I think the problem that almost any social movement has is when one person or a few people try to speak for a whole demographic or community. Inevitably this is going to cause problems, because each person’s life experience is going to be different even if you share an identity (female, gay, black, etc.). If there is one thing a liberal arts education has taught me it is this.
That’s why I want to start this series speaking about my personal experiences with gender discrimination and prejudice. Because these are my experiences, they are the only ones that I can speak about. Most of these experiences happened when I was participating in an activity deemed “typically male.” I’ve always been interested in “typically male” interests. I put “typically male” in quotes, because I think it’s a bullshit idea, but it is something that society seems to agree on.
Some of the “typically male” things that I enjoy include: camping, construction/building things, fishing, golf, baseball, etc. I’ve geared my extracurriculars accordingly. I was captain of my golf team in high school, and I’ve built numerous house with Habitat for Humanity. Below are a few of my experiences with discrimination and prejudice as a woman in these “male” fields.
Golf:
If you know anything about golf, you know that it’s pretty easy for the course to get backed up. All it takes is one slow player. This is just something that you have to get used to, and as a team we were used to it. One day, though, we had one of the course rangers come up to our group and tell us that we had to speed it up. What were we supposed to do? The guys in front of us were still on the green. According to the ranger we were supposed to just go ahead and hit. We politely informed him that we couldn’t hit, because there were still people on the green, and it’s good golf etiquette to not hit if you think that you’re going to be golfing onto them.
The ranger kind of gave us a smirk, like he thought there was no way any of us could hit that far, and then instructed us to hit. We were obviously insulted, but the best revenge is proving someone wrong. So our strongest driver went up, smashed the ball, and it plopped right onto the green. “Four!” she yelled a little too late.
Sure, it felt good to prove to this chauvinistic asshole that women could play like any guy, but the problem is that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. There should never be a situation when a man is assuming that a woman can’t do something simply because she is a woman. Actually, there should never be a situation in which any person is assuming that another person can’t do something simply because they are who they are. This is a type of oppression. When you tell someone they can’t do something, you are implying that they are less than you, and are oppressing them into a position of less power whether or not this is the intention.
Habitat for Humanity:
I love Habitat for Humanity. I think it’s an amazing non-profit that does a lot of good work. I’ve met many of my college friends through it, and I enjoy taking a hands-on approach to service. I also just genuinely enjoy building things and manual labor. The people are usually genuinely kind people.
However, the majority of the volunteers are old, retired (and rich), white men. This is not always the most politically correct demographic. My experience with these Habitat volunteers is that they mean well, but don’t realize that they are being offensive.
Remember what I said about assuming that someone can’t do something? Well, the same goes for my experience with Habitat. There would be two jobs: sweeping out the garage or hammering a doorframe. I would offer to hammer the doorframe, because I prefer a more physical job, but also because I’m pretty damn good at driving a nail straight. Because I was assumed to be weaker, I was always relegated to the less physically strenuous job.
I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been denied a job on the worksite, because someone assumed I couldn’t handle it. I understand that on the whole men tend to be physically stronger than women, but that doesn’t account for individual difference and perseverance.
To illustrate what I mean, once we were assigned to transport a giant pile of gravel from one driveway to the next. It involved shoveling heavy gravel for hours, pretty backbreaking stuff. Sure, the guys would lift more than I could, but the particular guys I was working with also got tired after an hour and gave up. Meanwhile, I kept chugging along, and I ended up shoveling far more than they had. You know what they say about slow and steady…
I am not saying that men will never out perform me physically. There will be many times that they do, but to assume a woman can’t do something and to refuse to let her try is plain and simply sexist.
Campus Job:
My last example is something that happened recently, in an unlikely place. It wasn’t in a male dominated field, and it wasn’t based on physical ability. My boss needed some personal dishes cleaned from his office, and despite the fact that both a male intern and I were available, he chose me for the cleaning task. The next day the same thing happened with another female coworker.
Repeatedly I have been asked to do “domestic” tasks, while my male peers are never asked to complete these “domestic” tasks. I don’t know if this is based on an inherent sexism. But you have to examine why the female interns are always being dealt the tasks that involve cleaning and reorganizing, while male interns are left to the tasks that require more responsibility and more diplomatic skill.
Those are just a few of my examples of discrimination and prejudice based on sex. I have a couple other ones that I will mention in a later article, but if I listed every experience that made me feel less than a man, sadly this blog post would be hundreds of pages long.
Hi –
Keep up the passion for equality. I hope that I am not the “typically male.”
I love your writing and reporting experiences from the front lines in a world of “Cavemen.”
LV, CLB