Sexism: Now Served Daily

Before you are even born choices are made for you because of your gender.  Girls wear pink and boys wear blue.  Boys play with toy cars and girls play with baby dolls.  Boys wear camo pants and girls wear dresses.  These expectations continue on throughout the rest of our lives influencing how we talk, dress, act, and sit.  More than that it affects our academic experiences, our careers, and even where we chose to live.  I can even understand it all, to a point, we like our categories; we like being able to say that this thing goes in this box and that thing goes in that box.  Putting people “where they belong” makes us feel in control and that we have a better grip on the world around us.  The problem is that we allow these boxes to become so constrained that we don’t allow people to breathe, to freely express themselves as they see fit.  These crippling boxes also allow us to create hierarchical status, men are supposed to be brave, strong, and competitive and all of these qualities are seen as good and strong.  Well, that is until a woman dons one of these mantels and she is then seen as crude, rude, and bitchy.  She is not in her “appropriate” box and therefore must be punished in some way.  These boxes are the linchpins for sexism within our society; they are the explanation for the comments, the gestures, and the discrimination.  If we let people just be people without shoving them into boxes that measure their “womanliness” or “manliness” then we wouldn’t have the power structure to enforce one group’s supposed superiority allowing a sexist society.

Sexism is an everyday pervasive occurrence, occasionally the instances are blatant, but more often than not they are so ingrained into our day to day lives that we don’t even realize that they are happening.  I had one class that asked us to write down a time when we experienced a sexist act and they just came pouring out.  Women were made to feel powerless, told to be silent, and made to feel that they were stupid.  It is heartbreaking to know the intensity with which women are told that they are lesser and are meant to be that way.  I recently found a website called everydaysexism that shows how every woman regardless of race, class, or religion share a similar experience simply because they are women.

What sexist things have happened to you?  Or to friends of yours?  What’s do you think the best way to combat these acts are?  Let me know in the comments!