The culture of my parents was unfortunately bigoted, authoritarian and incurious. My parents were informed by family tradition and a rigidly patriarchal interpretation of religious dogma. They felt that however the Europeans abused the indigenous Americans was fine because we are God’s chosen people. The brown-skinned people were a hindrance to Manifest Destiny. The fact that a couple of my ancestors were Mohawk was a source of shame for several members of my family.
I was the first person of any gender in my lineage to earn a college degree. My family viewed educated people with a combination of suspicion and fear. Educated women in positions of power seemed dangerous and unnatural. Suspicion and fear were also granted freely to people of other socioeconomic strata, ethnic backgrounds, and religions. The lesson was a lovely tautology. We (and other people just like us) were good, Others were different, therefore Other = Bad.
Attitudes promulgating sexism were so common that it was almost incidental--like always serving bread with dinner, or always unthinkingly flossing before you brush.
As an example, when I was about twelve my mother told me she had visited a "lady doctor." My surprised response was "What's her name?" (When had the men in charge of the world let women become medical doctors...) My mother chuckled in derision about the idea that a woman could be a medical doctor, and went on to vaguely describe a "doctor for ladies." When I finally understood what she was getting at, I was astonished. I couldn't imagine a doctor choosing to specialize in that loathsome portal from which the stain of Original Sin manifests itself every twenty-eight days. I was left to imagine the worst about what a "lady doctor" actually perpetrates in the examining room.
I learned early in adulthood that these physicians are called "gynecologists," and that they can indeed be women. Or men. Or brown-skinned. Or Hindi. Or Muslim. Or any wonderful and interesting combination of diverse traits reflecting human variation. I learned that women are just as deserving of respect, liberty, education, pay, power, and prestige as men. I learned that science education and an understanding of the natural world is incredibly elegant and empowering.
Happily I also learned that my own girly bits represent perhaps the most magnificent structures in all of human anatomy. They are mine alone to share or not (with someone of any combination of human variation I may choose), and are to be revered, not feared.
I have an opportunity to teach these lessons to my children.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(This is a short documentary film about the first Thanksgiving, for those of you not familiar with the holiday.)
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Comments
What I'd like to emphasize is this: there must be something about our parents/larger family (in terms of DNA or hard-wiring) which carries this outlook of cosmopolitanism. I don't imagine that education is the only culprit that makes some of us so different from our families. I think there is something latent there, something which has been made a prisoner to the xenophobia and ethnocentrism that abounds in many cultures but which has allowed education to free those of us who took advantage of it. Do you know what I'm getting at? I don't feel particularly articulate tonight.
The world has gotten a lot smaller. These days, Børretzen's grandmother would have a chance to meet black people and form her own opinion (at the very least, she would see them on TV). I think that makes all the difference in the world. So the "arc of the universe" should be pointing towards less bigotry.
Norwonk: Great point about the world shrinking. I'm hopeful that the arc is pointing toward less bigotry. Although it sometimes feels like Americans are increasingly divided.
I was wondering how old you are AU? I'm 61 and I knew of female physicians as a child. It wasn't common, but they were there. This doesn't invalidate anything you said, and I, too, am "different" from my family. My parents were early John Bircher's, outright bigots, and poorly educated. They were terrified that I WOULD go to college and tried to prevent it! I credit my high school teachers, many of whom were well-educated women, who today would choose from a myriad of better-paying professions than teaching. These women instilled a love of learning in me and lifted the veil of ignorance that my parents attempted to drape over me. My parents HATED my teachers and called them all sorts of names. Today, they would no doubt be tea partiers. We've lost a lot of these teachers and that is as it probably should be, but a loss it remains, I think.
I chose a domestic career in the end--four children and all that that entails. Few take this seriously as a career choice, and that saddens me. I thought it was about "choice".
Yeah, I "only" have a BA as well, and I also chose to stay home with my children. It is terrible that this important work is dismissed as irrelevant by our larger culture.
Kwombles: I love that so many of us are raising critical thinking, science-literate children! Kudos!