDMB are not the Ms type boards. When we complain about sexism, we’re NOT trying to convince people that there’s this great grand conspiracy by a so-called patriarchy that is intent on keeping women down and they’ll never get free of it no matter what, so we might as well just wallow in our victimhood.
Sometimes it is better to cut one’s losses and run. Other times, it’s better to stay and fight. If everyone keeps running, sooner or later you’re not going to have a place to run TO.
Yes, the feminazi types are annoying. That doesn’t mean though that there isn’t sexism in our society and that one should stand up against it.
If I refuse to be a victim, I’m NOT going to run, I’m going to stay and fight.
Oh, you mean the single time the word was used in Green Bean’s explanation of why she thought the list of jokes wasn’t funny?
There’s a difference between saying there is a “Patriachy” which is actively oppressing all women and saying our society is partriachal as evidenced by the difference in coverage of Viagra vs. birth control.
Moreover, even if Green Bean had said anything like that, one post by one poster does not change Guinastasia’s point – neither the board nor this thread represent an overwhelming attitude of uniform oppression and victimization of the type you describe. You’re tilting at windmills, kid.
This isn’t directed towards you personally, Guin. More of a general observation building on your post:
I’ve noticed a frequent implication that anti-male sexism is solely the province of so called feminazis - hysterical women who screech about how evil and degenerate men are, or whatever the stereotype is these days.
But that’s not the case any more than all anti-female sexism comes from fundamentalist Christian patriarchs making thunderous announcements on women’s natural subservience, or similar.
Sexism comes in both large and small doses, and if we want to combat it (and I do) we can’t just dismiss the small ones as unimportant. That, after all, is why msmith’s disgusting screed is being as criticized as it is - it was obviously intended as a joke, but that doesn’t make it okay.
Nor is it okay to joke about men being lazy slobs, or controlled by their libidos. It’s not okay to joke about men being raped (that one’s always hilarious, it seems). It’s not okay to defend violence just because it was perpetrated by a woman on a man. And it’s not okay to do any the hundreds of other little sexist words and thoughts and deeds that usually go by without comment, any more than it’s okay for overlyverbose’s A/C-repairmen or Satyricon’s boss to act the way they do.
Who in this thread has claimed that sexism doesn’t exist? I hope you’re not talking about catsix; most of her posts in this thread have been about what she considers to be sexism, so she can hardly be denying its existence ;).
Unless, of course, I’ve misunderstood her completely.
To elaborate on what Giraffe said about my post: I didn’t say anything about a patriarchy or the patriarchy. I never said or implied that there was a coherent force devoted to maintaining male power. Nor do I believe that there is an identifiable “patriarchy.”
I did say that we live in a traditionally patriarchal society–a society where males are dominant. That’s the facts, jack. The situation is slowly changing for the better, but it’s not there yet. If you believe that American society is not traditionally patriarchal, I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.
Perhaps you should go back and read the rather lengthy Pit thread regarding Rush Limbaugh’s description of feminazis, in which more than one poster stated that they believe we live in a patriarchal society and that women are still, overall, victims.
And for future reference, I am not a ‘kid’.
It’s no more or less ‘disgusting’ than jokes about men, t-shirts that crack jokes about violence toward men and boys, keychains with the same slogans, or television commercials that poke fun at men (the Dueling Banjos SUV ad).
Yes, this is exactly what I’m getting at. None of those things are acceptable. None.
That I believe it’s not OK to say men are slobby and libido driven doesn’t mean I think it is OK for the A/C repair person to ignore an appointment because the appointment maker was female.
I think all of those things are bad.
I don’t think that it is patriarchal, and I don’t think that ‘males are dominant’ purely because of the statistics of executive offices. This is a society in which women control more than half of the vote by virtue of being more than half of the population, where they control the majority of the consumer spending (which is why so many commercials are directed to them) and in which they have the same (or more, due to affirmative action programs for small businesses started by women) opportunity to start businesses or to get advanced education or to change careers for better pay, better benefits or better advancement.
It’s not about equality of outcome, it’s equality of opportunity. By and large, I believe the same opportunities exist for women as exist for men.