(no subject)
Did you read the article? I’m going to stand by some of the fundamental problems that it exposes, and leave it at that, unless there’s something specific within it that people have a problem with.
Gender discrimination isn’t a one way street. I’m not going to go into a whinefest about the disadvantages of being young, white, and male in our present incarnation of society, because it’s another path entirely, and because you can find it debated on any number of blogs and message boards across the internet. Personally, it’s something I overcome by making sure I work harder than others who share my ethnicity and gender.
I think more useful would be citing a few specific examples of where gender discrimination has affected me personally so that maybe where I’m coming from is a bit clearer.
Firstly, and least significantly in the larger picture, would probably be the sort of individual prejudices that are blatantly open. The equivalent, basically, of men who believe women aren’t able to handle (insert whatever prejudice here). For example, all through school I was highly active with the Yearbook. I won the yearbook award in Junior High, and in High School I was the only eleventh grader on the executive committee. I put in lots of extra work, and kept perfect records of sales and our finances. When it came up to applying for editor at the end of Grade 11, my only competition was a Grade Ten girl with one year of junior high experience. I though I had it pretty much locked up; I had superior qualifications, and it was a long established tradition that the editor was a Grade 12, as they have more of a vested interest in the process. I was wrong. The teacher advisor was one of those people who hide sexism behind feminism, and was known to make comments to the effect that guys were irresponsible and disorganized. Coincidentally, every single editor under her term as advisor was a female. That year was no different; with a real generosity she informed me I could help out around the office if I’d like. Long story short, the yearbook utterly flopped; my graduating class got a pathetically edited, improperly labeled, thrown together piece of shit that didn’t even come in until Christmas of the following year.
That was really just an unfortunate episode dealing with one person’s idiotic biases; it’s probably in my job that unfair perceptions do the most damage. I have to take far more caution than any of my female co-workers in my interaction with the kids. I’m a Day Camp leader/soccer instructor/tutor. Basically I work with kids. It is one of the best jobs in the world, from my prospective, because kids haven’t reached the point where they take life seriously, and they laugh at the stupidest things (Me for example). The trouble is, that as a male, I need to be perpetually on my guard. It is basically standard policy that I, or any other male staff, must stay around a female coworker at all times, as a safeguard against potential allegations. Females can apparently be trusted, after all; as we know, no female has ever done anything to a child. If a kid runs up and hugs me without their parent in direct sight, I have to worry that it will end up on a permanent record somewhere. It would be nice if I could just accept a hug as a sign I made a kid’s week fun, instead of having it tainted by the worry that people will think things in the back of their heads.
It’s also worth noting that in spite of my nine or so years of perfect performance reviews in an intense childcare setting, I’ve never once had a babysitting job. Not that that’s of any interest to me now, but in high school, I was always in need of extra cash. My sister has had tons of those jobs. Her friends, who would basically spend the entire course of the night talking on the phone, also made oodles of cash out of it. The fact of the matter is that people put more faith in untrained, quasi-neglectful females than they do in trained male professionals. It’s only within the last month that I’ve actually started tutoring someone without a parent hovering around, and that really only because I’ve worked with the kid for years, and am essentially the male role model in his life.
So there are a few ways where discrimination has affected me. I’d hardly consider myself the worst affected, much worse forms of it exist out there. My only point is that nothing is ever so black and white as many would like to portray them as. There is no one gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or body shape that is not subject to discrimination.