the dawning realisation that I’m sexist
It’s odd to think of the vast amounts of prejudice and discrimination we absorb in our lives. I like to think of myself as a champion of logic and equality: acutely in tune with the load of unconscious bias that I’ve undoubtedly accumulated through experiences in society; able to see individuals above and beyond stereotypical group characteristics.
But in recent weeks, as I’ve delved further into various corners of radical feminism, I’ve come to realise that my journey through life has left me undeniably sexist. Experiencing life in our unequal society, it’s difficult not to absorb ideas that raise one group of people above another, in the darkest recesses of our minds.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel sorry for men. Their experience of life can never match that of a woman.
From the most basic starting point, their appearance screams a one-dimensional existence. They are creatively constrained in how they present themselves, almost manacled in most societies to the dullest colours, fabrics and cuts – nondescript and characterless from head to foot. Let’s not even bother talking about bad complexions and blah hair. And yet they rarely have the wit to challenge these conventions, sticking doggedly to expectation and blending into concrete buildings like mindless worker ants.
But appearance isn’t everything. I would be a superficial fool to make sweeping generalisations about groups of people based on how most of them they look.
Many men struggle to communicate effectively, live in bubbles of themselves, while outwardly projecting the ‘competent male in control’ they believe is expected of them. It’s embarrassing. In large groups they often behave like our primate cousins, knocking their chests in primitive competition. And their favourite pastimes, their most passionate moments, so often involve knocking a ball around a bit of grass – seriously?
But it gets even worse. Being female is an experience on a merry-go-round of feeling and emotion – for most of our lives our bodies move in monthly cycles that take us on journeys most men can never imagine. And that’s before we even grow a whole new human within us. We experience life from so many more perspectives and have a richer, more rounded aspect to understanding life. Don’t get me wrong, bland and static tunnel vision can have its uses, can achieve a lot. But experience? No comparison.
So increasingly throughout life, I’m realising that I have applied my understanding of the limitations of men to my treatment of them. I don’t take them seriously. They are so often arrogant blowhards riding on the back their perceived status in society. Do I want their ‘status’? No, I don’t. I’m embarrassed for them that they blindly grab it from generation to generation, and so many of them believe they should be entitled to it. Their ‘status’ has made them war fodder, ruthlessly exploited workers for someone else’s benefit, and mindless violent idiots on power trips, since time began.
When it comes down to it, I don’t see men as fully human. My default human is female.
Confession over. Unconscious bias identified. I’m going to make an effort to treat every man as an individual, whose capabilities and life experiences could range over just as wide ground as those of women. I may be sexist, but I’m dealing with it.
VW, you said among other things:
—Don’t get me wrong, I feel sorry for men. Their experience of life can never match that of a woman.—
From a purely humorous point of view this is pretty good. This is a reaction from you being stoned by your ‘neighbors’ right……….this is an exaggeration because you were abused by the wounds of a ‘friend’ right……….
Because truth be told Violet, it is impossible to compare blue against yellow, or green against lilac, try it and you will agree.
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It’s not an exaggeration CS. Assuming you are a man, your life as a human being has limitations that mine doesn’t. I feel sorry for men in general. Women explicitly oppressed by men have a harder struggle, sure, but in general life as a woman is fuller, rounder, deeper. The best I can do is try and treat men with the respect I give women, and not discrimination against them because of their shortcomings.
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You will be happy to know I will spare you a return detailed comment.
But I can offer a few dozen sighs.
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I know, I understand your dismay … maybe in the next life …
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So you say it is a matter of consternation violet? Too funny.
Take a look at pics and choose your fav. Mine is the last one.
But tkx for the idea to put this together. I’ll do one for females also.
https://thenakedtruth2.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/sorry-ladies/
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I pack heat the way Mother Nature intended for me pack heat.
And there’s no shame in it.
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Yes, just like everyone else. Glad you recognise that SOM.
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Ah, now you have fallen down the rabbit hole. How delightful! I’m going to suggest that a few feelings of female superiority are not a bad thing, that cultivating some appreciation for our own gender and rejoicing in it is healthy. Also, just because one observes difference, does not always indicate sexism. We have these odd ideas, as if equal means the same and not equal means somebody suffers from less, a lack. While men may never really know the female experience, women never really know the male experience either. It’s the diversity, the inequality of life, that a makes our world so interesting.
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Stop scaring me Insanity. I’m nowhere near your rabbit hole. I think I am sexist, I genuinely sneer down my nose at men – ask Pink or Ark if you don’t believe me. Or Arb, I was nice to him till I found out he was a man.
Also, along with radical feminists, I believe that there is a different way for gender expression – I don’t think everyone would be gender neutral – but there are harmful roles that have evolved to date. I’d be interested to stick around for a few thousands years to see how things go. Shame.
We can have differences with equality of treatment, without discrimination. Weird you can’t see that.
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” I think I am sexist, I genuinely sneer down my nose at men – ask Pink or Ark if you don’t believe me.”
I know you do. I know you are. However, many of the men you associate with are more than worthy of a good sneer.
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How dare you! They are my good blogging buddies. I only sneer at them because they’re men and I’m sexist.
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Bahaha! Sounds like a bit of misappropriated guilt if you ask me.
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Men have access to that colourful world- a few physical adjustments, regularly taking cheap, easily available medication, and they’re there. Come on in! The water’s Lovely!
There is a feminist answer to this as well, though, based on Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. As far as I can work it out, men understand their own emotions vicariously, through women being encouraged to feel and to understand men’s feelings- doing the work of the slave. The synthesis is both understanding their own feelings: this comes with maturity.
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Thanks, I’ll have a look at that.
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Could I offer a divergent thought? I have a boss who when we first met suggested without saying it that I was sexist. She asked “how do you feel about working with all women?” At the time, I was the only man on the team. I responded professionally and non defensicely “I don’t really see it that way. When I come to work, I see my co workers as professionals not necessarily men or women” to which she responded “all men are sexist whether they know it or not”. I don’t think she grasped the irony of a woman denouncing sexism in the workplace by pronouncing her own sexist attitude that “All men” are any uniform and monolithic description, specifically in that conversation ‘sexist’ despite my personal and professional protestation.
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Men essentially have the upper hand in terms of promotability in the workplace – they undoubtedly benefit from expectation/profiling in that sense. She made an inappropriate statement that may or may not be true. I find it difficult to think of a man in a work situation who hasn’t been sexist at some point – talking over or through women, assuming women will make the coffee etc. It doesn’t work the other way commonly, and she may not have discriminated against you in terms of your work role (did she?), other than making that casual observation. For instance, although I admit to being sexist, seeing women as generally superior, at work I wouldn’t discriminate against a man in a way that would undermine his professional role.
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She has made it fairly difficult but over all, it’s nothing I can’t handle. I do my job, do it well and let my work speak for itself
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Delicious.
I’ve always found it amusing how various groups don’t have the creativity to see beyond their own experience. This TERF group takes that to new heights. Incapable even of seeing the many, many ways in which patriarchy constrains men.
Good examples above, but let me just say it’s all encompassing. From the times little boys are little boys, we have a whole world of expectations put on us. Ask any guy when he first heard the question: “do you have a girlfriend?” Always long before we even know what sex is. While cheerleaders are suffering the sexist indignity that is cheerleading, the boys are clobbering each other on the field in animalistic cock-fight-like rituals.
The expectation for physical prowess is then followed by the expectation for financial success (The Provider Role.) Just look at the suicide numbers for men right after the crisis. The number skyrocketed. In Greece alone the male suicide rate went up by 35%, making suicide one of the top reasons of death for young working men.
The thing is, we shouldn’t be playing the Misery Olympics to see who has it worse, but trying to, together, fix what’s wrong.
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“The thing is, we shouldn’t be playing the Misery Olympics to see who has it worse, but trying to, together, fix what’s wrong.”
You’re right that we should be working together. The Misery Olympics is useful for prioritising areas of greatest need. It’s excluding anyone else from the conversation that is harmful.
Do you know, I thought of this post after commenting on yours. Part of me meant it, that it was a good post for a man. Got me thinking. So while this may seem deliciously tongue-in-cheek, it’s true.
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As it should be.
From Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree:
“I wish I’d been accepted sooner and better. When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes–and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history. We choose our own lives. It is not simply that we decide on the behaviors that construct our experience; when given our druthers, we elect to be ourselves. Most of us would like to be more successful or more beautiful or wealthier, and most people endure episodes of low self-esteem or even self-hatred. We despair a hundred times a day. But we retain the startling evolutionary imperative for the fact of ourselves, and with that splinter of grandiosity we redeem our flaws.”
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Oooh, interesting thoughts, I like it. But women are better, objectively. 😀
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I made a ham, tomato and cheese sandwich earlier. It was fabulous.
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Nice variation on a theme! Well done you, picking up new skills as you go. 😉
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Did that just dawn on you? I could have told you that long ago, but I preferred to be kind.
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Hi Arch, you’re banned for making horrible comments to a friend who was suffering and trying to explain her pain. As you know. Any further comments will be spammed.
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P.S. I never gave you permission to use that hi-def picture of me in the post!
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Sexism is just one form of segragation between imaginary or arbitrary groups of people.
As an example of how culture works, here in Finland we have had a military conscript service required from men since the very beginning of our indipendence from Russia. The reason only men are required this extra sacrifice of their time and sometimes their health, or even lives is a tradition of dividing men and women into two separate groups of individuals, inhereted to us from the agrarian culture of our forefathers (and mothers, though it is never mentioned), because some estimations of the general requirements of the work needed to be done in that economic system.
By providing military service in wich Finnish men are taught how to kill other men, those men who do serve aquire a special position, or status within the society. Or that is how it is percieved, more or less on a conscious level. In many other countries men achieve this social status by just being born boys. In here, the social status of being a boy is given as a slightly higher than that of a girl, and harldy anybody anymore admits it aloud, that they would value a son more than a daughter. Yet, everybody knows, that the boy is in a priviledged postion just by the accident at birth. That there is a priviledge attached to the gender, regardless for all the hardship it also might bring along with it. Most often that priviledge is only relative to the social class of the individual.
A Finnish man who has served in the military is more likely to get a job, be considered a peer by other men most of whom have also served. They have stories to share about their service experiences and they bond. I am one of those men who served. When ever I have applied for a new job, even after years of my service I have remembered to mention to my would be employer, that I have served. It sets me apart from any applicant who has not served, or forgets to mention about it.
Men who have served share their experiences and stories often and the typical response of women in company of men who get too engaged in their military stories is to protest by telling stories about giving birth. But there are a lot of men who never served in the military either for ethical conviction or a medical reason and a lot of women who for similar reasons have not given birth. Are they any less men, or any less women? How important is our gender identity to us?
Today, women are also allowed to serve in the military. Regrettably, that is precisely how it is percieved. As if they have been given this allowance to try to be men. True men, the sort of men who are willing to put their lives on the line for the fatherland. Not some “berrypickers” and would be men. Yet, even the women who serve are often only seen as wannabee men. Not real people, but wannabe people. We have a long way to go to a situation, that women would really be seen as equal to men.
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“We have a long way to go to a situation, that women would really be seen as equal to men.”
I know you’re a feminist Raut, but I wonder if you forget you’re speaking from the point of view of a man. Do you think women think they are not equal to men? I’m sure women who view they’re not being treated equally think society stinks, but we still know we’re equal. Do you think women place higher value on having a son? I’m not in your country, so I have no idea. But you’re presenting this idea (like Arb did) of ‘society’ thinks this, as if society is just men. I’m fairly sure the vast majority of women I know would prefer daughters – no-one talks much about it because obviously gender preference in babies is a bit of a fraught topic.
More interesting stories about Finland. I guess having such a key coming of age experience that splits people into men and women, and gives men an important bonding moment, certainly would affect life. I don’t see an equivalent here, but perhaps I’m wrong.
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Something Raut might want to keep in mind is that one reason we (as a cultures) often value sons more, is because statistically they are the most likely to die, either in the womb, at birth, or from health issues. Men are usually stronger than women in a literal physical sense, but they also tend to be more vulnerable health wise. It is also the boys who are most likely to engage in risky behavior growing up, so they are the leading cause of accidents. By the time we get to war or conflicts, it is our sons who are the most likely to be killed in combat. All this potential loss and grief, heavily colors that idea of how “men achieve this social status by just being born boys.” They are often valued more because they are more likely to be lost.
An awareness of that changes one’s desire for “equality.” Equal death rates? Equal suicide rates? Equal right to be drafted into war? Equal right to die in conflict? Equal right to suffer PTSD? Head injuries? What “equal? is it we desire here?
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@Insanitybytes22, the difference between baby girls and boys dying of natural causes is less than a persentage. That is not something people could even be aware, unless there were statistics to make a note of it. That is not the reason why such cultural norms as to value boys over girls and men over women have appeared in any society. It is true, but even so in respect to this issue of sexism, merely an excuse of abuse set from completely different reasons.
The statistics about how death rates differ between male and female populations are cultural results of the arbitrary division between the percieved sexes. Not some natural law we should not tamper with, or could not change for better.
Boys being more likely to engage in risky behaviour is mostly due to social cultural models they are fitted into from the day they were born. Same applies to men on average dying in conflicts, or in general more early than women. It is the unhealthy role models of man and woman that cause men to be brittle about their loss of strength due to hormone level loss in their elderly years. It is not some sacrifice by wich they somehow are entiteled to buy a leading role within a family unit, nor better salary for the same work. Why should it even be considered as such?
Families generally speaking function better in respect to all members without any single person acting as a leader, just like bigger societies do. Such single leadership in a family feeds authoritarianism. What good is authoritarianism? Or would you prefer dictatorship over democracy? If in any situation there needs to be leadership, then who gets to lead should be evaluated according to ability, not according to dingly bits of our bodies, percieved gender, physical strength, and certainly not according to who has sacrificed most. Correct?
Yes, men are the victims of sexism also, though I do not think in any real comparrison to women.
The ancient Spartans became the victims of their slave society. The spartans owned the rest of the population of Lakonia as their property, but were so affraid of the slaves rebelling against them, that they lived punishing lives of constant alertness and military drill. When the war came, the slaves were tolled in to make war beside their masters. The Spartan professional soldiers bore the brunt of any battle, but would you say that somehow entiteled them to own their slaves? The Spartans did not enjoy life, art, food or even company of the opposite sex much other than to reproduce more men and women to serve their social status quo and cultural heritage. With a dear price they bought their lordship over other people. Why? Because it became their tradition and they were ultra conservative. Fear and religion were their main motivators. No doubt, some of their slaves thought this is how the gods had set the world and how it should forever be. Was it good for anybody, exept perhaps the Spartan priesthood, who got to decide stuff for everyone else and as such satisfy their own need for power.
This is not about whose fault this all is, but about how do we repair such disparity as the one you describe along with women having less pay for the same work, being expected to obey their hubbies etc. We are so much more than our gender, that we should not treat each others simply as representatives of the group of genitals we happen to have. Most often genitals are a private matter between consenting adults and otherwise not the specific concern of anybody else. Right?
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I am a person. I am speaking from the point of view of a person.
Yes, I have the male experience in a sexually oriented culture. Yet, I think I can get over my male ego and my own subjective experience and try to percieve the matter in somewhat objective manner. If everyone was only allowed to speak from personal experience we would not ever get to any conclusions about anything, since necessarily all of us have different subjective experiences. The binary biology of our reproductive organs does not make our experiences about the society so very different we could not possibly set ourselves to the position of a nother. If anything, the little difference there should guide us to try to understand others even more, because it tells us not everyone has the same experience.
My culture may actually be less sexually oriented, than most cultures I know of, but the binary undercurrent is there because of historical reasons, not so much because of biological reasons. Biological reasons have caused the historical reasons, but the historical reasons are not the biological reasons.
I do not think it is as much an issue here for most people to place different value on having sons over daughters, but it has not been so long since we came to the realization, that girls should not be seen as any worse than boys. Mere 50 years ago, it was clear, that a male child was more likely to economically support his parents, when the parents were no longer able to do so themselves. Even now, that our society has mostly realised this is not how it should be – that it is not fair – there is a disparity between the sexes in salaries. It is less of an issue in my society, than it is in most of the world, because we have a social support system by the society, that equalizes and provides even those elderly people who have no children to support them, but it still creates an arbitrary difference between the sexes. And people of both sexes buy into that, because the cultural heritage is so pervasive and thorough, despite new and better evaluation of what is fair.
Besides, even our modern society has those conservatives, both men and women, who are scared about any changes, especially social changes. It is a primitive reaction coming from intuition, of having managed this far, why should we change anything, and it is abused by the power hungry politician alike the unemployed husband. The politician may achieve power in much greater abundance, by appealing to the negative emotional fears of the voters, but the unemployed husband has every bit as much at stake, to have power over at least over his wife. The need for such power is a result of sexist cultural values, in wich the man expects to have at least some power, to feel complete. A bit like the person indoctrinated to a religion might fear they feel a need to believe and incompleteness in face of doubt of their unfalsifiable faith.
Yes, some women do submit to all sorts of abuses, because they have been taught, that is part of their identity and what being a woman means. Both men and women are the victims of this sexist and binary thinking. The difference lies, in that women are taught, that they should fear and only feel safe when men protect them, while the men are taught that they should protect women and gain their superiority over women by buying it in this nonsensical protection racket.
The question is what sort of a society do we want and why.
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Sometimes I can see it, and sometimes I can’t. I think sometimes we forget where we are, and apply our not-so-historical patriarchal lens when it isn’t required – a kind of confirmation bias that it’s still awful for women everywhere. It’s still awful for many men everywhere. And there’s fear of regressive movements taking us back. We’re all in very different communities in different countries so the reality of what sexism there is affects us all differently. I’m in Argentina just now, and contrary to expectations, I don’t really see it. Yes, men are mindlessly weilding power in boring ‘power’ jobs and therefore probably making a disproportionate number of decisions, but on the ground there are so many strong women working and leading families.
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Agreed. The division of power, responsibility, but also liberty and rights, on the arbitrary line of percieved gender according to reproductive organs is very much a cultural phenomenon. We are all products of our cultures, and they affect us even when we realize, that some of the cultural notions are nonsensical.
Now that Finland has recieved many refugees from the Near- and Middle-East, women who have been here less than half a year are going through some emancipation. I just read an article of a refugee woman, who used to wear black hijab and ankle lowng gown as standard in her own country, but has stopped using the gown has taken up new sports activities culturally impossible for her in her country of origin and is acting as a foreman (might there a gender neutral term for this in English – in Finnish it is “työnjohtaja” a leader of work) for a bunch of refugee dudes in forestry. Some of the refugee men have expressed discontent to be ordered about by a woman, but if they want to stay in this country, that is what they may have to get to used to. She said, that even her husband might be annoyed to know this when he arrives from Denmark…
It might be, that male hormones have a slightly higher ratio of causing men to ply for positions within social groups, but I think it is more likely a cultural phenomenon passed down on us mostly from times beyond our history, when leadership in social groups was generally occupied by the physically strongest individuals, who simply are more likely to be male. We have (in many modern societies) outgrown the idea, that the strongman should be the leader, so I expect we are able to outgrow the idea, that gender should be a nominating feature on leadership (as we already have in a number of societies around the globe).
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“I am a person. I am speaking from the point of view of a person.”
And I see I annoyed you here. I think people value daughters more (maybe not ‘value’ so much, but certainly would prefer) because the majority of my immediate society is female, and I generalise from there. I wonder if a men make the same assumption and generalise from their circles of influence, with that historical understanding that men would bring a family more economically (which obviously isn’t the case now). In fact, in terms of sheer support factor, I would argue that daughters are of more ‘value’ as they can now generate broadly equal income and, be it culturally or a biological inclination, they are more likely to take care of older generations. So base assumptions on comfort in old age (which I believe some people care about) make daughters a better catch.
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Well, perhaps you annoyed me a bit. I have high expectations of you. 😉 But foremost I am a person. My identity as a man, or for example as a member of my family, nation, profession, or even a hobby are all very much secondary on me being a person. I have high expectations of myself of trying to be as objective as I possibly can regardless of my personal experiences.
I see the percieved gender issue affecting to the preferances of people more on a subconscious cultural level, than on any rational level of actually calculating what real costs and benefits of having a boy or a girl child might provide them with, and even when they bring rationality into play, it is often just to justify the already held cultural assumptions. But those cultural assumptions have been and are constantly supported by the fact that they produce a culture in wich they perpetuate not only the assumptions, but also real life situations, that in turn cause people to come to the conclusions. A kind of vicious circkle. This does not only apply to the position and expecations of women and men, but in all sorts of other injusticies, like capitalism.
Most of the population on the planet even today seem to have a cultural preference to having boys, while here in the western countries it has mostly died out and it is at least politically correct for people not to pronounce such preferences. If they do, one or the other, it is – in my experience – considered more like an intuitive proclamation of a passing emotion. A sort of mental fart, that everybody descreetly ignores, rather than an expression of genuine and deeply rooted wish. Ultimately, that is what it is. A wish.
For now we are unable to decide for ourselves and I wish we do not become able to before we truly have understood, that even wishing one or the other way in this matter is actually rather vile. It is as if you were wishing your child to have a certain colour of eyes. Would you love your child more or less, if they did not have that eye colour? If not, then what does it matter what the eye colour of the child is? In my view, same should apply to gender.
If the social disparity and unequal treatment according to reproductive organs in the society could be excused by boy babies being more likely to die, than girl babies – like Insanitybytes22 insinuated, then we could also expect people in general to be more likely to hope for a girl child. Because, who would want to take any higher risk, that their baby dies, that their child dies in a reckless sports accident, commits a suicide, or is killed in combat?
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Should I read anything into the picture you chose for this post?
In the business world I concluded a few things that cause men and women to have different outcomes.
1. Men were generally more aggressive at meetings and more likely to talk over other people. 2. Men tended to be more single minded in pursuing their career goals being more ready to give up quality of life for career advancement.
3. Men tend to feel uncomfortable being around women who try like a man.
I had a female boss for about a year. This did not give rise to any issues. We ended up being good friends, I was one of three men who were her direct reports. We never made anything about her being woman, though we did stir her up about her being English (from Yorkshire), but we were Australian so if we did not stir an English person they would have felt something was not right.
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Do you think the differences you observed could be accounted for by social programming? Or do you think there might be biological influences in there? I would put a lot of that down to testosterone, but radical feminists would probably say it’s mere social construct.
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Yes, you are sexist, Violet. You need more exposure to real men like me.
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I need less exposure to men who say things like that, in order to give me faith in male qualities (be they biological or programmed). So I’m assuming that was tongue in cheek, but it’s about as effective as John’s sandwich joke. 🙂
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I heard that
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Wow! You are King of the Lurkers.
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