Re: Emotional reactions to news » Tabitha

I grew up in the 1960s before feminism exerted any influence. Everything you described here is very familiar. Of course, in retrospect, it was absurd to treat women such that everyone accepted that there be subordinate roles that society dictated they assume. I was not immune to this. I had been exposed to very sexist messages growing up. At age 20, I remember being angry that my girlfriend began working. That was my job. I think I was also afraid of her becoming independent. In my mind, college was not for women to develop a career. It was just something to do to fill time. How very immature of me. I was clueless. Fortunately, I educated myself out of most of these role stereotypes and false sexist ideas. I discovered that I enjoy my relationships with women more when there is the presumption of equality and the recognition of, and respect for, each other's egos.

> > I'd be really interested if you could share some specific examples of how that was conveyed to you.
>
> The idea was everywhere, but not explicitly spoken. All the leaders I saw were male, except elementary school teachers. (Yet even with teachers, as you moved up in grades there were more and more male teachers, which conveyed to me the idea that male teachers were higher status.) The TV news anchors were male. Narrators on TV shows were male. The lead characters on cartoons were always male. Female characters, when present at all, were ultra-feminine and presented as romance interests. I remember being very confused, watching Bugs Bunny, Popeye, and so forth, that there was different music for when female characters appeared, and the male character suddenly had hearts popping out of his eyes. The original Star Trek was the first grownup TV show I saw. Again, the lead characters were all males, the few women were part of sex/romance subplots.
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> In social situations and families, it seemed like people showed more respect and deference to males. It seemed the women shrank back a bit, to let the males take center stage. Males got the "good" chair in the living room. Males had the better car (sportier, more expensive), and whenever Dad was in the family car, he drove, even though Mom was perfectly capable of driving.
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> At family gatherings, men sat around watching TV and playing games while women cooked. Then we ate, male at the head of the table, male saying the blessing, then once again women cleaned while men watched TV and played games. I never saw the men do even a token amount of helping. It just struck me as ridiculous and unfair.
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> In church, the pastor was always male, the Sunday school teachers always female. Again, that said to me that men led adults, and women only led children.
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> I remember movies (probably old 50s movies that were running on local TV in the 70s) where single women characters were pathetic stereotypes of desperation. Younger women were solely focused on getting their man. The women's stories always ended with marriage. Comedies had jokes about women needing to be reigned in by their husbands. There were shows where the dad was wise and amazing and everyone deferred to him (naturally), and other shows where the dad was a huge jerk but everyone deferred to him anyway.
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> Any time overt sexism came up, even as jokes in conversation, I don't recall my mom ever defending women. Instead, I recall her criticizing her mother-in-law, who she said was "domineering" toward her husband, and how wrong that was. My mom rarely said critical things about other people, so that really stood out. I got the idea mom thought that things just worked better, and were more right somehow, when women were subservient to men. Yet she also told me that there were "ways to get your way without seeming like you're getting your way" which must have been a necessary survival skill for her to have, while supporting the necessary order of things.
>
> In my own family, my brother always got the larger bedroom. I complained that it was unfair. My mom's explanation was that he had larger furniture. I didn't think to point out that it was unfair he got larger furniture.
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> For maybe a year it was a fad among the boys to call each other a "woman" as an insult. They put the emphasis on the first syllable, "you're a WOMan". I was thinking, wait, why is it an insult to be a woman? My brother even called me a WOMan. I told him it didn't make sense because I was a woman. But most of the time he called me a dog. I remember it as him calling me a dog all through my childhood, in private and in front of my parents, and rarely if ever getting told to stop. So there was the heirarchy, laid out in children's insults. Put down the boys by calling them WOMan (the level below, even though they were boys and a WOMan was presumably an adult female). Put down the girls by calling them dogs (because to go lower than a girl you have to be a dog).
>
> Personally, I never felt my family had any expectation for me whatsoever. By the time my brother was 6 or 7, I knew that my father insisted he would go to college. It was not mentioned for me. All through school, I was a top student, and he was an average student. I wasn't commended for my grades, and I was confused by it. I assumed it was because they didn't want to show up my brother. Which isn't necessarily sexism, but it was part of not feeling like my achievements mattered. In general, when the family talked about others, it seemed like the males' lives were of more interest and importance.
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> And this was before anyone in my family got into Christian fundamentalism. Then the hierarchy became overt. Men were the head of the family, women their "help-meet". The universe would come crashing down, apparently, if women were considered equals to men. My mom married a man that was less than her in any metric you could come up with-- education, intelligence, finances, family status, ability to get along with people, health, yet she was bound and determined to make him head of the household.
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> >
> > it may have been that although my father worked longer hours than my mother, he did most of the cooking and a fair amount of other things around the house.
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> I think if I had seen that, it would have made a big impression. In my 20s I spent a holiday with friends of a friend, and the husband cooked, brought us (ladies) drinks, and left the room so we could all talk. I was gobsmacked. I had literally never seen a bunch of women (a) get to have fun and be the center of attention or (b) have the husband bring drinks.
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> > Whoever cared the most took over any given task. Battles were won on both sides, based again more on who cared enough to keep fighting.
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> Yeah, that's how it works with my current in-laws. Back home, things were just so much more gendered. And women were defined by their ability to keep an immaculate house.
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> >
> > Was it gender specific feedback you got at home, or a general tearing down of self confidence? Were brothers considered to matter more? Did a father's wishes always override a mother's? Was it learned directly or through example? If you care to share...
> >
>
> So that was a lot of examples. In general it was just a feeling that everyone around me agreed idea that males were the natural leaders, or entitled to the lead role whether or not they deserved it. And it just irked me, because I felt like a full human being. I had a sense of justice, and I wasn't naturally drawn to subservience, housework, child-care, or ultra-feminine clothing.
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>

Some see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.

- George Bernard Shaw

Re: Emotional reactions to news » Tabitha

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