One of my teachers made a sexist comment last week about all women acting a certain way. Comparing women to technology as we ( women) did not do what he wanted it to. When my friend confronted him about this after the lesson he dismissed it as “just a joke to lighten the mood”. I don’t know about you but nothing lightens my mood like casual sexism, right? When it was pointed out to him that it was sexist and he shouldn’t be saying it over teenagers he simply shrugged it off, and when questioned further he turned the situation around on us, saying that we were saying that all men acted that way. Which was not the case. In the end we just had to walk away due to the sheer stupidity, that a middle ages man, with a wife and kids, was arguing like a child about how that all of this was “just a joke” and that “we shouldn’t make anything of it”. I mean what harm could a influential role model for children making a sexist joke and enforcing casual sexism do? ( sarcasm btw). I’m only 15 and I still have collected a fair few of sexist experiences. Some much bigger, some smaller. At the age of 13 i learnt that it was safer to sit on the outside seat of a bus, then you could control who sat next to you then. It scares me that the world is like this, and I don’t want my brother to grow up in this world. A world where Donald trump is president of the USA – sending a very clear message to anyone that this behaviour is acceptable as long as society gives you the green light, that some people say that now we have a female leader that that woman suddenly equal as men (That this solves every problem that we as a society have)That the media screams don’t do this do that at young girls; if you do this you will be ugly, boys won’t like you, be liked and sets unrealistic body images in young girls heads, that millions of young girls look down at their body’s and sigh. Because we don’t have the waist line of a Disney Princess or the body type that’s in fashion. Or how boys shouldn’t cry, to be tough manly, creating more toxic masculinity and stigma around being anything but this. It scares me that this is a society. That every child is socialised into, that’s this is the real world. That this is not a dystopian book. But that means it’s up to us. And me, a 15 year old girl, to stand up challenge these stereotypes and stand up to every inequality. And hopefully something might change. Because I don’t want the next generation to face these old issues. No one does