Sexism

I grew up in a pretty liberal household. My parents always told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, and never told me not to do this or that cause I was a girl. I was always a bit of a tom-boy. I stopped wearing skirts and dresses when I was 6 or so and didn't wear one again until high school. I've always been interested in science and good at math. I don't cry much. I don't consider hormones an excuse to be a bitch to people. I've always been pretty tough, and generally opposed to letting feelings have anything to do with my actions and choices. I hate asking for help and especially "emotional support". I'm not the most stereotypical girl. Until very recently I would never have said that I grew up with sexism.

Recently, however, I am beginning to see ways that sexism has always been a part of my life. Perhaps I am such a tom-boy because of it. My father never would have told me "You can't do such and such, you're a girl," but when ever I spoke to him about problems I was having he would take things into his own hands. When I complained about it he would say "Well that's just something you should learn about men, if you tell them a problem they try to fix it. They don't just want to talk about it like women do..." Now that, in my mind, boiled down to, "Girls just want to bitch about stuff and boys actually want to fix it," and since the second option sounded more productive, I went with it. I stopped considering it useful to talk to people about problems unless I wanted their practical help fixing them.

There were also constant cautions about guys. "Judith," my dad used to tell me, "Guys are always just going to be looking to have sex with you." I translated this one as "No guy is ever going to want anything from me but sex," Which has lead to a problem or two when people want to be friends with me, or are looking for emotional support. In relationships with guys I tend to figure that there might as well be sex and nothing else, since that's really all they're looking for any way. Of course that's never true, but I always worry that people asking for support, or wanting to help me, are just trying to trick me into looking weak, to make them feel like they're in control.

There are pressures put on guys as well, to either conform and be strong and stoic and hardcore, or rebel and be sensitive and open and sweet. To grow up with the idea that women want emotional support and not sex, or that they should always try to fix problems that people present them with instead of just listening and being there for their friends, pushes them one way or another as well. It frustrates me that so many differences between people are attributed to gender, even though perhaps they are nothing but personality traits, and how many personality traits I see in myself that I have developed based on gender stereotypes.

Very few people in middle class liberal society today says that individual girls can't do anything individual boys can, (though I think a few more would say that individual boys can't do anything that girls can) but there are still a set of assumptions about gender rolls that everyone must react to by either conforming to expectations or rebelling against them. The frustrating thing is that even rebelling against your gender role is not helping to get rid of sexism, because you are still acting in a way that was defined in one way or another by the stereotypes you were trying to obviate. Even if you would rather do nothing about them at all, and just follow your personal preferences, society reads your actions through a big pink or blue filter, and puts you in the conformity box or the rebellion box.

How can we escape this really stupid web of mess and gender gender gender gender? I'm going to go ahead and be a pessimist and say that we can't. Or at least not individually. I'm only starting to be aware of these issues, and at this point, I feel like many of the character traits I cultivated as a reaction to the sexism I encountered when I was a kid are really now a part of me. I am a little insensitive, and a little bit cynical about the motivations of most of the people I encounter. These things make me who I am.

In my dealings with people though, I think it is important to try to minimize the stereotyping that I do. I am trying now not to say "Guys are like such and scuh..." or "Girls are like such and such..." I am ready to admit that it is difficult. I find it difficult to separate my personality from the prejudices that shaped it, but I think it is possible, at least in my behavior to come off a little less sexist than I am, and therefore prevent my sexism from rubbing off on people. If everyone could do this, eventually perhaps the stereotypes would just fade. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about the stereotypes that we have in a serious and reflective way, just that we shouldn't perpetuate them by taking them for granted or even mentioning them in jest.

I was talking to a friend the other day who said that the most important thing to do about getting rid of sexism is to talk about it, and I would agree with that, as long as we don't make it an issue of men oppressing women. Sexism isn't just the Man keeping you down. Many women have expectations that the men they interact with will behave a certain way, and pressure them to conform to or rebel against those expectations. I sure do. Pressure comes from within genders just as much as it comes from the opposite gender. Sexism isn't about men and women; It's about a way people think. I wouldn't call myself a feminist, but would say that I'm an anti-sexist. I'd like to see that way change.