gender roles

Kate

My family and I was staying with my grandparents in Ireland over the holidays. I was making an apple pie in the kitchen. My grandparents local preist (they’re catholic) came by to say hello and have a chat. When he saw me he said “what a good girl. Every woman needs her training behind the sink. I suppose I can’t say that nowadays. * laughter *” I didn’t say anything, my grandparents didn’t notice, my parents weren’t there. He was well into his 60s or even late 70s I’m not sure, I was 12.

Kitty

Was listening to Heart Radio recently, & was subjected to two lots of casual sexism in quick succession. First, Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines was played (again!- Heart plays that & another ghastly, appallingly sexist song- Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me, which disgusts me & makes me cringe- depressingly regularly, & no one bats an eyelid), then a few minutes later, presenter Toby Anstis started going on about how Justin Bieber had wanted all sorts of weird & wonderful things in his dressing room (or words to that effect) when he was on tour, including food that seemed weird to Anstis. Anstis then made a comment to the effect of how [Justin’s significant other] should remember that for when she does the weekly shop. Um, WTF?! Because OF COURSE food shopping is the wife’s job, isn’t it?! I thought this was 2018, not 1958! I thought Heart’s motto was ‘turn up the feel good’, not ‘turn up the sexism’! Having to listen to Blurred Lines (or It Wasn’t Me, for that matter) does not make me feel good, & neither does listening to sexist claptrap about how food shopping is the job of a man’s wife! Justin Bieber may well do his own food shopping for all Toby Anstis knows- having a penis does not render someone incapable of doing this! Idiot.

Back to the 1950s

This is one of those cases where I’m not sure it’s sexism. Sometimes it’s tricky to spot sexism because it could just be a problem with an individual and have nothing to do with gender. Still, my story makes me feel discriminated based on the qualities I may possess because I’ve been conditioned to cultivate them as a woman. I’m not a housewife: I go to work part-time and I’m a university student. I’m currently off work to care for our newborn baby, but I still have one class at uni and coursework to do. In a nutshell: I manage our household. If I didn’t dole out the tasks to make things more equal, I’d be doing everything on my own. I’ve spent so much time over the years discussing or arguing about cooking and cleaning, the things that take up so much time in our daily lives. My partner agrees that we need to share the responsibilities at home but doesn’t believe in doing things regularly. He would clean the toilet twice a year and eat a warm meal every day from a cheap snack-bar down the street from us in order to save himself the trouble of doing chores and doesn’t expect me to do the cooking or the cleaning either, so that’s why he’s not discriminating against me based on my gender. But the fact that I do clean the apartment on a regular basis and keep our kitchen stocked with healthy meals means that at the end of the day, I’m running the household on my own. It’s convenient that my partner doesn’t have to feel like a sexist when he eats his dinner at the table I’ve wiped his breakfast crumbs from by telling me that I don’t have to do anything at home if I don’t want to. Because he does see that he needs to share the workload with me, he will clean or prepare a meal (from time to time) but I always have to tell him what to do. In this respect I’m the house manager, organising our home-life on my own and enlisting my partner’s “help” rather than working with him on an equal level. I know that not all men are like this, and that in some cases, the man is the cook and keeps the home clean. Having spoken with others about their partnerships though, I get the feeling a lot of women are doing more than their fair share at home while working outside of the home. Not all men are abusers either, but I’m bringing this up because I think that many partnerships between men and women are tainted by long-standing conditioning of gender roles and that we’ve lost sight of the source of this problem in 2018 where we believe we’re on an equal level and that we’re free to do what we please. My children will grow up seeing their mother running the show at home and even though the world wants to convince them that women and men can share the responsibilities equally. The fact of the matter is, more often than not, we don’t.

Back to the 1950s

This is one of those cases where I’m not sure it’s sexism. Sometimes it’s tricky to spot sexism because it could just be a problem with an individual and have nothing to do with gender. Still, my story makes me feel discriminated based on the qualities I may possess because I’ve been conditioned to cultivate them as a woman. I’m not a housewife: I go to work part-time and I’m a university student. I’m currently off work to care for our newborn baby, but I still have one class at uni and coursework to do. In a nutshell: I manage our household. If I didn’t dole out the tasks to make things more equal, I’d be doing everything on my own. I’ve spent so much time over the years discussing or arguing about cooking and cleaning, the things that take up so much time in our daily lives. My partner agrees that we need to share the responsibilities at home but doesn’t believe in doing things regularly. He would clean the toilet twice a year and eat a warm meal every day from a cheap snack-bar down the street from us in order to save himself the trouble of doing chores and doesn’t expect me to do the cooking or the cleaning either, so that’s why he’s not discriminating against me based on my gender. But the fact that I do clean the apartment on a regular basis and keep our kitchen stocked with healthy meals means that at the end of the day, I’m running the household on my own. It’s convenient that my partner doesn’t have to feel like a sexist when he eats his dinner at the table I’ve wiped his breakfast crumbs from by telling me that I don’t have to do anything at home if I don’t want to. Because he does see that he needs to share the workload with me, he will clean or prepare a meal (from time to time) but I always have to tell him what to do. In this respect I’m the house manager, organising our home-life on my own and enlisting my partner’s “help” rather than working with him on an equal level. I know that not all men are like this, and that in some cases, the man is the cook and keeps the home clean. Having spoken with others about their partnerships though, I get the feeling a lot of women are doing more than their fair share at home while working outside of the home. Not all men are abusers either, but I’m bringing this up because I think that many partnerships between men and women are tainted by long-standing conditioning of gender roles and that we’ve lost sight of the source of this problem in 2018 where we believe we’re on an equal level and that we’re free to do what we please. My children will grow up seeing their mother running the show at home and even though the world wants to convince them that women and men can share the responsibilities equally. The fact of the matter is, more often than not, we don’t.

Violet

I don’t know if this is appropriate here…? Khm, I’m a teen, I live in Europe, and my parents are divorced. I live with my mom and older sister. They make really sexist comments on men all the time, stupid thing like “that’s not very manly”, or “he sounds gay”, which, wow, I didn’t know that voices had sexualities. And this whole “manliness” thing? Yes, please, don’t let them have their own personality and preferances, because that’s totally fair. Mom has been forcing gender roles and crap like that down our throat since we were little, and in the past two years my sister has started thinking like that too. This isn’t about women, but hey, sexism goes both ways, right? Another thing that really bugs me is how pretty/popular girls at my school are treated. There are 6 girls in my class, and me and my friend are “the outcast” or whatever. The point is, she keeps talking trash about them, like they’re the mean girls out of a teen drama or something, while I doubt that she would be close enough with any of them to actually know who they are outside of some stupid stereotypes.

Kitty

The fact that in this century, some people (including some women!) view the man as the head of the household and/or think that a wife’s role is to be submissive to her husband & allow him time to go out & be a man, whatever the smeg that means. These views were aired as part of a series of short films on Channel 4 a few years back, & they were made available online as well. There was the ever-present comments section under the vid, & the comments were absolutely depressing as & made me both furious & despairing of modern society. The majority of the commenters seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that it was the 1950s, not whichever year in the late noughties/early 10s it was, & posted comments to the effect of how the lady in the vid was right, as the man is the ‘captain of the ship’ (why? In my opinion, a healthy & happy marriage is one where both partners are equal- a democracy, if you like- not where one partner calls all the shots! Depressingly, I think a woman posted that). Another commenter posted something to the effect of how they knew that what the lady in the vid said wasn’t very politically correct, but they agreed with her (I think this poster might’ve been male, but I wouldn’t swear to it). WTF?! As I already said, it makes me despair that in 21st century Britain, people still hold these outdated views.

R

Back at my old primary school, every year there was an event called the “Western zones”; essentially a multi-day sport contest between the eldest two years of kids from primary schools in the area, the winners of which would go on to represent the region in our city-wide games. In this, instead of track & field events, we all had to choose two sports to play in from a list of four. There was football (soccer), rugby, netball and volleyball. Now, I’ve never been an athletic person. I’m fat. I always have been. But, that’s a different can of worms. My first year, I chose football and netball. I’d never so much as stepped on a netball court during a casual lunchtime game, so I had no clue what was going on. The one time the ball actually came my way, I did manage to pass it correctly to my teammate, so I guess that went ok. But when it came to the football, I actually kinda kicked ass. I had chosen football because I genuinely enjoyed it (despite how rarely I played), and netball because I thought I “should”. It’s always been presented as a girls’ game, right? And yet, I was bored stiff during that game. In the football match, I was shooting and passing and shadowing like nobody’s business. Even this one boy, who’d been my “arch enemy” since year 2, commented on how well I was playing (this kid was English, so he was pretty much treated as an authority on the sport). And he sounded surprised. I know, it was most likely because I’d never once showed any enthusiasm for sport before this at school. But part of me always suspected it was also because I was a girl. Don’t get me wrong, that little bit of encouragement really boosted my confidence for a good while. He’d just sounded a little too amazed, if that makes sense. Either way, next year I opted for volleyball instead of netball. Would’ve made Sakura Avalon proud.

‘Elaina’

This is basically directed at my dad, so apart from changing the names, I just left it in this letter format seeing as I wrote it as I was feeling it. Coarse language and severe satire follows. Fucking patronising dickhead “when you’re done with your intensive studying can you clean up a little?” fucking prick, because ‘Jacob’ is so clearly the golden child in this situation, sitting in his room, isolated from the world, doing nothing with his life except maybe pissing me off on a daily basis when he looks smugly at me when you praise him. ‘Oh, ‘Jacob’ cleaned the kitchen tonight…’Elaina’ you could’ve cooked dinner for your sister’ Well maybe ‘Jacob’ shouldn’t have eaten our hardworking, uni student-sister’s leftover lunch, and maybe you should’ve cooked dinner. Of course as soon as it becomes more complex than sausages, you refuse to look up a recipe even though you can’t cook- and even when I try to help you find one and make suggestions, you act as if some great burden has been placed upon you and decide it’s too hard. I’ve given up on cooking for you fuckheads because I spent hours finding healthy recipes which wouldn’t inconvenience me too much in (in terms of cooking skill and time)-between having a life, trying to lose weight because I’ve been insecure about that since forever (and thanks for letting ‘fat bitch’ slide for a good 7 years with ‘Hayden’ [other brother], can’t comprehend why such a nickname could be harmful), doing homework, and feeling miserable because I had no friends. Then I would go shopping with you, to which you would always complain if it took too long, then we would get home and I would unpack the whole fucking thing. Emphasis on I. ‘Jacob’ would so graciously bring a few bags inside before he went back to his room. Well done Golden Child (who has a penis), well done! Then I’d cook the damn meal, you’d make some remarks about how the kitchen was a bit messy (sorry I’m not a 50s housewife looking to protect you from dishes). And when I cooked, the dishes were never cleaned properly, so then I would have to re-clean the pots/utensils before I cooked. Worst case scenario, I wrongly assumed you or ‘Jacob’ had completed a simple task, and yet in the middle of cooking the meat, I get last night’s sauce coating tonight’s food. Poor you, you fifty-year old adult, I can’t fix your life when you’re fucking up mine on a daily basis. I used to rely on you before, but now I prefer it when you fuck off, because I don’t need you throwing a tantrum in the kitchen and turning your anger towards me. I’m done taking it, I don’t care how much you scowl at me, this is not going to be a one-sided conversation in which you are correct because you happened to ejaculate some sperm during an orgasm you fucking dickhead. “‘Elaina’, you should do a little more around the house” fuck off. On top of everything, when I came home feeling lonely and miserable from school, I had you in the kitchen-every fucking day and I am not exaggerating-yelling about every little thing. ‘Why is there an empty cup on the coffee table’ Because I’m done with life so I recently just took the last sip of coffee so I can be prepared for your bullshit. I dealt with it for too long, so you only have yourself to blame for the teenager who no longer enjoys going to school which makes doing homework a billion times harder as you helpfully suggest that I should do some laundry as ‘a break’ from studying. I still love you, because you can genuinely feel bad and apologise for these things and you can still be kind, but I don’t want to live under the same roof as you anymore. This keeps going on and we don’t put space between us, the space we will inevitably find will be permanent, as much as the thought of removing family from my life sickens and distresses me. Rant over.

Kitty

Another sexist advert: McCain Roast Potatoes- just like Mum’s. Because of course only mums cook, don’t they? What about families where the dad does the cooking, or where the parents share the cooking (or indeed if the mother isn’t on the scene for some reason, or if the family is a gay couple who have kids)? The advert for this product is sexist to both women & men. Newsflash, McCain- it’s not just women who cook- men cook as well! This is 2016, not 1956!

Kitty

A couple of annoyances about sexism with regards to roles in relationships: Some people seem to think that proposing marriage is a ‘man thing’ (i.e. the man should do it) on the grounds that it’s ‘traditional’ for it to be done that way. Last weekend, I was at a wedding reception, & I was party to a conversation where a couple of people were saying as much. To add insult to injury, two of them were women, & one of the women was my sister- a very intelligent young woman, who I thought was quite liberal-minded. She also said something along the lines of how her now-husband (my brother-in-law) wouldn’t have liked it if she’d proposed to him. Whyever not?! Why shouldn’t the woman propose to the man, for heaven’s sake? Talk about sexist, patriarchal & outdated ideas! That conversation annoyed me, & I remember sighing exasperatedly while it was going on. I didn’t want to challenge them on the grounds that I didn’t want to get into an argument, cause a scene & make things even more uncomfortable for the bride’s brother (my sister was talking to him & his girlfriend) than they were already that day. Another gripe revolves round same-sex relationships. Some people seem to think that in such relationships, one partner is the ‘man’ & the other is the ‘woman’. Surely that’s missing the point of a same-sex relationship? Homophobia AND gender stereotyping here, folks.