Aw fiddle, this started out as a comment in caramida’s LJ and it grew so it has become a feature in mine.
I read this article about gender issues with Men talking down to Women a little while ago and had some strong feelings.
For the record, I am female and I don’t run into this sexism often.
This could be because:
I get the same behavior from both men in women in equal amounts and end up sticking the posted note of “avoid” to the individual instead of watching it along gender lines.
It could be because I don’t listen to overly full of themselves men long enough for them to Explain Things To Me.
It could be that I had enough of it with my grandfathers and don’t tolerate it.
It could be because I avoid those situations naturally.
It could be because I am one of the ones that Explains Everything myself. (I haven’t seen this in me but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there).
I am not surprised that women out there get this sort of treatment. The author did state she was playing the ingenue and men that would have the tendency to talk down to anyone would pounce on a woman in that roll.
I think men and women do it but it would make sense that men do it more. Society does tend to put it on the men that they have to know everything and be able to do everything and it would be easy to get caught up in that roll.
I do agree with the author that it does show up in a number of places like her examples. These are things that are better than they were and could still use some improvement.
But I think she is giving over her power when she says that this sort of behavior from men “trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation.” I look at men that do this as trying to replace a deficiency in themselves. I know that I am good at what I do and who I am.
I will admit, I work hard to find places that appreciate what I have to offer so I am not exposed to the negative reinforcement. In fact, the first time I my confidence was shaken in college where I pursued a Physics degree and later a Engineering degree is when I started listening to the Women in Engineering organization. They had a special room for women to go to for help with their classes. When I started having troubles in class, I started to thing about availing myself to that help and I started questioning if the reason I was having trouble was because I was female. Which is stupid. When I caught myself going down that thought process, I stopped myself and proceeded to ignore anything “special” for women. I was just another student and I would make it or break it just like any other student. I got through just fine. In some areas, I can’t believe how well I managed to make things work.
I have only had positive experiences being female in a mostly male world and I think a lot of that has to do with refusing to see the “inequalities” and going forth like I was just like everyone else and there was no difference in gender. It has served me well.
You’re very lucky that it’s worked for you.
I recommend reading “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” which is about a longitudinal study done by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. They were specifically looking at why there were so few women in the computer science department, and further why women transferred from comp sci to another department at a much, much higher rate than men.
Their findings are interesting and complicated, and it’s not the same answer for every woman. The short version is that sexism is pervasive, hard to escape, easy to internalize, but possible to ameliorate. After the study, CMU initiated changes to their curriculum, and their application and retention rate for female comp sci students shot up dramatically.
They also noted that all of the (4) African-American and Hispanic students left the program. There’s race as well as gender bias in computer science, but race was outside the scope of that particular study.
That sounds like a good study and more of them should be done. I think that is a good way to address the inequalities that still exist.
I figure I am a freak in that I don’t have these standard problems. Just even as a freak, I want to stand up and be counted. I sometimes hope that others might be able to make use of my methods or variations of my methods or maybe the fact that my methods worked for me, they could have more faith in their methods.
I don’t want to invalidate what the author was saying, but her solution is the sort of thing that would wipe out my power under the guise of “helping” me and I think people should be aware of that possibility.
I do want to own up that I did quit Physics and switched majors to Liberal Arts. This happened because my faith in the solidity of Physics was destroyed and Religions of the East explained my Quantum Theory class better than the teacher of that class. It didn’t have anything to do with gender issues.
Thanks for the info on the study. I would love for a study to be done about race. It seems so simple from my side but I am on the easy side so I doubt I even have a clue.
The incidents she describes are familiar to me. I’ve had men exclaim, “Why, gosh, yes, I guess you COULD possibly know something I don’t.” I put people like that on my asshat list and go about my business.
I believe everyone has to come up with her own strategies for dealing with these kinds of things, depending on the situation. In the workplace I’m comfortable strongly asserting myself as a knowledgeable person. As a guest in a much older person’s home, I’d probably be much gentler.