Here’s the thing about gender. In an ideal world, I would not have to think about it at all because I don’t care about it (to an extent). Just as I don’t think about religion or children unless someone else brings it up. In that ideal world, I would just be a woman and people would accept that without question. I would not have people telling me that I was womanning incorrectly or pointing out all the ways in which I was not really a woman. I ended the last post by talking about the sexism of my father. His attitude is one big reason I’m a feminist now. He definitely believed that I was a fuckup as a woman, but he wasn’t the only one.
Here are many ways I have been dismissed as a woman:
1. Not having children (always at the top).
2. Not getting married.
3. Not caring about fashion and/or makeup.
4. Not liking dolls (as a girl).
5. Not caring about cooking, cleaning, or sewing.
6. Liking sex.
7. Imaging having sex with strangers.
8. Liking sex a lot. As in every day a lot.
9. I don’t shave anything (I’m also Asian).
10. I don’t do anything to improve my appearance.
11. I treat men, women, nonbinary, genderqueer, agender people as equally as I possibly can.
Just a note on that last one. I’m not saying that women are worse about this, but that women can be as bad about it. Because of how patriarchy works, women oftentimes do the major lifting of keeping other women in check. Patriarchy wouldn’t work if there weren’t women who were willing and/or eager to hold up the status quo. This is just an unspoken truth about sexism. Women are just as capable (if not more) of being sexist against other women.
Side note to the side note: This is part of the insidiousness of sexism. Women learn early on that in order to move up in America, you have to appease the men at the top. One way of doing this was to be more ruthless than men, claw your way up the ladder, and then kick it down below you so no other women can climb up it.
Side note to the side note to the side note: This is why I’m deeply suspicious when people say that the world would be a better place if women were in charge. I say it depends more on the system than the gender of the people in charge. If the system is sick, then it doesn’t matter the genders of the people in charge.
Back to my list.