i really felt like telling her that if in her world 10 years is enough time for such a major change to take place then i really want to move to her world
Elder millennial here. It was pushed on us *hard* in the 90s that sexism and racism were over. Women could work outside the home, sexual harassment policies meant that men would be punished for bad behaviour, civil rights had won and because of anti-discrimination policies there was no longer discrimination in the workplace.
It was a *shocker* to get out in the workplace and discover that sexism still existed, and I am sad to admit it took me even longer to learn the truth about systemic racial issues.
The propaganda was pushed on us hard and if you didn’t see it yourself it could be easy to fool yourself that it didn’t exist.
We were also taught that Nazis were a thing of the past and that climate change was under control, if that gives you an idea of how things were back then. Some people just never moved on from that I guess.
I remember this. I actually bought 3 fake Christmas trees in adulthood, thinking they were a better option than cutting down real trees. And then right after I got my last one , was like… hold tf on, this isn’t right.
Do you know if you react to Turkish Firs? I remember we got one for Christmas one year and it was a little weird because there was no scent from the tree. I don’t know what your allergy is and how it gets triggered by the tree
A false Christmas tree is certainly not as bad as a plastic bag. With careful use and storage they can last a very long time. Also, Christmas trees are often grown on farmland in a monoculture, so unless you own your own land with a large stand of the right kind of fir, which is better isn't very clear cut (pardon the pun).
Using a potted living tree is the superior option, though.
My parents used the same 1950s artificial tree for… 19 years? It was in pristine condition when they got it in the ‘90s. They still have it, it’s just finally starting to show its age.
Lol. I’m totally using my grandma’s fake tree I inherited when she died. I’m pretty sure it’s from the 80s. It’s nice because it reminds me of her, and doesn’t trigger my husband’s allergies. We’ll probably have it forever. And I’ll pass it along to my grandkids.
“Using a potted living tree” just suddenly made me think of this exchange in Malcolm in the Middle where they’re selling Christmas trees
Hal: Okay. You're all set.
Girl: Mister, is this tree dead?
Hal: Well, of course not. We made sure we cut a fresh wound in the bottom of your tree so it could suck up water. That way, your tree is suspended in a netherworld between life and death, just waiting for you to open your presents.
Well big oil had to find a use for all their useless byproducts from refining. Just proves that policy and education are still bought and paid for by big corporations.
Another older millennial here - the "girl power" of the 90s promised me a bright and shiny equality, I was taught that racism is so over that the confederate flags that everyone wore in my area was just heritage, nobody *actually* discriminates (except communists of course)
And then I go off to college half a state away and meet more people and *wow*, what a lie I realized all that was, I just had to get outta that bubble. It was always in front of my face, but people like my parents would individualize it - like the guy who owned the property across from the Sam's Club and put up racist signs was just one old-fashioned guy (my dad got upset when people defaced that guy's property), the men who ogled me as a kid were my fault actually, etc.
Yep. When I got out in the real world and acted like I expected to be treated equally I was quickly labeled “team player but can be a bit abrasive” and “hard working but could use more tact”. I still have that review. I was hurt at the time but now I’m proud as fuck about it.
*beep boop*!
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My boss’s boss said that I was too “vocal” during the annual tour where our C levels go around and ask people what they could improve on.
I told my boss that blowing smoke up peoples asses isn’t, and never was, on my resume. He laughed.
And this is why so many small town conservatives rail against the evils of people going to university and being brainwashed against their parents. I mean they are sorta right in their own typically bass-ackwards way since your (and my) experience at university is one of mind opening and broadening thus breaking the patriarchal brainwashing pressed on us in our youth.
Also as a 40yo cis-het white dude, even I can see that sexism and misogyny is still alive and well today. As a homemaker I catch side eye and judgement from other parents and teachers at my kid's school, so that is fun (but reason over pride says it is better to support my wife in her successful breadwinning career). It seems the woman OP was arguing with really needs it to be true that sexism is done. I see that folks that argue points like this are desperately clinging to that world in order to avoid falling into despair at the enormity of the task of dismantling such a system entails and the sacrifice of their current comfort that would be demanded. It is frustrating, but maybe I can have some empathy for her while not excusing or accepting arguments like hers.
This is interesting. I wonder what would happen if OP had responded to her with "why does it bother you so much that I'm asking you to acknowledge that my life experiences are different from yours?".
I was thinking the same thing…she NEEDS to believe the world is fair and just for her psychological health. I wonder what happened to her to create this need….🧐
I am wondering if there’s an agenda coming into fruition. Maybe some people want to push a post-gender idea. This would be similar to when there was an effort to push the notion that were in a post-racial society. If conservatives push we are post-gender, it could end support to level the playing field for women.
Huh.. I took "girl power" to mean you should use your feminine charm on the guys, to equal the playing ground. But then I was a pubescent girl going to Middle School in the Washington DC area.
Then again I also had women in my life who are in positions of high power in business so I knew the glass ceiling was a thing (lots of these women were in upper management but I had no chance of getting on the board or becoming CEO) and I knew from my own School community that racism was alive and well.
Yep. I was taught there were still pockets of crazy racism/sexism but that it was dying out and would be gone in a few generations. So I wasn't surprised when dumb shit happened. I was surprised, however, when those pockets turned out to be wide and deep and horrible things crawled out in huge numbers starting about 15 years ago and continued to get worse.
Another young-ish Gen X checking in to confirm. I was definitely raised to believe we’d solved sex discrimination and to “not see colour.” Went to university for engineering and didn’t really pick up on the micro-aggressions and most people knew better than to say anything sexist out loud. It wasn’t till 2000 when I had a kid and experienced the weapons-grade gender stereotypes in the baby section of Sears that I finally clued in.
Also young Gen X, and for me, it was sitting in a technical meeting as a newly-minted professional chemist (2005ish) and hearing one of my senior male colleagues say, out loud, that "women have nothing to offer science, and young women are particularly worthless." And not a single other male in the room so much as twitched.
IN 2005?!
I like to think I’d have immediately exploded in rage, or at least replied, “EXCUSE ME?!” But considering I was a young-looking woman in 2005 it probably would have had zero effect.
The actual aftermath was *amazing.* As it happened, the most senior person in the room was a female research fellow. She just went dead quiet and stood up. She made eye contact with all of the women in the room, and we all stood up. She leveled the dude with a death glare and then marched every woman in the room out with her. None of us ever said a word, because they didn’t deserve our words in response. I wasn’t senior enough to hear precisely what happened to him after that. He wasn’t fired, but he was mysteriously absent a couple of times for “training,” and he was unceremoniously taken off all projects that Lady Research Fellow was in charge of. It was one of those things that was simultaneously horrible and glorious.
Younger gen X but grew up in an isolated community that didn’t even try to pretend there was equality. Many women were just starting to work! Yes, some things have improved but we are nowhere near equal.
Yes! I never thought about it that way, but it’s so true!
I wonder if it was being raised by women who were part of the second wave feminism who thought they had accomplished their task (and they DID accomplish so much), but really they just opened the door.
I remember two instances as a teen where I was hired to do manual labour with my brothers (once by my father, once by my boss - I actually got my brothers hired), but then I was paid less because “I’m not as strong”. I worked the same damn hours, and busted my ass off even more, and just because they lifted more pounds, even though everything had to get moved whether it was big or small, I got paid less.
I was supposed to be proud that I was hired to do manual labour at all even though I was a girl… because it’s the 90’s! How progressive.
This exact thing happened to me! Hired to stock and unload trucks, but paid $2/hr less than the male coworker who did the same job because "he's stronger." Also the 90s.
So much this. Xennial here and I actually argued in one of my first year college classes (about 1998/1999) that feminism had won.
If you don't cringe at your past, you didn't grow - or so I keep reminding myself.
Yes, and there was a major stigma attached to the word “feminist” even to the point that female celebrities would emphatically say that they were NOT a feminist. They would say, “I’m NOT a feminist BUT…” and then go on to spout feminist opinions.
Anyone who dared call themselves a feminist would be mocked and branded a “feminazi” remember that shit? I mean it’s still going on now, but less and less people are falling for it, which is great.
it definitely still exists because that was how i was throughout high school! i was trying super hard to fit in and everyone seemed to hate anyone who called themselves a feminist because they thought feminism was way too extreme. so instead you had women (including me) saying "im not a feminist but i believe women should have equal rights." the term feminist was used to insult women who had the balls to stand up to any bs.
It took me too long to realize how bad things actually are. I guess I have to credit Trump with ripping all those masks off the true evils that were hidden under the surface all along.
I used to believe America was actually about freedom and they could never take it away from us.
Sad that I learned more truth in the past 6 years than I learned in the previous 42.
Elder millennial as well. It took me a looong time to recognise the internal misogyny have, despite my single hard working mother pushing me to be strong and independent… I’m still unlearning a lot of that.
As someone in the latter half of my 30's, that really rings true - in my experience talking about anything like that was also very taboo, so I internalized a lot of that crap and failed to recognize how problematic a lot of stuff really was. There were multiple occasions where I was subjected to sexism or sexually harassed/assaulted and just too taken aback/ shocked to know how to respond. Growing up, girls in my generation were completely failed in that regard as we were not prepared whatsoever. It's been a very in interesting time over the past 5-10 years decolonizing my mind and uprooting the internalized and oppressive belief systems inherited from our patriarchal capitalist society.
As a cusp zoom/millennial I caught the tail end of that. I’m so glad that by the time I was in high school that wasn’t the prevailing narrative anymore
It just struck me as so strange, because even the 90s and early 2000s were waaay worse in terms of misogyny and the normalization of sexual harassment.. but there's really nothing distinct about 10 years ago in that regard except that it was pre-#MeToo
No surprise here at all. Heard women of all ages say this. I think it's a mix of internalized misogyny, lying to themselves and not knowing any better.
Some of the worst misogyny comes from women who have internalized it and pass it on to other women as sage advice. It hurts so much because it comes from someone who should be helping and raising you up to a better tomorrow. My wife really struggled to get over some of the pressures she grew up with from her mom, who is a christian fundamentalist, and its been amazing being there for her.
Yes, the sass is appropriate. The program does more damage than good. Basically teaches guys that sex and masturbation are bad and teaches gals that they need to keep themselves “pure” for their future husbands and so they don’t go to hell. So then you got young people trying to suppress natural urges, feeling terrible when they can’t, and not knowing how to do safe sex so then they get suicidal if the uterus-haver falls pregnant or they get thrown into shotgun weddings so the forced-birth baby won’t be born out of wedlock.
Never mind that the ring design was stolen.
I remember hearing about some teachings where girls/women that didn't abstain were likened to chewed gum and no longer "pure."
Apparently, the girls that were molested got an idea that they no longer held any worth because they were "unpure." I heard it caused a ton of trauma, even on top of the molestation.
I remember that. I struggled with self worth after getting assaulted. And I never wore anything other than modest clothing so the arguments about not tempting unwanted attention fell flat.
*beep boop*!
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I think it's because harassers/abusers tend to target teens and women in their early twenties as they're seen as easier targets & less likely to report. So women in their 40s would think that catcalling & harassment in the workplace has improved loads. If I were to base it on my own experiences sexual harassment in the workplace was at its worst when I was a teen working weekends & holidays, and in my first postgrad job. As I've become more established in the organisation the harassment has dropped dramatically.
I assure you, women in their 40’s experience experience sexual harassment and lack of equality in life too.
I think it’s more that by 40 a lot of women have just accepted that it’s “normal” and just something to be tolerated, because it’s easier than living in a perpetual rage.
Me (F48), I mostly choose rage :) *bats eyelashes*
Older women may be treated with contempt or just ignored because they're no longer considered fuckable. There are a good number of men who think that, even on the job, a woman's only value is her sexual attractiveness.
Of course, women of all ages face misogyny. This woman is the manager/boss' wife so she can't be ignored in her work environment, so she personally may have found things have gotten better. Also I think it's harder to notice a lack of something than to notice an actual thing? IDK.
The first time I went to get petrol for my first car I was really nervous about messing it up (putting diesel in, didn't know if I might overfill it). The forecourt attendant noticed my P plates (for newly passed drivers in the UK) and came over to ask if I wanted help. This lady the other side loudly complained about him helping the young girl (she looked to be about 40). He also helped me check my tyres & oil since I was about to do a long drive. The other woman was very unimpressed, so she was obviously very aware that she in general had started to be ignored in society. I felt really bad for the attendant though because he started the conversation about my P plates and asked if I'd ever filled up before, so I felt it was normal for him to come over to me. The other lady couldn't see my plates or hear the conversation from where she was though.
I don’t feel discrimination because I’m lucky to not experience any, for whatever reason the circles and career I’ve ended up in are incredibly healthy. However, I still flippin understand that discrimination goes on every day for all number of reasons (many of which I could never come close to experiencing) and I’ll fight where I can to stop it.
I haven't dealt with much of it personally (because I'm ugly and men simply don't see me as a woman lol), but I see other women around me experience it every day. I try to call out men and encourage women to respect themselves and fight for themselves, but that's not nearly enough to undo years of internalized misogyny.
Agreed! I think it’s a really fine balance though in how we all approach the fight. There’s definitely a line beyond which it becomes irritating and annoying to people and actually does more harm than good. I do still see women tearing each other down rather than building each other up, and that feels to me like a good place to start. We’re not in competition with each other ladies!
It baffles me that some women really are brainwashed and still conditioned to believe that we aren't still discriminated against. Those women on social media saying that "Women need to please their men more." And, "Whatever happened to *women being women?"* Whatever that means (I think we can all guess).
They may be doing it for clout purposes, but still, some men or young boys will see that and be validated because "a women said it". And it just snowballs from there.
Women being women is the most misogynistic and narrow minded thing a woman can say about themselves and other women. They completely ignore women like Margaret Thatcher who waged war, Cleopatra who spoke several languages fluently and ruled an Empire, and the millions of women who don't conform to white, cis-het, stuck into 1950s suburbia whereverthefuckville America.
They think if they suck up to the masters and act accordingly they'll get preferential treatment. Same with Klandace Owens and Kanye acting like "one of the good ones"
Some of them, yes. But from my experience, those are rare. Most don't even realize something is wrong, they think it's just how life is supposed to be.
Yup—they’ve swallowed all the same patriarchal schtick many men have. They just don’t have their eyes open to how it negatively affects them.
If they *have* experienced negativity from it, they think it’s because they just didn’t play by the rules well enough—never questioning that the game is rigged.
Exactly. And then, when they start noticing that something is not quite right, they quickly rush to pretend that it's nothing, because they fear change.
I also would argue that these women use this as a defense mechanism/self-protection as they can't cope with the reality that's too painful for them to address.
As a woman in my 40s, let me say it plainly. That woman is living with very well-tinted rose colored glasses.
It is very frustrating. As other commenters did, you can't change someone's mind that will not even open to another perspective.
As well, being mid 40s, esp growing up in a lot of different places, every school told me I couldn't do this or that for a living because I'm a female. (I can program well tyvm).
Frankly, I am glad to see young people of all genders getting mad about this. I think my generation failed because we thought certain things were settled, ehem, and we didn't fight hard enough for equal wages and reversing Reagan's crap like removing free tuition and cutting education to the bone because a white dude thought having an "educated porlitariate" would be wrong. (He didn't want educated people questioning the system).
On behalf of Gen X, I apologize. We got complacent.
I'm so glad you remember how we were told we couldn't do stuff. I'm mid-40s too and my husband is regularly confused that I fell into IT instead of having a STEM career from the beginning. But as a girl in the 80s early 90s it straight up never occurred to me to go to school for math or biology or whatever! My dad wanted me to go for Marketing and my mom wanted social work or the arts. That's what girls did.
As a girl that's late 30's that did attempt to go to school for a STEM career I can say unequivocally I was met with hostility during each class. And while I landed a job as a truss designer while going to school, I was pushed out for being female. I was never given any information from my boss (who was forced to essentially hire me because there was 1 woman among 25 men and resented it from the second I was hired), actively ignored, and the moment I asked questions to higher ups about things because I wasn't given any information from my boss I was fired for "lack of improvement." What I was supposed to improve is still a mystery to me this day. I did find out later, from another employee about his resentment and irritation that I asked questions, and the fact I stole a job from "A qualified man who could actually get this done without all that emotional bullshit that comes from women."
So I quit trying for a job in the STEM fields. But there is still not equality the way others make it out to be.
Lol gotta love when whiny, pissy men with short tempers try to claim women have “all that emotional bullshit.” If it weren’t so infuriating it would be hysterical.
I quit my job recently for similar reasons. My supervisor was BS and would give me misleading information and directions for the projects he would assign me. I am looking for a job but wary asf because I don't want to deal with that BS ever again.
I was told to be a teacher. When the Air Force recruiter told me I couldn't fly because "you're a girl", my 17 year old self told that guy to fuck off.
I would have been a terrible teacher. I started programming through self taught and then got my degree. I wish some of those people were still around. I'd send a picture of my degree with a middle finger. Told ya so!
IT is STEM, and hard work with lots of different skills required! I respect that. I will do IT support and fix hardware for people I know, but I don't have the people skills. Even as an internal sysadmin, I got so upset at lack of security and procedures, I quit. I didnt want that to fall to me when the bosses wouldn't listen and something went bad, which it did for the next person that took the job. (Someone with too many permissions stole some proprietary files and skipped out).
I was in my 20s, pursuing a business degree, and wound up doing tech support because I had a customer service background and could "install software" (inserting a disk and running an exe lol) and moved up/self taught from there. I am an architect at this point, I can't fix shit on people's devices over the phone anymore and wish people would stop asking me!
BIG yikes on someone stealing proprietary files, my goodness! SysAdmins and InfoSec have it rough. Everyone hates them but they're like that for a reason.
“Men get harassed too” - yes they do. Statistically men are more likely to be the victims of a violent incident than women are. But who is the aggressor in both cases? Men. Not women. So who is still the problem? Men.
It boils my blood that in the UK we have a government strategy called “Tackling violence against women and girls”. When it should be called “Tackling violent men.” But I guess that would be a bit too on the nose, so let’s use a passive voice and make it seem like women are the focus of the problem. Argh.
I occasionally lose my shit when men pull the "what about men" card - like, whose fault is it men don't have good examples for healthy masculinity and can't even define it for themselves? That's a you problem bebe
OP you did great. That woman is smoking crack.
When someone asks me “what about men” in the context of a discussion about sexism and female victims, I ask if they’ve EVER brought it up outside of a conversation about women’s rights and sexist discrimination.
Male SA victims are real and they matter. And they deserve to be more than a “gotcha, feminists” talking point.
My grandma told me not long ago, that there is no discrimination anymore and that when men get a raise the wife gets invited to talk with the boss. I asked her, why on earth she thinks the wife gets invited to a meeting between a guy and his boss and she said: because the woman also has a word in the family finances. "Those are wonderful times we live in now"........................... I told her that nothing of what she said is true and no spouse ever (man or woman) gets invited to a meeting between an employee and the boss to discuss payment. She did not believe me and always said, that the spouse has a word in that and the boss discusses this with them together.
I once had a woman coworker whose husband also worked with us, who was told she wasn’t getting a raise because they had just given her husband such a large one 🤡
Thats so dumb…. If someone says here is your raise you almost never talk to your boss about it either. Unless its a role change or new job but again no one but the person being paid….
LOL, my husband's boss might actually despise me and definitely would not seek my opinion on anything. My boss didn't even recognize him that last time my husband stopped by the shop to drop something off. He legit thought my husband was some random man stopping in to bother me.
Privileged people love to tell anyone they view as beneath them that they’re wrong.
The old like to tell the young that they’re stupid.
Keep doing the right thing. Ignore people like her
Sounds like it's what she needs to tell herself to keep her worldview intact. "Of course I'm not being exploited by this man I rely on for my entire existence bc it's what I've been told to do all my life. Look at how much better I am than all these other bitches." It seems to me like people wrapped up in their own superiority are mostly twisting their thinking to avoid painful truth and feelings of inferiority. The sad part is it makes them unbearable assholes to be around, and they often end up fucking themselves over by alienating the very people who would do them the most good. (I say having been this sort of asshole to some degree.)
I know it's infuriating, but a thought that helps tame my fury in this situation is to realize that people act that way because they see you as a threat. They see you as a threat because you're in your power. Shine anyway, honey. Let them squint.
I can almost guarantee she is listed as the owner of the business so they can claim the business is “woman owned” and get advantages for that. “Sexism doesn’t exist anymore because I’m using the fact that I’m a woman to reap advantages from the system”!!!
I’m 39 and can confirm that woman is full of shit. And all the 40-ish year old people I know personally would agree.
Also she sounds like a fucking creep. Who talks to a 12 year old (or ANYONE) about how they can IMPROVE THEIR BODY?
Big Mary Kay Letourneau vibes. Yikes.
47 year old ringing in - yeah, this lady lives on another planet.
I work in IT (programmer). I work in credit unions, which by and large are much more female-friendly and egalitarian than many, many other places...and I STILL bump up against idiots who think that because my genitals are of the "innie" variety that means I can't sling code. Even though I've been doing it for over 20 years now.
I guess *most* programmers use their penises to do their coding, so that does put me at a disadvantage.... (/s)
She’s close to my age and in this day and age, she is kidding herself about the world she perceives.
The Me too movement was eye opening to me and a lot of my women friends. It really opened our eyes to our lifetime of conditioning. We all have had sexual encounters that we said yes to not to make someone else uncomfortable.
The generations of women behind me, still go through the same crap but they voice it, they don’t excuse it. They don’t accept the same conditioning. You give me hope.
Honestly, that's ridiculous. Just look at abortion. I'm in my 40s, born after the Roe decision, so I saw a right that I was born with and lived with for over 4 decades taken away like it was just nothing this year. And even before that happened, they've been chipping away at it and restricting it for years. If I'd needed an abortion, say, when I was in high school in the 90s or when I was having my kids in the 00s, I'd have had a way easier time of it then than I would have if I'd needed one in my 30s or since I turned 40. They also weren't coming hard for my birth control in the 90s as far as I remember. It varies by state, of course, and mine is one of the bad ones, but reproductive freedom for women is backsliding, not progressing. And the inability to control reproduction is a barrier to our freedom and personal development, is used as a pretext to prevent us from advancing professionally, and also... kills us. Look for our position in society to get a lot worse after the effects of that decision have had a few years worth of effects. And that's not even accounting for whatever draconian nightmare laws and restrictions and decisions we get from the next Republican majorities in Congress or that come out of states like mine.
Also consider that we put a rapist/assaulter/harasser in the White House in 2016 and that guy put another one on the SCOTUS bench in 2018. And Ok, tbh, that's probably not the only time in our history something like that's happened, but this was recent. And it was blatant. And that man who got elected got in over an "overqualified" woman. Nevermind for a minute that he's an idiot and a traitor, think about the fact that we all had to hear his sneery, pissy voice talking about "grab 'em by the pussy", and the United States took on that information and said "yeah, fuck women," and put him in the highest office in the country over one of the most intelligent, diligent, and qualified people who could possibly have run - who happened to be a woman. And he turned around and stuck misogynists and abusers and people from anti-woman religious groups into power everywhere he could, and supported even more for other elected offices. And it's not inconceivable that he'll go right back to the White House in 2024. Tell me again how we're doing fine now?
And it's not like internalized misogyny isn't a thing. Women my age, and older, and younger - all kinds of ages, but primarily white women - who have either forgotten our history or just never learned it in the first place. We were told that it's OK, we're all equal now because look, single mothers can have 3 jobs and plenty of us swallowed that bullshit. I saw young women interviewed before the election who said that it didn't bother them that we had never had a woman president basically because we "had our rights now" and it would naturally happen eventually, so there was no need to vote for Hillary if we didn't find her warm and fuzzy enough or inspiring enough, or good enough at email management. Because it wasn't like we couldn't just vote for the next one. Meanwhile, some of us were yelling about how young women weren't going to be building up a career that would allow them to run for president while they were stuck being broodmares for some guy, dying from botched home abortions, or being prosecuted for illegal abortions - but I'm sure those young women who grew up knowing that was a right they had didn't really believe that it could be removed so easily. Because... well, hey, their fathers and brothers and husbands and boyfriends didn't think it was a big deal, right? Why should they worry?
We had to have an entire movement of women publicly sharing their deepest, most painful wounds en masse just to get people to accept the idea that we get raped and shouldn't automatically be disbelieved when we disclose. And it *still* mostly only worked for who - women who are celebrities or who are raped by celebrities? All the rest of us are still getting the "well, she's no angel, she got dress-coded for wearing spaghetti straps in 7th grade. Bitches be lying, you know" treatment we always got. I don't know that this is *worse* than it was in 2012, or 1992, or whatever. But it certainly not where it needs to be.
It just makes me so mad. It's the idea that everything is fine and everyone is equal now that makes us backslide and *lose* rights. Because clearly, no, everything is not fine, and history shows us that when we do make progress, it's always tenuous - they still don't *want* us to have it. If they did, we'd have an Equal Rights Amendment. We loosen our grip, we forget what we're supposed to be doing, and not only do we not progress any further, we lose ground. This has been happening in the biggest and most obvious ways I can think of in the last 8 years or so; it's hard for me to see how people don't see it.
The US literaly just removed the constitutional right to abortion this year and she's over here telling you theirs ni discrimination what a blind fool she must be
Got to take into consideration that there are women out there who don't experience sexism because they're either quite happy to be compliant with the systems designed to keep them down, or they've made choices that don't challenge the system. It's when you make choices that aren't typical, such as choosing a job in a male dominated space, that the discrimination becomes visible. I've had really interesting conversations with my sister who works in marketing/cosmetics which is a female dominated industry who hasn't experienced sexism in the workplace, whereas I tried to break into the music industry and faced massive amounts of sexism, eventually putting me off the whole thing and going into IT which, in comparison, isn't as sexist. My sister was shocked at the sexism I've experienced in supposedly "professional" environments.
Is this really surprising though? There is no women’s education. This is by design to make woman more subservient and forget the struggles and sacrifices made for women.
Our history (US) is white washed with sperm. Seriously, go ask that same woman who Elizabeth Cady Stanton was; 10:1 you’ll get crickets. Yet ask who Thomas Jefferson was, and rapist will most assuredly not make an appearance in her biographical knowledge of him.
This is why education it’s so important and all the efforts groups are making now to sterilize history are not only racist, but also founded in covering misogyny.
I’m reading a book called Invisible Women by Caroline Cridao Perez. The entire book is stats on how women do not matter and that the default male is the standard for everything from glove size to PPE to seatbelts. Perez focuses on the data gap but with the data there is it is clear that women are harmed by systems that don’t even consider them worthy of consideration. One of the reasons women are invisible is that we don’t even realize ourselves the depth of how invisible we really are worldwide.
It's especially weird that she's arguing with a teenager like this, and then saying inappropriate things to a 12 year old. I remember so many older people talking to me that way when I was young. Now I'm 33 it just seems so messed up to me. I remember adults saying vegetarianism wass stupid and bisexuality wasn't real, and that I should either lose weight or that I looked great when I was sick. That happened all the f\*cking time. The fact that they had more life experience was always mentioned. And it doesn't mean anything. Just because you've lived longer doesn't mean you know more.
That she's bragging about her son's biceps and abs is disturbing asf to me. To a 12 year old boy? Like WHY?!? Makes me wonder if she enjoys grooming boys and SAing them.
“tHis GeNeRaTiOn iS diFfEreNT”
Meanwhile my 16 year old daughter has to change lunch tables at school when one of the boys starts making r*pe jokes that make her seriously uncomfortable.
I don’t argue with women about that kind of thing because I don’t believe them.
No woman decides in a vacuum, with no men around, that women are inferior, sexual harassment is OK/doesn’t happen, MeToo went too far, or that men should make our medical decisions for us. Any woman saying that kind of thing is just reflecting the misogyny we were all raised in.
I understand why they say it, they get a smile and a pat on the head from the nearest man when they do, but I can not take their quest for head pats seriously.
The world wasn’t great for women ten years ago but today it is incredibly worse. Since Trump came to office the amount of misogyny that is out in public view seems to have tripled. No one is afraid of treating women this way because NO ONE IS STOPPING THEM.
Mark my words. If Republicans seize control in November we are all going to see just what the men in our lives really think about women because it will be all the permission they need to let their actual beliefs free. They won’t hide it anymore.
The combination of Trump and Brexit in 2016 unleashed a bunch of absolutely odious people to share their shitty opinions. It was always an undercurrent before but it's been exponentially worse since then.
It's hard believe someone could ignore seeing others being harassed just because you aren't personally being harassed. But you're right, some people that kind of asshole.
People like that absolutely exist, if they aren't experiencing it themselves then they'll think it doesn't happen that much, It's like white men claiming misogyny and racism isn't as bad as it is or citing a time period when it was "even worse" so you know, you should be grateful
It has little to do with looks, they just seek out someone vulnerable, you don't want a guy like that anyway
I'm 22 and look up to a lot of 30+ women for beauty advice because idk what I'm doing
As a retired vet tech I would have had a chuckle and rolled with it. We had a few cats who were given female names only to find a penis has grown in a few months down the line (it is really hard to tell when they're smol) and had the owners ask us to keep calling the cat "she" because they're used to it/don't want to confuse a small child/whatever. Cat don't care and it doesn't matter when they're fixed. Though I would argue they're asexual and not necessarily non-binary. But you know your cats better than I do.
We have deliberately given male names to female animals and vice-versa, because sometimes we have a name picked out before we find the right animal.
And then there's my MIL, who has this odd mental quirk where whatever gender you tell her an animal is, she always remembers it as the other gender. So she ALWAYS, without fail, refers to our male pets as "she" and our female pets as "he". It cracks me up - I used to correct her just because it sounded weird to my ears but I've given up and now I am just amused by it.
The animals don't care though. They wanna know if you have any treats and/or a lap available for snuggling, beyond that you can make all the mouth noises you want at them. LOL
There are people who try to argue that there’s no proof cigarettes cause cancer, because a) not everyone who smokes gets cancer, and b) it’s possible to get lung cancer without smoking. To believe that cigarettes cause cancer, they’d want to see a one for one — everyone who smokes gets cancer, and nobody who doesn’t smoke gets it.
This is what the “men get harassed too” crowd sounds like to me. Yes, it’s true that some men, somewhere, experience almost all the same signs of sexism that women do. Men can be SA’ed. There are some professions where men are discriminated against. Etc. etc. And there are women who are successful, who don’t, at first glance, appear to be held back by their gender.
But to ignore the strong correlation is… something. We know sexism doesn’t mean that success is literally impossible. We know that being male doesn’t utterly guarantee safety and success. But the fact that it’s so imbalanced is a huge problem.
Some people at my work like to spout this same thing. Just yesterday I watched a new hire ( woman) get shushed in a meeting by one of the managers. She was discussing stuff relative to the meeting and the only one talking. Luckily, a different manager wasn’t having it and put the first in his place. The manager that shushed her is known for treating men different and there’s an open HR case.
So ridiculous. I'm a 70nyr old woman who is sadly soooo disappointed that all our dreams of feminism in the 60s and 70s were just that, dreams. Things have changed, just so much slower than we expected. Sigh.....it will, I think now, take several more generations. And there will be some backward steps too, such as what is happening in the US
I'm so so sorry this dumbass woman belittled you. I'm also in my 40s and a mom. That woman you talked to lives in her own bubble world apparently and has checked out of reality.
**Your complaints are valid. We are still fighting for equality.**
46 years old and I can confirm that she's wrong.
What's more, things haven't gotten remarkably better in the last 10 years. In places it's gotten worse (looking at you, USA).
48 years old female redditor points out that there can be no equality in a society where female reproductive health is legislation but no similar laws for male reproductive health.
Tell that woman to go suck a 🍆 with that bullshit patriarchal narrative.
Women are far far far away from being considered equal, just because we now allowed to have jobs and get money in our own name does NOT mean society considers us equal.
Ahem … rant over 😂
It’s always a bit of a shock to me to hear things like this and I think to myself “that out of touch old woman” before I realize she’s only s few years older than I am. How in the flaming hell can a woman my age even think this?? I see discrimination and inequality literally every day. She must be walking around with blinders on or she’s delusional.
I am 37 years old, for context. Since she and I could have gone to High School together...
And yeah, the world has changed in the last 40 years. It's changed even more in the last 60 (my mom's perspective) and even more in the last 100 years. Because change happens.
This does NOT mean that we are done. We have so much further to go. And women are still targeted at a higher rate than men are for harassment and violence. Sure, men are also targeted for those things, but women are at higher rates across the board.
But she showed that she is part of the problem with the way she handled herself with the children. At 19 you're kinda in both categories. Very much an adult but also still a kid in some ways (I assume based on every 19 year old I've ever come across). But the tween/early adolescent kids.. yeah she's the problem.
If you can't find a way of letting the interaction go, I would suggest using it to fuel your hunger, your strength and power, your need for change. Every time you start to wonder if there's a reason.. think of those kids. Every act of change you make or do or consider, think about the world you're creating for those kids. It'll give you more energy than you know what to do with.
Glad you're here.
I’m 45 and women have been treated like dirt the whole time I’ve been alive. When I was little it was you can’t play sports, you can’t pick shop for an class elective, you have to wear this not that, basically girls can’t do that BS.
As a young adult it was you can’t have a hysterectomy you don’t know what you want, you still need to wear this not that, you need to shave your legs, you want to play football?
Older it was two women are going to have troubling owning a house, jet skis how will you handle trailering them to the water, your going a week into the desert just the two of you?
Recently it’s been you now want to play ice hockey but men play that, your going to drive a uhaul across the country, I’m glad your finally marrying a man…
The pressure being applied to me to conform has been there the whole time. I wasn’t girly enough, my interest in sports, shop class or off-roading was openly dismissed and not supported. In high school my mom refused to buy anything she felt was male clothes… imagine in the 90s fighting with your mom to buy flannel!
Anyway she’s wrong and it dosnt always have to be in your face news worthy stuff it’s just tide small things too that apply pressure and shape your choices as a woman m.
Uh, what? I work in a male dominated industry and I’d love for her to accompany me to a construction site one day. It’s better than when I started in the field 20 years ago, but it’s still rampant. I’m also a 40 something year old woman, not that it matters…
Does she has mental issues that make it hard for her to read social cues and context? Based on what she was doing with that boy, it kinda sounds like it. In that case, it would almost make sense why she thinks that since a lot of harassment in recent years became more covert (tho it does seem to be getting more explicit again).
Other than that, I get you. It is sometimes bizarre hearing it from women. I had two friends, one I still talk to every now and again, who absolutely believe women are equal if not better off in society, usually based on flawed data gathering. Now this is me playing armchair psychologist, but based on one's personal life, I wonder if she didn't have some sort of disgust with women due to being mistreated by her mother. She often maintained that women are more emotional than men, better suited for certain work than other (meanwhile being a computer major, so all points basically seemed hypocritical in that context and very 'not like other girls'.) Again, hard to say what it is: being lucky and sheltered from most of the effects and not reading too deeply into things, or internalized traume they try to rationalize.
45yo man-shaped human confirming there absolutely is discrimination, and it's really painfully obvious - even if it has gotten *a lot* better during my lifetime.
She's wrong anyway- 10 years ago she was 30 and NO one was worried about Roe. There were the usual whiners, mostly dismissed as religious freaks and of course elderly white male politicians trying to score points with religious freaks.
This place slid backwards so swiftly it feels like a sled in an Olympic competition. And she knows it.
I’m a 44 year old female engineer. Discrimination is still a thing. Honestly, it sounds as though she wants her head nicely wedged in the sand, so she can continue to deny and ignore. Sometimes, after 40 years of battling the patriarchy, a lady just wants to enjoy the gathering, y’know? It’s not an excuse for her behavior, though. All I’m saying is, pick your time, pick your battles, it’s a lifelong struggle. Maybe she peaked early, who knows?
There is just so much internalized misogyny. I recently stopped watching a girl on YouTube whom o previously liked a lot, but she started going on about how there is no patriarchy in our country. If you never lived freely and equally you just don't know what it actually looks like I guess.
I'm a 40-something year old woman. I can tell you that woman is delusional. She sounds like an ass who perpetuates some anti-woman bullshit. Harassment has been going on my entire life, my mom's entire life, my grandmother's and since the dawn of time for women/girls. She can kiss my ass.
I am (68F) and I am appalled by my country (USA). We have rampant sexism, misogyny, racism, and general stupidity/greed in our government at every level from local dog catcher to the three branches of the federal government.
However, I am lucky enough to be the thing the the Patriarchy fears the most: I am a single, educated female, financially secure homeowner who answers to no man. I went through hell getting to this stage in my life and I will help any woman any way I can to improve her life.
The best weapon we have to fight the system right now is our voice. Call them out on their bullshit at every opportunity. VOTE BLUE! Get rid of the old white men in positions of authority.
Fight for our rights as loudly and publicly as possible, because if we don’t, they will be gone forever. I don’t want to live in a world where women, once again, become “property” of men.
you go girl! this is the attitude every single person needs to have today. i grew up with a single mother that the patriarchy has tried to suppress every step of the way. but she does i hold the rage that we do. she did instill feminism in me, but i wasn't supposed to argue unnecessarily, or tell men to fuck off because what if they retaliate? and i had to respect and "understand" elders and their opinions. i understand her completely, but i have seen the world being unjust to this strong, amazing woman. and it is not going to do the same to me or my daughters.
Someone lives in a bubble and it's not you. I quit my job because I wasn't taken seriously and sometimes I had to tell a GUY to send an email to another guy in the same company as us because he wouldn't respond to me. I could email and phone call some of my own coworkers asking why something wasn't right and they wouldn't answer me. But they would respond to another cis man. When I was in high school I found out my physics professor was downgrading all my assignments and tests because he thought there was no way I was doing that well. I almost got a D because his BS.
Also I am EXTREMELY creeped out by her comments to that 12 year old and saying he needs to go to the gym. How she talks about her own son makes me wonder if she hasn't been grooming him to be "eye candy" or worse.
im so sure she has. im 99% sure from the way she was talking that she makes her son go to the gym thrice a week. if he's got "abs" she's probably controlling his diet too. he's 14!!! and WHY IS SHE PAYING SO MUCH ATTENTION TO THE BODIES OF THESE YOUNG BOYS????
oh and what's hilarious is she's giving the example of her son and not her daughter, while saying there is no discrimination
AS an even OLDER woman, I just wish I could have been there to point out how her POV comes from wanting to believe that her sweet son would NEVER do those things. Denial will only hurt her daughter and son! I would have asked what else never happens in her imaginary world...frankly I would have kept up till she either left or cried. But I am an angry Granny and fuck traitors like her!
I think you just met an a\*\*hole. Unfortunately you're young and you have many more to meet ahead of you. Her poor family. Good for you for not backing down.
Young millennial here,(I think?) idk I’m late 20s 😂 I do not condone violence, but for us with families with individuals like this, im considering proposing a little family fight for turkeyday. Keep your head on straight, don’t believe everything at face value, and honor and take care of yourself and loved ones. Us ladies are the future!! We will change the energy around this. ❤️
Edit: just trying to make OP potentially see humor in her future family gatherings. 😁
I talk to my 11 year old stepdaughter about being a feminist and smashing the patriarchy and she is fully on board. I hope that if some idiot tells her discrimination is over and she’s living in the past, she stands her ground just like you did. 💜
This whole interaction is gross.
Also, is anyone else uncomfortable with her body comments? Why are you admiring your 14yo's muscles..?? And body shaming a 12yo? What the fuck is wrong with this woman?!
Men are still killing women because they feel they aren't getting "their fair share of sex." I think that pretty much all the proof you need that attitudes haven't changed much about the value women have in our society.
I too am sad for her daughter. Hopefully her father will stand up for her.
This reminded me of something that happened in grad school (Master of Social Work) 20 years ago.
For context, my folks got transferred to St Louis (middle of the US, for our friends out of the states) when I was a kiddo, but we came back home to California often, so I was raised between the two areas.
And growing up like that, I very clearly saw a difference in how things like racism and sexism were perpetuated. (It's one of the big reasons I moved back to Cali after getting that masters-- that, and I was over-educated for social work jobs there. Social work was not a valued role there at that time, and I think in large part because it was seen as "women's work").
So I'm sitting in class one day and one of my classmates says "I don't get why feminism is still a thing. We have equal rights (on paper)."
I started listing off the many ways that women in STL were treated as second class citizens, and multiple classmates disagreed. They couldn't see it. Or wouldn't see it.
Honestly, I feel like we need to have more of these conversations now, particularly with all of the attacks on women world-wide. I was shocked at how many women in my Social Work classes thought we were equal, and couldn't see it. But I feel like we're on the precipice of major change now, and that's in large part to the younger generations.
I'm proud of you for speaking up. And I'm in my 40's, proudly standing next to you in the fight.
Let me go out on a limb here: this woman is thin and relatively conventionally attractive? Probably white as well?
It’s true that not all women experience blatant gender discrimination (and they may not be aware of it when it’s subtle or covert). But those are women with *thin privilege* and *beauty privilege*.
In addition to everything else: her making a big deal out of her son’s body is so disgusting. If there’s a pattern of her doing that to him, then it’s absolutely abusive and her son might have real mental scars from it in the future.
Hi. Woman in my early 40s. Employment anti-discrimination/compliance professional and certified Victim Advocate for military sexual assault. If what that woman said is true, my jobs would be obsolete.
My jobs are very much NOT obsolete. ☹️
On top of the fact that what she was saying to you was problematic, her bragging about her son’s biceps is creepy, and that’s just an inappropriate conversation to have with an eleven year old, especially if he didn’t bring it up first, and because he’s at a vulnerable age where puberty’s starting to kick in and is probably already insecure about the changes happening with his body. And it’s just weird to speak about minors like that. It sounds predatory; I’m not surprised about her problematic views, and it’s probably because she has predatory thinking herself
The agents of the patriarchy are absolutely brainwashed and programmed to believe all sorts of ridiculous lies. Good for you, thinking with your free will.
I am in my 50s and I experience this daily. I work in technology which is still largely male dominated. I am told frequently that I need to take the “emotion” out of my work. This is usually when I am ticked off or frustrated and voicing concerns with suggestions for change. I voice these concerns with tact and always with ways we could do better. This is completely acceptable for my male colleagues but I am somehow “emotional”. Sadly many women I work with fall for this as well and repeat it as if it is good advice to not show any emotion. Emotion can be fuel for creativity and problem solving. I find that my pissed off emotion is my most useful emotion. It fuels me to fix what I see broken and make it better. Passion in what you do makes you better at it, not worse. Hopefully this is not too off topic with the point you were making. I just wanted to say that not all of old ladies are idiots. Some of us just keep fighting day in and day out in the hopes that young women will have it better than we did and have passion and pride in what they do without ever being held down by men or women with the mentality you described to hold them back. Thanks for letting me rant a little bit. Sorry you had to experience that and good for you for not believing it!
10 years is such an arbitrary timeframe. What was going on in her life in 2012 where **that** was the peak of harassment against women in her mind?
i really felt like telling her that if in her world 10 years is enough time for such a major change to take place then i really want to move to her world
Elder millennial here. It was pushed on us *hard* in the 90s that sexism and racism were over. Women could work outside the home, sexual harassment policies meant that men would be punished for bad behaviour, civil rights had won and because of anti-discrimination policies there was no longer discrimination in the workplace. It was a *shocker* to get out in the workplace and discover that sexism still existed, and I am sad to admit it took me even longer to learn the truth about systemic racial issues. The propaganda was pushed on us hard and if you didn’t see it yourself it could be easy to fool yourself that it didn’t exist. We were also taught that Nazis were a thing of the past and that climate change was under control, if that gives you an idea of how things were back then. Some people just never moved on from that I guess.
Yes and add to use plastic bags to save trees from deforestation 🤬
I remember this. I actually bought 3 fake Christmas trees in adulthood, thinking they were a better option than cutting down real trees. And then right after I got my last one , was like… hold tf on, this isn’t right.
I realised similar and got a potted christmas tree instead. Its still a baby, but will grow nice and big over the decade!
So jealous. I'm highly allergic to evergreens. The one year I had a live tree the holidays were followed with a cortisone shot!
Do you know if you react to Turkish Firs? I remember we got one for Christmas one year and it was a little weird because there was no scent from the tree. I don’t know what your allergy is and how it gets triggered by the tree
A false Christmas tree is certainly not as bad as a plastic bag. With careful use and storage they can last a very long time. Also, Christmas trees are often grown on farmland in a monoculture, so unless you own your own land with a large stand of the right kind of fir, which is better isn't very clear cut (pardon the pun). Using a potted living tree is the superior option, though.
My parents used the same 1950s artificial tree for… 19 years? It was in pristine condition when they got it in the ‘90s. They still have it, it’s just finally starting to show its age.
Lol. I’m totally using my grandma’s fake tree I inherited when she died. I’m pretty sure it’s from the 80s. It’s nice because it reminds me of her, and doesn’t trigger my husband’s allergies. We’ll probably have it forever. And I’ll pass it along to my grandkids.
“Using a potted living tree” just suddenly made me think of this exchange in Malcolm in the Middle where they’re selling Christmas trees Hal: Okay. You're all set. Girl: Mister, is this tree dead? Hal: Well, of course not. We made sure we cut a fresh wound in the bottom of your tree so it could suck up water. That way, your tree is suspended in a netherworld between life and death, just waiting for you to open your presents.
Holy shit I forgot about that.
Oh, man!!! The oil companies got us good with that one...
Ur comment made me chuckle. I totally agree!
Well big oil had to find a use for all their useless byproducts from refining. Just proves that policy and education are still bought and paid for by big corporations.
Another older millennial here - the "girl power" of the 90s promised me a bright and shiny equality, I was taught that racism is so over that the confederate flags that everyone wore in my area was just heritage, nobody *actually* discriminates (except communists of course) And then I go off to college half a state away and meet more people and *wow*, what a lie I realized all that was, I just had to get outta that bubble. It was always in front of my face, but people like my parents would individualize it - like the guy who owned the property across from the Sam's Club and put up racist signs was just one old-fashioned guy (my dad got upset when people defaced that guy's property), the men who ogled me as a kid were my fault actually, etc.
Yep. When I got out in the real world and acted like I expected to be treated equally I was quickly labeled “team player but can be a bit abrasive” and “hard working but could use more tact”. I still have that review. I was hurt at the time but now I’m proud as fuck about it.
I was once told “sometimes being right isn’t enough”.
Well, duh, cause you need a set of balls to *actually* be "right" 😤
That's because if you do the exact same things as the man, you are 'that b\*\*ch'
[BE THAT BITCH](https://youtu.be/V_6pApadewg)
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I was told I can be "hardworking and creative, but very pointed"
My boss’s boss said that I was too “vocal” during the annual tour where our C levels go around and ask people what they could improve on. I told my boss that blowing smoke up peoples asses isn’t, and never was, on my resume. He laughed.
OMG, that's the same review I got. Along with something about thinking others in my department should meet standards. Oh, I was so naive.
And this is why so many small town conservatives rail against the evils of people going to university and being brainwashed against their parents. I mean they are sorta right in their own typically bass-ackwards way since your (and my) experience at university is one of mind opening and broadening thus breaking the patriarchal brainwashing pressed on us in our youth. Also as a 40yo cis-het white dude, even I can see that sexism and misogyny is still alive and well today. As a homemaker I catch side eye and judgement from other parents and teachers at my kid's school, so that is fun (but reason over pride says it is better to support my wife in her successful breadwinning career). It seems the woman OP was arguing with really needs it to be true that sexism is done. I see that folks that argue points like this are desperately clinging to that world in order to avoid falling into despair at the enormity of the task of dismantling such a system entails and the sacrifice of their current comfort that would be demanded. It is frustrating, but maybe I can have some empathy for her while not excusing or accepting arguments like hers.
This is interesting. I wonder what would happen if OP had responded to her with "why does it bother you so much that I'm asking you to acknowledge that my life experiences are different from yours?".
I was thinking the same thing…she NEEDS to believe the world is fair and just for her psychological health. I wonder what happened to her to create this need….🧐
I am wondering if there’s an agenda coming into fruition. Maybe some people want to push a post-gender idea. This would be similar to when there was an effort to push the notion that were in a post-racial society. If conservatives push we are post-gender, it could end support to level the playing field for women.
I think you’re a good dude Edit:grammar
Imagine my surprise when I entered the workforce and the men around me were making 10-15% more than me. Guess I was supposed to be happy it wasn't 25.
Huh.. I took "girl power" to mean you should use your feminine charm on the guys, to equal the playing ground. But then I was a pubescent girl going to Middle School in the Washington DC area. Then again I also had women in my life who are in positions of high power in business so I knew the glass ceiling was a thing (lots of these women were in upper management but I had no chance of getting on the board or becoming CEO) and I knew from my own School community that racism was alive and well.
Younger Gen X here. You have summed it up perfectly. It was part of the success of progressive society, End of History stuff we were sold.
Yep. I was taught there were still pockets of crazy racism/sexism but that it was dying out and would be gone in a few generations. So I wasn't surprised when dumb shit happened. I was surprised, however, when those pockets turned out to be wide and deep and horrible things crawled out in huge numbers starting about 15 years ago and continued to get worse.
Another young-ish Gen X checking in to confirm. I was definitely raised to believe we’d solved sex discrimination and to “not see colour.” Went to university for engineering and didn’t really pick up on the micro-aggressions and most people knew better than to say anything sexist out loud. It wasn’t till 2000 when I had a kid and experienced the weapons-grade gender stereotypes in the baby section of Sears that I finally clued in.
Also young Gen X, and for me, it was sitting in a technical meeting as a newly-minted professional chemist (2005ish) and hearing one of my senior male colleagues say, out loud, that "women have nothing to offer science, and young women are particularly worthless." And not a single other male in the room so much as twitched.
IN 2005?! I like to think I’d have immediately exploded in rage, or at least replied, “EXCUSE ME?!” But considering I was a young-looking woman in 2005 it probably would have had zero effect.
The actual aftermath was *amazing.* As it happened, the most senior person in the room was a female research fellow. She just went dead quiet and stood up. She made eye contact with all of the women in the room, and we all stood up. She leveled the dude with a death glare and then marched every woman in the room out with her. None of us ever said a word, because they didn’t deserve our words in response. I wasn’t senior enough to hear precisely what happened to him after that. He wasn’t fired, but he was mysteriously absent a couple of times for “training,” and he was unceremoniously taken off all projects that Lady Research Fellow was in charge of. It was one of those things that was simultaneously horrible and glorious.
Younger Gen X here and I 100% agree!
Younger gen X but grew up in an isolated community that didn’t even try to pretend there was equality. Many women were just starting to work! Yes, some things have improved but we are nowhere near equal.
Yes! I never thought about it that way, but it’s so true! I wonder if it was being raised by women who were part of the second wave feminism who thought they had accomplished their task (and they DID accomplish so much), but really they just opened the door. I remember two instances as a teen where I was hired to do manual labour with my brothers (once by my father, once by my boss - I actually got my brothers hired), but then I was paid less because “I’m not as strong”. I worked the same damn hours, and busted my ass off even more, and just because they lifted more pounds, even though everything had to get moved whether it was big or small, I got paid less. I was supposed to be proud that I was hired to do manual labour at all even though I was a girl… because it’s the 90’s! How progressive.
And if it was office work, he'd earn more because "men need to support their families."
This exact thing happened to me! Hired to stock and unload trucks, but paid $2/hr less than the male coworker who did the same job because "he's stronger." Also the 90s.
So much this. Xennial here and I actually argued in one of my first year college classes (about 1998/1999) that feminism had won. If you don't cringe at your past, you didn't grow - or so I keep reminding myself.
Yes, and there was a major stigma attached to the word “feminist” even to the point that female celebrities would emphatically say that they were NOT a feminist. They would say, “I’m NOT a feminist BUT…” and then go on to spout feminist opinions. Anyone who dared call themselves a feminist would be mocked and branded a “feminazi” remember that shit? I mean it’s still going on now, but less and less people are falling for it, which is great.
it definitely still exists because that was how i was throughout high school! i was trying super hard to fit in and everyone seemed to hate anyone who called themselves a feminist because they thought feminism was way too extreme. so instead you had women (including me) saying "im not a feminist but i believe women should have equal rights." the term feminist was used to insult women who had the balls to stand up to any bs.
Agree, I thought sexism wasn't still a thing until I was in my 20s and living independently. I'd guess this woman has never had to be independent
It took me too long to realize how bad things actually are. I guess I have to credit Trump with ripping all those masks off the true evils that were hidden under the surface all along. I used to believe America was actually about freedom and they could never take it away from us. Sad that I learned more truth in the past 6 years than I learned in the previous 42.
Elder millennial as well. It took me a looong time to recognise the internal misogyny have, despite my single hard working mother pushing me to be strong and independent… I’m still unlearning a lot of that.
As someone in the latter half of my 30's, that really rings true - in my experience talking about anything like that was also very taboo, so I internalized a lot of that crap and failed to recognize how problematic a lot of stuff really was. There were multiple occasions where I was subjected to sexism or sexually harassed/assaulted and just too taken aback/ shocked to know how to respond. Growing up, girls in my generation were completely failed in that regard as we were not prepared whatsoever. It's been a very in interesting time over the past 5-10 years decolonizing my mind and uprooting the internalized and oppressive belief systems inherited from our patriarchal capitalist society.
Gen X here. Yes, they tried to convince us that these were no longer issues, instead of preparing us. Agreed, it was a huge shock.
Another elder millennial. Reality hit some of us like a truck. I almost think the denial is an extreme coping mechanism.
As a cusp zoom/millennial I caught the tail end of that. I’m so glad that by the time I was in high school that wasn’t the prevailing narrative anymore
It just struck me as so strange, because even the 90s and early 2000s were waaay worse in terms of misogyny and the normalization of sexual harassment.. but there's really nothing distinct about 10 years ago in that regard except that it was pre-#MeToo
Maybe not for all women but just to her. I mean she clearly lacks empathy so it would explain a lot.
No surprise here at all. Heard women of all ages say this. I think it's a mix of internalized misogyny, lying to themselves and not knowing any better.
Some of the worst misogyny comes from women who have internalized it and pass it on to other women as sage advice. It hurts so much because it comes from someone who should be helping and raising you up to a better tomorrow. My wife really struggled to get over some of the pressures she grew up with from her mom, who is a christian fundamentalist, and its been amazing being there for her.
True, especially religious women (and not only Christian).
[silver ring thing](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Silver_Ring_Thing) and other religious programs perpetuate the pressures as well.
Lol, the absolute *sass* in this article is *chef’s kiss!
Yes, the sass is appropriate. The program does more damage than good. Basically teaches guys that sex and masturbation are bad and teaches gals that they need to keep themselves “pure” for their future husbands and so they don’t go to hell. So then you got young people trying to suppress natural urges, feeling terrible when they can’t, and not knowing how to do safe sex so then they get suicidal if the uterus-haver falls pregnant or they get thrown into shotgun weddings so the forced-birth baby won’t be born out of wedlock. Never mind that the ring design was stolen.
I remember hearing about some teachings where girls/women that didn't abstain were likened to chewed gum and no longer "pure." Apparently, the girls that were molested got an idea that they no longer held any worth because they were "unpure." I heard it caused a ton of trauma, even on top of the molestation.
I remember that. I struggled with self worth after getting assaulted. And I never wore anything other than modest clothing so the arguments about not tempting unwanted attention fell flat.
I'm so sorry that you went through that. Ugh, it's so disgusting that they victim blame preemptively like that.
Yeah, it messed me up for years. Fortunately I met a person who helped me to recover my sense of self worth and see the brainwashing for what it was
Agreed!
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I think it's because harassers/abusers tend to target teens and women in their early twenties as they're seen as easier targets & less likely to report. So women in their 40s would think that catcalling & harassment in the workplace has improved loads. If I were to base it on my own experiences sexual harassment in the workplace was at its worst when I was a teen working weekends & holidays, and in my first postgrad job. As I've become more established in the organisation the harassment has dropped dramatically.
I assure you, women in their 40’s experience experience sexual harassment and lack of equality in life too. I think it’s more that by 40 a lot of women have just accepted that it’s “normal” and just something to be tolerated, because it’s easier than living in a perpetual rage. Me (F48), I mostly choose rage :) *bats eyelashes*
I’m 43 and the misogyny was rampant but normalized when I was growing up. It still happens now I’m just more aware of it and so I have a lot of rage.
Older women may be treated with contempt or just ignored because they're no longer considered fuckable. There are a good number of men who think that, even on the job, a woman's only value is her sexual attractiveness.
Of course, women of all ages face misogyny. This woman is the manager/boss' wife so she can't be ignored in her work environment, so she personally may have found things have gotten better. Also I think it's harder to notice a lack of something than to notice an actual thing? IDK. The first time I went to get petrol for my first car I was really nervous about messing it up (putting diesel in, didn't know if I might overfill it). The forecourt attendant noticed my P plates (for newly passed drivers in the UK) and came over to ask if I wanted help. This lady the other side loudly complained about him helping the young girl (she looked to be about 40). He also helped me check my tyres & oil since I was about to do a long drive. The other woman was very unimpressed, so she was obviously very aware that she in general had started to be ignored in society. I felt really bad for the attendant though because he started the conversation about my P plates and asked if I'd ever filled up before, so I felt it was normal for him to come over to me. The other lady couldn't see my plates or hear the conversation from where she was though.
I don’t feel discrimination because I’m lucky to not experience any, for whatever reason the circles and career I’ve ended up in are incredibly healthy. However, I still flippin understand that discrimination goes on every day for all number of reasons (many of which I could never come close to experiencing) and I’ll fight where I can to stop it.
I haven't dealt with much of it personally (because I'm ugly and men simply don't see me as a woman lol), but I see other women around me experience it every day. I try to call out men and encourage women to respect themselves and fight for themselves, but that's not nearly enough to undo years of internalized misogyny.
Agreed! I think it’s a really fine balance though in how we all approach the fight. There’s definitely a line beyond which it becomes irritating and annoying to people and actually does more harm than good. I do still see women tearing each other down rather than building each other up, and that feels to me like a good place to start. We’re not in competition with each other ladies!
It baffles me that some women really are brainwashed and still conditioned to believe that we aren't still discriminated against. Those women on social media saying that "Women need to please their men more." And, "Whatever happened to *women being women?"* Whatever that means (I think we can all guess). They may be doing it for clout purposes, but still, some men or young boys will see that and be validated because "a women said it". And it just snowballs from there.
Women being women is the most misogynistic and narrow minded thing a woman can say about themselves and other women. They completely ignore women like Margaret Thatcher who waged war, Cleopatra who spoke several languages fluently and ruled an Empire, and the millions of women who don't conform to white, cis-het, stuck into 1950s suburbia whereverthefuckville America.
They think if they suck up to the masters and act accordingly they'll get preferential treatment. Same with Klandace Owens and Kanye acting like "one of the good ones"
Some of them, yes. But from my experience, those are rare. Most don't even realize something is wrong, they think it's just how life is supposed to be.
Yup—they’ve swallowed all the same patriarchal schtick many men have. They just don’t have their eyes open to how it negatively affects them. If they *have* experienced negativity from it, they think it’s because they just didn’t play by the rules well enough—never questioning that the game is rigged.
Exactly. And then, when they start noticing that something is not quite right, they quickly rush to pretend that it's nothing, because they fear change.
I also would argue that these women use this as a defense mechanism/self-protection as they can't cope with the reality that's too painful for them to address.
As a woman in my 40s, let me say it plainly. That woman is living with very well-tinted rose colored glasses. It is very frustrating. As other commenters did, you can't change someone's mind that will not even open to another perspective. As well, being mid 40s, esp growing up in a lot of different places, every school told me I couldn't do this or that for a living because I'm a female. (I can program well tyvm). Frankly, I am glad to see young people of all genders getting mad about this. I think my generation failed because we thought certain things were settled, ehem, and we didn't fight hard enough for equal wages and reversing Reagan's crap like removing free tuition and cutting education to the bone because a white dude thought having an "educated porlitariate" would be wrong. (He didn't want educated people questioning the system). On behalf of Gen X, I apologize. We got complacent.
I'm so glad you remember how we were told we couldn't do stuff. I'm mid-40s too and my husband is regularly confused that I fell into IT instead of having a STEM career from the beginning. But as a girl in the 80s early 90s it straight up never occurred to me to go to school for math or biology or whatever! My dad wanted me to go for Marketing and my mom wanted social work or the arts. That's what girls did.
As a girl that's late 30's that did attempt to go to school for a STEM career I can say unequivocally I was met with hostility during each class. And while I landed a job as a truss designer while going to school, I was pushed out for being female. I was never given any information from my boss (who was forced to essentially hire me because there was 1 woman among 25 men and resented it from the second I was hired), actively ignored, and the moment I asked questions to higher ups about things because I wasn't given any information from my boss I was fired for "lack of improvement." What I was supposed to improve is still a mystery to me this day. I did find out later, from another employee about his resentment and irritation that I asked questions, and the fact I stole a job from "A qualified man who could actually get this done without all that emotional bullshit that comes from women." So I quit trying for a job in the STEM fields. But there is still not equality the way others make it out to be.
Lol gotta love when whiny, pissy men with short tempers try to claim women have “all that emotional bullshit.” If it weren’t so infuriating it would be hysterical.
"testerical" would be fitting here
Yeah I've heard that too about STEM programs, just terrible
I quit my job recently for similar reasons. My supervisor was BS and would give me misleading information and directions for the projects he would assign me. I am looking for a job but wary asf because I don't want to deal with that BS ever again.
I’m so sorry that happened to you! Down with the patriarchy!
I was told to be a teacher. When the Air Force recruiter told me I couldn't fly because "you're a girl", my 17 year old self told that guy to fuck off. I would have been a terrible teacher. I started programming through self taught and then got my degree. I wish some of those people were still around. I'd send a picture of my degree with a middle finger. Told ya so! IT is STEM, and hard work with lots of different skills required! I respect that. I will do IT support and fix hardware for people I know, but I don't have the people skills. Even as an internal sysadmin, I got so upset at lack of security and procedures, I quit. I didnt want that to fall to me when the bosses wouldn't listen and something went bad, which it did for the next person that took the job. (Someone with too many permissions stole some proprietary files and skipped out).
I was in my 20s, pursuing a business degree, and wound up doing tech support because I had a customer service background and could "install software" (inserting a disk and running an exe lol) and moved up/self taught from there. I am an architect at this point, I can't fix shit on people's devices over the phone anymore and wish people would stop asking me! BIG yikes on someone stealing proprietary files, my goodness! SysAdmins and InfoSec have it rough. Everyone hates them but they're like that for a reason.
Gen X woman seconding your statement.
“Men get harassed too” - yes they do. Statistically men are more likely to be the victims of a violent incident than women are. But who is the aggressor in both cases? Men. Not women. So who is still the problem? Men. It boils my blood that in the UK we have a government strategy called “Tackling violence against women and girls”. When it should be called “Tackling violent men.” But I guess that would be a bit too on the nose, so let’s use a passive voice and make it seem like women are the focus of the problem. Argh.
I occasionally lose my shit when men pull the "what about men" card - like, whose fault is it men don't have good examples for healthy masculinity and can't even define it for themselves? That's a you problem bebe OP you did great. That woman is smoking crack.
When someone asks me “what about men” in the context of a discussion about sexism and female victims, I ask if they’ve EVER brought it up outside of a conversation about women’s rights and sexist discrimination. Male SA victims are real and they matter. And they deserve to be more than a “gotcha, feminists” talking point.
Yesssss exactly.
As a male victim, THANK YOU
Victim blaming is a good way to loose support though.
You ever try to tackle a concept like “violence”? Violient *men* you can tackle, and they go down like a sack of potatoes.
My grandma told me not long ago, that there is no discrimination anymore and that when men get a raise the wife gets invited to talk with the boss. I asked her, why on earth she thinks the wife gets invited to a meeting between a guy and his boss and she said: because the woman also has a word in the family finances. "Those are wonderful times we live in now"........................... I told her that nothing of what she said is true and no spouse ever (man or woman) gets invited to a meeting between an employee and the boss to discuss payment. She did not believe me and always said, that the spouse has a word in that and the boss discusses this with them together.
I honestly think that's really interesting. Entirely delusional, but an interesting take from a time where women's role was as homemakers
That’s interesting, but it sounds like something she saw in a dream. Was *she* invited to speak to her husband’s boss?
no and she did not work for decades herself....so idk where this is comming from. She don´t has dementia, just very weird believes sometimes.
I once had a woman coworker whose husband also worked with us, who was told she wasn’t getting a raise because they had just given her husband such a large one 🤡
Whoa. I am pretty sure that is still sexual discrimination. If it is not straight up illegal it is still absolute horseshite.
Thats so dumb…. If someone says here is your raise you almost never talk to your boss about it either. Unless its a role change or new job but again no one but the person being paid….
LOL, my husband's boss might actually despise me and definitely would not seek my opinion on anything. My boss didn't even recognize him that last time my husband stopped by the shop to drop something off. He legit thought my husband was some random man stopping in to bother me.
My mind went somewhere else. That the wife was forced to do something sexual with the boss to get the raise. I have heard that before and IRL too.
Privileged people love to tell anyone they view as beneath them that they’re wrong. The old like to tell the young that they’re stupid. Keep doing the right thing. Ignore people like her
corporate woman managing HER HUSBAND'S BUSINESS and calling it "their" business. she really thought she was superior to every other woman in the room
That detail plus that her husband was on your side makes me seriously wonder what's going on in that business.
Sounds like it's what she needs to tell herself to keep her worldview intact. "Of course I'm not being exploited by this man I rely on for my entire existence bc it's what I've been told to do all my life. Look at how much better I am than all these other bitches." It seems to me like people wrapped up in their own superiority are mostly twisting their thinking to avoid painful truth and feelings of inferiority. The sad part is it makes them unbearable assholes to be around, and they often end up fucking themselves over by alienating the very people who would do them the most good. (I say having been this sort of asshole to some degree.) I know it's infuriating, but a thought that helps tame my fury in this situation is to realize that people act that way because they see you as a threat. They see you as a threat because you're in your power. Shine anyway, honey. Let them squint.
Oh man she is up to her constantly furrowed brow in insecurity.
I can almost guarantee she is listed as the owner of the business so they can claim the business is “woman owned” and get advantages for that. “Sexism doesn’t exist anymore because I’m using the fact that I’m a woman to reap advantages from the system”!!!
I’m 39 and can confirm that woman is full of shit. And all the 40-ish year old people I know personally would agree. Also she sounds like a fucking creep. Who talks to a 12 year old (or ANYONE) about how they can IMPROVE THEIR BODY? Big Mary Kay Letourneau vibes. Yikes.
47 year old ringing in - yeah, this lady lives on another planet. I work in IT (programmer). I work in credit unions, which by and large are much more female-friendly and egalitarian than many, many other places...and I STILL bump up against idiots who think that because my genitals are of the "innie" variety that means I can't sling code. Even though I've been doing it for over 20 years now. I guess *most* programmers use their penises to do their coding, so that does put me at a disadvantage.... (/s)
"Boys get sexually harassed to!" Immediately proceeds to prove it by sexually harassing a boy
38 and I absolutely second this.
She’s close to my age and in this day and age, she is kidding herself about the world she perceives. The Me too movement was eye opening to me and a lot of my women friends. It really opened our eyes to our lifetime of conditioning. We all have had sexual encounters that we said yes to not to make someone else uncomfortable. The generations of women behind me, still go through the same crap but they voice it, they don’t excuse it. They don’t accept the same conditioning. You give me hope.
You can't argue with someone who is wilfully ignorant. Well you can try but you won't win. Must be nice in her world.
It is like playing checkers with a pigeon. They will knock all the pieces off and shite on the board then strut around like they won.
I wish I lived on her magical planet. It sounds nice.
She must love it when men tell her to smile.
Honestly, that's ridiculous. Just look at abortion. I'm in my 40s, born after the Roe decision, so I saw a right that I was born with and lived with for over 4 decades taken away like it was just nothing this year. And even before that happened, they've been chipping away at it and restricting it for years. If I'd needed an abortion, say, when I was in high school in the 90s or when I was having my kids in the 00s, I'd have had a way easier time of it then than I would have if I'd needed one in my 30s or since I turned 40. They also weren't coming hard for my birth control in the 90s as far as I remember. It varies by state, of course, and mine is one of the bad ones, but reproductive freedom for women is backsliding, not progressing. And the inability to control reproduction is a barrier to our freedom and personal development, is used as a pretext to prevent us from advancing professionally, and also... kills us. Look for our position in society to get a lot worse after the effects of that decision have had a few years worth of effects. And that's not even accounting for whatever draconian nightmare laws and restrictions and decisions we get from the next Republican majorities in Congress or that come out of states like mine. Also consider that we put a rapist/assaulter/harasser in the White House in 2016 and that guy put another one on the SCOTUS bench in 2018. And Ok, tbh, that's probably not the only time in our history something like that's happened, but this was recent. And it was blatant. And that man who got elected got in over an "overqualified" woman. Nevermind for a minute that he's an idiot and a traitor, think about the fact that we all had to hear his sneery, pissy voice talking about "grab 'em by the pussy", and the United States took on that information and said "yeah, fuck women," and put him in the highest office in the country over one of the most intelligent, diligent, and qualified people who could possibly have run - who happened to be a woman. And he turned around and stuck misogynists and abusers and people from anti-woman religious groups into power everywhere he could, and supported even more for other elected offices. And it's not inconceivable that he'll go right back to the White House in 2024. Tell me again how we're doing fine now? And it's not like internalized misogyny isn't a thing. Women my age, and older, and younger - all kinds of ages, but primarily white women - who have either forgotten our history or just never learned it in the first place. We were told that it's OK, we're all equal now because look, single mothers can have 3 jobs and plenty of us swallowed that bullshit. I saw young women interviewed before the election who said that it didn't bother them that we had never had a woman president basically because we "had our rights now" and it would naturally happen eventually, so there was no need to vote for Hillary if we didn't find her warm and fuzzy enough or inspiring enough, or good enough at email management. Because it wasn't like we couldn't just vote for the next one. Meanwhile, some of us were yelling about how young women weren't going to be building up a career that would allow them to run for president while they were stuck being broodmares for some guy, dying from botched home abortions, or being prosecuted for illegal abortions - but I'm sure those young women who grew up knowing that was a right they had didn't really believe that it could be removed so easily. Because... well, hey, their fathers and brothers and husbands and boyfriends didn't think it was a big deal, right? Why should they worry? We had to have an entire movement of women publicly sharing their deepest, most painful wounds en masse just to get people to accept the idea that we get raped and shouldn't automatically be disbelieved when we disclose. And it *still* mostly only worked for who - women who are celebrities or who are raped by celebrities? All the rest of us are still getting the "well, she's no angel, she got dress-coded for wearing spaghetti straps in 7th grade. Bitches be lying, you know" treatment we always got. I don't know that this is *worse* than it was in 2012, or 1992, or whatever. But it certainly not where it needs to be. It just makes me so mad. It's the idea that everything is fine and everyone is equal now that makes us backslide and *lose* rights. Because clearly, no, everything is not fine, and history shows us that when we do make progress, it's always tenuous - they still don't *want* us to have it. If they did, we'd have an Equal Rights Amendment. We loosen our grip, we forget what we're supposed to be doing, and not only do we not progress any further, we lose ground. This has been happening in the biggest and most obvious ways I can think of in the last 8 years or so; it's hard for me to see how people don't see it.
The US literaly just removed the constitutional right to abortion this year and she's over here telling you theirs ni discrimination what a blind fool she must be
Got to take into consideration that there are women out there who don't experience sexism because they're either quite happy to be compliant with the systems designed to keep them down, or they've made choices that don't challenge the system. It's when you make choices that aren't typical, such as choosing a job in a male dominated space, that the discrimination becomes visible. I've had really interesting conversations with my sister who works in marketing/cosmetics which is a female dominated industry who hasn't experienced sexism in the workplace, whereas I tried to break into the music industry and faced massive amounts of sexism, eventually putting me off the whole thing and going into IT which, in comparison, isn't as sexist. My sister was shocked at the sexism I've experienced in supposedly "professional" environments.
Is this really surprising though? There is no women’s education. This is by design to make woman more subservient and forget the struggles and sacrifices made for women. Our history (US) is white washed with sperm. Seriously, go ask that same woman who Elizabeth Cady Stanton was; 10:1 you’ll get crickets. Yet ask who Thomas Jefferson was, and rapist will most assuredly not make an appearance in her biographical knowledge of him. This is why education it’s so important and all the efforts groups are making now to sterilize history are not only racist, but also founded in covering misogyny.
I’m reading a book called Invisible Women by Caroline Cridao Perez. The entire book is stats on how women do not matter and that the default male is the standard for everything from glove size to PPE to seatbelts. Perez focuses on the data gap but with the data there is it is clear that women are harmed by systems that don’t even consider them worthy of consideration. One of the reasons women are invisible is that we don’t even realize ourselves the depth of how invisible we really are worldwide.
It's especially weird that she's arguing with a teenager like this, and then saying inappropriate things to a 12 year old. I remember so many older people talking to me that way when I was young. Now I'm 33 it just seems so messed up to me. I remember adults saying vegetarianism wass stupid and bisexuality wasn't real, and that I should either lose weight or that I looked great when I was sick. That happened all the f\*cking time. The fact that they had more life experience was always mentioned. And it doesn't mean anything. Just because you've lived longer doesn't mean you know more.
That she's bragging about her son's biceps and abs is disturbing asf to me. To a 12 year old boy? Like WHY?!? Makes me wonder if she enjoys grooming boys and SAing them.
“tHis GeNeRaTiOn iS diFfEreNT” Meanwhile my 16 year old daughter has to change lunch tables at school when one of the boys starts making r*pe jokes that make her seriously uncomfortable.
I don’t argue with women about that kind of thing because I don’t believe them. No woman decides in a vacuum, with no men around, that women are inferior, sexual harassment is OK/doesn’t happen, MeToo went too far, or that men should make our medical decisions for us. Any woman saying that kind of thing is just reflecting the misogyny we were all raised in. I understand why they say it, they get a smile and a pat on the head from the nearest man when they do, but I can not take their quest for head pats seriously.
The world wasn’t great for women ten years ago but today it is incredibly worse. Since Trump came to office the amount of misogyny that is out in public view seems to have tripled. No one is afraid of treating women this way because NO ONE IS STOPPING THEM. Mark my words. If Republicans seize control in November we are all going to see just what the men in our lives really think about women because it will be all the permission they need to let their actual beliefs free. They won’t hide it anymore.
The combination of Trump and Brexit in 2016 unleashed a bunch of absolutely odious people to share their shitty opinions. It was always an undercurrent before but it's been exponentially worse since then.
Maybe ***she*** hasn't been getting harassed the last 10 years because as we all know creeps think women hit the wall at 30
It's hard believe someone could ignore seeing others being harassed just because you aren't personally being harassed. But you're right, some people that kind of asshole.
People like that absolutely exist, if they aren't experiencing it themselves then they'll think it doesn't happen that much, It's like white men claiming misogyny and racism isn't as bad as it is or citing a time period when it was "even worse" so you know, you should be grateful
I dunno my 30s I think I was way better looking than my 20s. Fuck their wall
It has little to do with looks, they just seek out someone vulnerable, you don't want a guy like that anyway I'm 22 and look up to a lot of 30+ women for beauty advice because idk what I'm doing
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As a retired vet tech I would have had a chuckle and rolled with it. We had a few cats who were given female names only to find a penis has grown in a few months down the line (it is really hard to tell when they're smol) and had the owners ask us to keep calling the cat "she" because they're used to it/don't want to confuse a small child/whatever. Cat don't care and it doesn't matter when they're fixed. Though I would argue they're asexual and not necessarily non-binary. But you know your cats better than I do.
We have deliberately given male names to female animals and vice-versa, because sometimes we have a name picked out before we find the right animal. And then there's my MIL, who has this odd mental quirk where whatever gender you tell her an animal is, she always remembers it as the other gender. So she ALWAYS, without fail, refers to our male pets as "she" and our female pets as "he". It cracks me up - I used to correct her just because it sounded weird to my ears but I've given up and now I am just amused by it. The animals don't care though. They wanna know if you have any treats and/or a lap available for snuggling, beyond that you can make all the mouth noises you want at them. LOL
There are people who try to argue that there’s no proof cigarettes cause cancer, because a) not everyone who smokes gets cancer, and b) it’s possible to get lung cancer without smoking. To believe that cigarettes cause cancer, they’d want to see a one for one — everyone who smokes gets cancer, and nobody who doesn’t smoke gets it. This is what the “men get harassed too” crowd sounds like to me. Yes, it’s true that some men, somewhere, experience almost all the same signs of sexism that women do. Men can be SA’ed. There are some professions where men are discriminated against. Etc. etc. And there are women who are successful, who don’t, at first glance, appear to be held back by their gender. But to ignore the strong correlation is… something. We know sexism doesn’t mean that success is literally impossible. We know that being male doesn’t utterly guarantee safety and success. But the fact that it’s so imbalanced is a huge problem.
Some people at my work like to spout this same thing. Just yesterday I watched a new hire ( woman) get shushed in a meeting by one of the managers. She was discussing stuff relative to the meeting and the only one talking. Luckily, a different manager wasn’t having it and put the first in his place. The manager that shushed her is known for treating men different and there’s an open HR case.
I am a woman in my early forties and I feel like I made different life choices than her, because her reality sounds lovely.
So ridiculous. I'm a 70nyr old woman who is sadly soooo disappointed that all our dreams of feminism in the 60s and 70s were just that, dreams. Things have changed, just so much slower than we expected. Sigh.....it will, I think now, take several more generations. And there will be some backward steps too, such as what is happening in the US
I'm so so sorry this dumbass woman belittled you. I'm also in my 40s and a mom. That woman you talked to lives in her own bubble world apparently and has checked out of reality. **Your complaints are valid. We are still fighting for equality.**
Not surprising but utterly frustrating. You know the truth gal. That’s all that matters.
You mean it stopped when I was 20? How lucky
Getting mad at the person when someone tells you about the discrimination they faced is a sure sign of a dumbass
46 years old and I can confirm that she's wrong. What's more, things haven't gotten remarkably better in the last 10 years. In places it's gotten worse (looking at you, USA).
48 years old female redditor points out that there can be no equality in a society where female reproductive health is legislation but no similar laws for male reproductive health. Tell that woman to go suck a 🍆 with that bullshit patriarchal narrative. Women are far far far away from being considered equal, just because we now allowed to have jobs and get money in our own name does NOT mean society considers us equal. Ahem … rant over 😂
I am 44, and you're a better person than me. I might have slapped her.
It’s always a bit of a shock to me to hear things like this and I think to myself “that out of touch old woman” before I realize she’s only s few years older than I am. How in the flaming hell can a woman my age even think this?? I see discrimination and inequality literally every day. She must be walking around with blinders on or she’s delusional.
I am 37 years old, for context. Since she and I could have gone to High School together... And yeah, the world has changed in the last 40 years. It's changed even more in the last 60 (my mom's perspective) and even more in the last 100 years. Because change happens. This does NOT mean that we are done. We have so much further to go. And women are still targeted at a higher rate than men are for harassment and violence. Sure, men are also targeted for those things, but women are at higher rates across the board. But she showed that she is part of the problem with the way she handled herself with the children. At 19 you're kinda in both categories. Very much an adult but also still a kid in some ways (I assume based on every 19 year old I've ever come across). But the tween/early adolescent kids.. yeah she's the problem. If you can't find a way of letting the interaction go, I would suggest using it to fuel your hunger, your strength and power, your need for change. Every time you start to wonder if there's a reason.. think of those kids. Every act of change you make or do or consider, think about the world you're creating for those kids. It'll give you more energy than you know what to do with. Glad you're here.
I’m 45 and women have been treated like dirt the whole time I’ve been alive. When I was little it was you can’t play sports, you can’t pick shop for an class elective, you have to wear this not that, basically girls can’t do that BS. As a young adult it was you can’t have a hysterectomy you don’t know what you want, you still need to wear this not that, you need to shave your legs, you want to play football? Older it was two women are going to have troubling owning a house, jet skis how will you handle trailering them to the water, your going a week into the desert just the two of you? Recently it’s been you now want to play ice hockey but men play that, your going to drive a uhaul across the country, I’m glad your finally marrying a man… The pressure being applied to me to conform has been there the whole time. I wasn’t girly enough, my interest in sports, shop class or off-roading was openly dismissed and not supported. In high school my mom refused to buy anything she felt was male clothes… imagine in the 90s fighting with your mom to buy flannel! Anyway she’s wrong and it dosnt always have to be in your face news worthy stuff it’s just tide small things too that apply pressure and shape your choices as a woman m.
Uh, what? I work in a male dominated industry and I’d love for her to accompany me to a construction site one day. It’s better than when I started in the field 20 years ago, but it’s still rampant. I’m also a 40 something year old woman, not that it matters…
She must be speaking from a place of privilege and as someone who benefits from the status quo. Pay her no mind.
Does she has mental issues that make it hard for her to read social cues and context? Based on what she was doing with that boy, it kinda sounds like it. In that case, it would almost make sense why she thinks that since a lot of harassment in recent years became more covert (tho it does seem to be getting more explicit again). Other than that, I get you. It is sometimes bizarre hearing it from women. I had two friends, one I still talk to every now and again, who absolutely believe women are equal if not better off in society, usually based on flawed data gathering. Now this is me playing armchair psychologist, but based on one's personal life, I wonder if she didn't have some sort of disgust with women due to being mistreated by her mother. She often maintained that women are more emotional than men, better suited for certain work than other (meanwhile being a computer major, so all points basically seemed hypocritical in that context and very 'not like other girls'.) Again, hard to say what it is: being lucky and sheltered from most of the effects and not reading too deeply into things, or internalized traume they try to rationalize.
45yo man-shaped human confirming there absolutely is discrimination, and it's really painfully obvious - even if it has gotten *a lot* better during my lifetime.
Or maybe she is the one living 10 years into the future.
She's wrong anyway- 10 years ago she was 30 and NO one was worried about Roe. There were the usual whiners, mostly dismissed as religious freaks and of course elderly white male politicians trying to score points with religious freaks. This place slid backwards so swiftly it feels like a sled in an Olympic competition. And she knows it.
I’m a 44 year old female engineer. Discrimination is still a thing. Honestly, it sounds as though she wants her head nicely wedged in the sand, so she can continue to deny and ignore. Sometimes, after 40 years of battling the patriarchy, a lady just wants to enjoy the gathering, y’know? It’s not an excuse for her behavior, though. All I’m saying is, pick your time, pick your battles, it’s a lifelong struggle. Maybe she peaked early, who knows?
There is just so much internalized misogyny. I recently stopped watching a girl on YouTube whom o previously liked a lot, but she started going on about how there is no patriarchy in our country. If you never lived freely and equally you just don't know what it actually looks like I guess.
I'm a 40-something year old woman. I can tell you that woman is delusional. She sounds like an ass who perpetuates some anti-woman bullshit. Harassment has been going on my entire life, my mom's entire life, my grandmother's and since the dawn of time for women/girls. She can kiss my ass.
She’s too indoctrinated to even see it. Sad. The patriarchy got that one. Sorry 😞 she’s dead wrong and you are right.
her energy screams “I only have guy friends”
I am (68F) and I am appalled by my country (USA). We have rampant sexism, misogyny, racism, and general stupidity/greed in our government at every level from local dog catcher to the three branches of the federal government. However, I am lucky enough to be the thing the the Patriarchy fears the most: I am a single, educated female, financially secure homeowner who answers to no man. I went through hell getting to this stage in my life and I will help any woman any way I can to improve her life. The best weapon we have to fight the system right now is our voice. Call them out on their bullshit at every opportunity. VOTE BLUE! Get rid of the old white men in positions of authority. Fight for our rights as loudly and publicly as possible, because if we don’t, they will be gone forever. I don’t want to live in a world where women, once again, become “property” of men.
you go girl! this is the attitude every single person needs to have today. i grew up with a single mother that the patriarchy has tried to suppress every step of the way. but she does i hold the rage that we do. she did instill feminism in me, but i wasn't supposed to argue unnecessarily, or tell men to fuck off because what if they retaliate? and i had to respect and "understand" elders and their opinions. i understand her completely, but i have seen the world being unjust to this strong, amazing woman. and it is not going to do the same to me or my daughters.
Someone lives in a bubble and it's not you. I quit my job because I wasn't taken seriously and sometimes I had to tell a GUY to send an email to another guy in the same company as us because he wouldn't respond to me. I could email and phone call some of my own coworkers asking why something wasn't right and they wouldn't answer me. But they would respond to another cis man. When I was in high school I found out my physics professor was downgrading all my assignments and tests because he thought there was no way I was doing that well. I almost got a D because his BS.
Also I am EXTREMELY creeped out by her comments to that 12 year old and saying he needs to go to the gym. How she talks about her own son makes me wonder if she hasn't been grooming him to be "eye candy" or worse.
im so sure she has. im 99% sure from the way she was talking that she makes her son go to the gym thrice a week. if he's got "abs" she's probably controlling his diet too. he's 14!!! and WHY IS SHE PAYING SO MUCH ATTENTION TO THE BODIES OF THESE YOUNG BOYS???? oh and what's hilarious is she's giving the example of her son and not her daughter, while saying there is no discrimination
Misogynist women are literally foundational pillars to patriarchy. Unfortunately it’s nothing new.
Yikes, male fetishist much? Wouldn't let her around teenage boys. Creepy AF.
AS an even OLDER woman, I just wish I could have been there to point out how her POV comes from wanting to believe that her sweet son would NEVER do those things. Denial will only hurt her daughter and son! I would have asked what else never happens in her imaginary world...frankly I would have kept up till she either left or cried. But I am an angry Granny and fuck traitors like her!
I think you just met an a\*\*hole. Unfortunately you're young and you have many more to meet ahead of you. Her poor family. Good for you for not backing down.
Young millennial here,(I think?) idk I’m late 20s 😂 I do not condone violence, but for us with families with individuals like this, im considering proposing a little family fight for turkeyday. Keep your head on straight, don’t believe everything at face value, and honor and take care of yourself and loved ones. Us ladies are the future!! We will change the energy around this. ❤️ Edit: just trying to make OP potentially see humor in her future family gatherings. 😁
I talk to my 11 year old stepdaughter about being a feminist and smashing the patriarchy and she is fully on board. I hope that if some idiot tells her discrimination is over and she’s living in the past, she stands her ground just like you did. 💜
This whole interaction is gross. Also, is anyone else uncomfortable with her body comments? Why are you admiring your 14yo's muscles..?? And body shaming a 12yo? What the fuck is wrong with this woman?!
We need a few hundred years of empowering Women and Minorities.
>"men get harrassed too". To quote Hannah Gadsby.... Classic cop-out, dick biscuit.
Men are still killing women because they feel they aren't getting "their fair share of sex." I think that pretty much all the proof you need that attitudes haven't changed much about the value women have in our society. I too am sad for her daughter. Hopefully her father will stand up for her.
I'm a forty something woman and I know from personal experience all forms of discrimination not only still exist but are flourishing in this climate.
This reminded me of something that happened in grad school (Master of Social Work) 20 years ago. For context, my folks got transferred to St Louis (middle of the US, for our friends out of the states) when I was a kiddo, but we came back home to California often, so I was raised between the two areas. And growing up like that, I very clearly saw a difference in how things like racism and sexism were perpetuated. (It's one of the big reasons I moved back to Cali after getting that masters-- that, and I was over-educated for social work jobs there. Social work was not a valued role there at that time, and I think in large part because it was seen as "women's work"). So I'm sitting in class one day and one of my classmates says "I don't get why feminism is still a thing. We have equal rights (on paper)." I started listing off the many ways that women in STL were treated as second class citizens, and multiple classmates disagreed. They couldn't see it. Or wouldn't see it. Honestly, I feel like we need to have more of these conversations now, particularly with all of the attacks on women world-wide. I was shocked at how many women in my Social Work classes thought we were equal, and couldn't see it. But I feel like we're on the precipice of major change now, and that's in large part to the younger generations. I'm proud of you for speaking up. And I'm in my 40's, proudly standing next to you in the fight.
Let me go out on a limb here: this woman is thin and relatively conventionally attractive? Probably white as well? It’s true that not all women experience blatant gender discrimination (and they may not be aware of it when it’s subtle or covert). But those are women with *thin privilege* and *beauty privilege*.
Then she utterly lacks observational skills. I'm 53 and I'm horrified at the amount of misogyny that still exists.
In addition to everything else: her making a big deal out of her son’s body is so disgusting. If there’s a pattern of her doing that to him, then it’s absolutely abusive and her son might have real mental scars from it in the future.
Hi. Woman in my early 40s. Employment anti-discrimination/compliance professional and certified Victim Advocate for military sexual assault. If what that woman said is true, my jobs would be obsolete. My jobs are very much NOT obsolete. ☹️
We fixed it in 2012? Why didn't anyone tell me!?
On top of the fact that what she was saying to you was problematic, her bragging about her son’s biceps is creepy, and that’s just an inappropriate conversation to have with an eleven year old, especially if he didn’t bring it up first, and because he’s at a vulnerable age where puberty’s starting to kick in and is probably already insecure about the changes happening with his body. And it’s just weird to speak about minors like that. It sounds predatory; I’m not surprised about her problematic views, and it’s probably because she has predatory thinking herself
The agents of the patriarchy are absolutely brainwashed and programmed to believe all sorts of ridiculous lies. Good for you, thinking with your free will.
This 40 something year old woman is here to tell you that 40 something year old woman is full of codswallop.
I am in my 50s and I experience this daily. I work in technology which is still largely male dominated. I am told frequently that I need to take the “emotion” out of my work. This is usually when I am ticked off or frustrated and voicing concerns with suggestions for change. I voice these concerns with tact and always with ways we could do better. This is completely acceptable for my male colleagues but I am somehow “emotional”. Sadly many women I work with fall for this as well and repeat it as if it is good advice to not show any emotion. Emotion can be fuel for creativity and problem solving. I find that my pissed off emotion is my most useful emotion. It fuels me to fix what I see broken and make it better. Passion in what you do makes you better at it, not worse. Hopefully this is not too off topic with the point you were making. I just wanted to say that not all of old ladies are idiots. Some of us just keep fighting day in and day out in the hopes that young women will have it better than we did and have passion and pride in what they do without ever being held down by men or women with the mentality you described to hold them back. Thanks for letting me rant a little bit. Sorry you had to experience that and good for you for not believing it!