One phrase that is guaranteed to send me into an instant rage is “But if you reverse the _____ (genders, sexual orientations, races, etc.), then people would be up in arms about it!”
I hate it with the intensity of a thousand suns. Why? Because it strips all context from a situation. “A woman can catcall a man on the streets, but let a woman do it, and suddenly, he’s a creep!”
First of all, the vast majority of women do not catcall on the streets. I’ve not seen a gang of women standing on the corner and hassling random men as they walk by about the size of their package or how they would like the man to nail them hard. And, by the way, let’s assume these women are large, tough, and not the kind of women the guy is sexually inetreested in. It’s not Salma Hayek, Lucy Liu, or Uma Thurman wanting to climb their rods. And there is a history of women violently attacking men who turn them down. And men in the workplace were treated like eye candy who were only there as visual decoration. And to be harrassed.
Oh, let’s not forget the sexism of women being held to a double standard at work, too. She is supposed to not be too soft otherwise she’s giving into her girly side. Too cold, however, and she’s a bitch. Women are expected to sooth men and make sure not to rile them up, but they can’t be too diffident about it either.
Then, let’s not forget dress. There are so many pitfalls a woman can fall into with dress, including makeup, stockings, nails, jewelry, hair–and that’s in addition to the clothing itself. There are so many hiddens dos and don’ts when it comes to dressing while female.
So, yeah, add all that to the equation and then maybe you’ll have a point. Otherwise, simply flipping the genders is lazy and doesn’t make the point you think it makes.
This comes into play often around this time because of Christmas. It’s a Christian holiday, but many Christians like to pretend it’s not. They say it’s a cultural holiday and not a Christian one. I’m not disagreeing that ti’s a cultural holiday at this point. But the roots of it is Christian and it’s infuritaing when Christians try to pretend it’s not. Doubly so because we the ‘war on Christmas’ is now a thing that some Christians are waging specifically because they think we have gotten too far away from Christianity during the Christmas season.
This comes up every year on Ask A Manager because of holiday parties. One year, a manager said she put up a small Christmas tree in the lab in which she worked with grad student workers. She asked ahead of time (a few hours) by Slack or Team and claimed no one saaid they had a problem with it. She admitted that she didn’t really give much time for an answer and acknowledged that maybe the students might feel uncomfortable bringing it up, but glossed by it pretty quickly.
Alison who is Jewish was forthright in saying it wasn’t the biggest of deals, but it could absolutely be seen as othering. I love that her basic rule for questions like this is that if you’re in the majority, you don’t get to dictate how people not in the majority should feel. She does the same when it’s a LGBTQ+ question or a race question. It makes me feel more comfortable because it’s so dispiriting to have a question like that and have the majority bleating about how it’s not REALLY Christian to them.
I can’t read the c omment section at Slate when these kinds of questions come up, especially queer questions, because the commentariat is so anti-queer over there. Not in an overt way, but it’s death by a thousand cuts.
When it comes to Christmas, I don’t really care either way. I spent decadse hating Christmas, but that slowly faded over time. I will say that I still get tired of hearing about it starting from today. Yes, it’s the first day of December. Yes, advent calendars, blah, blah, blah. I don’t give a fuck! I don’t care about Christmas decorations, although Christmas lights can be charming. But in general, I don’t care. I like winter wonderland scenes because I like winter, but I don’t like them with overtly religious themes.
I do care that two of the radio stations I have in my car play Christmas music for the entire month of December. I hate Christmas music. I have written at length about how I find it treacly and tooth-achingly sweet. Plus, a lot of the old ones are just so simpering. There is only one I like. O Holy Night. I have said this time and time again. I have found many versions of the carol that I love so much–and a few that are terrible.
I am so happy that I don’t watch TV any longer. I don’t have to see the Christmas ads that choke the airwaves. If I watch something online, I have adblock–or it’s Netflix which has no ads.
I will admit that I have been watching Sugar Rush Christmas (a gentle competition reality show that has four duos who compete against each other making desserts, and this is the Christmas edition) because it’s that time of year. It’s one of my favorite competition shows even though it’s not the best by far. It’s comfort viewing, and I like the host, Hunter Marsh. Yes, he’s a bit cheesy, but he’s better than most of them. Also, he’s gluten intolerant, too, which I appreciate.
I much prefer being indifferent to Christmas than hating it with all my heart. Granted, I still don’t want to hear about it or talk about it ad nauseam, but I can politely put up with it. Or ignore it. In the RKG Discord, I just skim by it. There are one or two other people who are not into Christmas at all, but for the most part, it’s all fa la la la la going on in the chat. I noticed thta it was especially the Americans, but there were a few Brits who were excited about the advent calendars. The Americans were more into the lights.
I do buy gifts for a few people, but that’s it. I may go to my brother this Christmas if I feel better. My niece asked me if I was going to Thanksgiving, and I said no but maybe Christmas. We’ll see how I feel in a few weeks.