This post is being written as a codicil to Voice Gal’s posting of January 2 with regard to misogyny, sexism and all the other 50’s and 60’s bunk that many of us “gals” (the favored word that men from that era apply to those of us who possess a double XX chromosome) have had to deal with from the time we were small.

I wouldn’t normally tag onto another OSer’s posting but the subject opened by Voice Gal is important and well worth examining. It is far to easy to assume that women have achieved equal status in our United States and we can put all that women’s lib stuff aside- that it’s not relevant anymore.

Just to be clear, it’s not all in our heads, we have been treated as property and as second class citizens. We have been pigeonholed by others based on gender, and we have been discriminated against. (“There, there dear, just calm yourself, take a deep breath and it will all be all right. Need to lie down for awhile? I will get a cool cloth for your brow.”)

My mother too was trapped in the maze of gender roles. According to Mom, women had a set of rules by which they must abide as did men. No confusion if we all follow the rules. Men do what men do, women do what they do and it all works out. What? Your daughter has the razor sharp mind of a mathematician ? She will never get a man that way. Men don’t marry girls who are smarter than they are….Better dumb it down dearie.

Like Voice Gal, my role was to be pretty and popular in high school, snag a man, and procreate. I am sure that in my mother’s mind that was the way to security and happiness. The trouble was, I wasn’t that kind of girl. For one reason or another I had opinions and I voiced them. Which didn’t make me popular in high school. I didn’t have any driving ambitions necessarily- in 1967 who had ever heard of a female astronaut? But being very shortsighted both figuratively and literally I never could see too far down the road. I always picked the wrong kind of guys-not the marrying kind. (Interestingly enough all the boys my mother wanted me to date weren’t necessarily the marrying kind either. They all came out of the closet later in life. But he’s such a nice boy! No doubt true, but definitely not what either he or I had in mind.)

During the early 70’s when women were just beginning to decide to keep their own names when they married, my mother and I got into a raging argument about the subject. Her point of view was that by not taking a man’s name my eventual children would not know to whom they belonged and I would be exhibiting a serious a lack of commitment to my future husband. My point was that when I married I would still have absolutely no blood of the family of my spouse running in my veins so why would I need to be labeled as if I did? I really didn’t think that regardless of my name, my future children would be unclear as to whom they belonged otherwise what would all those kids named Jones or Smith do? As it turned out, I did take my husband’s last name but doing so didn’t create a commitment on his part. Maybe he should have taken mine.

I was not as aware as Voice Gal about sexism as I was growing up, but I was swimming in it. I don’t remember a specific “ah-ha moment” when I realized that the rules were different for boys and girls but I do recall events or moments that were exceedingly strange. Events that only in the context of time and the conscious raising of feminism allowed me to name it for what it was.

When I was in eighth grade I was required to take algebra as most of us are. Those of us double X’ers in class were instructed by the male algebra teacher not to bother paying attention since we would never use the subject as we would all be getting married anyway. I wasn’t particularly troubled by the directive as math was not a favorite of mine-however, I was peeved when I was tested on what I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to and almost failed the class. Being math challenged followed me into high school where my lack of algebra skills haunted me for the next four years. I was required to take one math credit in college where I encountered a math instructor who for one reason or another didn’t much care whether those arrayed before him in his class were male or female and I succeed beyond my wildest imagination. At that point I realized it wasn’t that my brain was unable to grasp mathematical concepts, it was that my brain had never been respected as an organ that COULD grasp mathematical concepts. What a cheat. I remember being so angry that I had been allowed to believe that this was something that I was unable to comprehend.

The same math instructor from eighth grade used class time to express his opinions on various subjects. One in particular caught my attention. It was his thought that it was impossible for a man to over power and rape a woman. In his version of reality the only woman who could truly claim to be raped was one who was knocked unconscious prior to the act. Peculiar opinion that. Excuse for college date rate on his part maybe? I remember looking around as he was expressing his viewpoint and seeing more than a few of the heads of the boys in my class nodding in agreement. Who knows how many rapists that teacher turned loose on the unsuspecting female population.

Most of the time I went my own way fairly oblivious to the way in which our culture was and to a large degree still is a white men rule society. I just tried to do what I wanted to do. If my path was blocked by a hurdle created by male privilege, I chose another route or a different objective.

While in college I had the opportunity to visit Florida over spring break and to do an internship while in school. Even in the 70’s various cities in Florida had a 365 day a year party going on. At that time south Florida seemed to be a place where everyone who was at loose ends gravitated. Being asked if I wanted to fuck on a continual basis by mindless drunken young men when I was minding my own business got very old very fast. Why do men think it is appropriate to walk up to a woman and ask her point blank, “Want to fuck?” No hello, how’s your mother or kiss my ass. It was bad then, I don’t even want to think about what it is like now. I have often wondered how men would like it if a strange woman walked up to them on a public street and grabbed their crotch or their ass and said something lewd and rude.

I majored in education in college-nice safe major just in case I didn’t obtain that Mrs. Degree. Teaching, nursing, home economics; even in the early 70’s these were the safe professions for women. I had friends who were attempting law, DVM and medical degrees. Tough enough getting by the course work alone, much less the boys club bullshit thrown at them along the way. So with my safe teaching degree I went out to find a job. But wait, my degree was in social studies education. Given my myopia about my own future (which still exists to this day) I had never taken a look at who populated the social studies education jobs at the time I was in high school. Men. And what kind of men? The football coach of course. What do you do with the football coach? You give him the subject that he doesn’t really have to learn to teach-history. He just has to be able to read. Which is not to say that there probably weren’t some fine history teachers who happened to coach football. I just never met one. After I was turned down for any number of teaching jobs because, “We are looking for a man for this position, we need an assistant coach.” I fell back to my default behavior and chose a different objective. And for the record, I really like football. Knowing what I know now I would attempt to talk them into letting me coach it-I didn’t have that kind of confidence then.

My next stop along the road was retail management. Once again, I became enlightened when I would ask for maximum raises for female employees and was told they would be awarded less money because the ones who had husbands didn’t need the money (regardless of the quality of their work) or they were young and would be getting pregnant and leaving soon. I too slaved away putting in twelve hour days and six days weeks for very meager pay, one year not receiving any raise because my boss when awarded the raise money to distribute among his female management staff, chose to keep it for himself.

Even now as a fairly well respected businesswoman in my own right I encounter men who treat me as if I exist for no other reason than to serve their needs and to be otherwise dismissed. I have had male clients stick their fingers in my face and order me to do what they want me to do. In one case my order was to do something illegal. Fortunately I have no trouble firing a client.

While in some regard the culture has changed, in many other ways it has not. I have grave concerns about the extreme sexualizaton of our young women and what that says to young men about acceptable ways to treat women. While objectifying women is nothing new, the airwaves, advertising, music and movies are mediums that not only overwhelm young people with the message but encourage them to act on it. Our daughters can’t know how difficult it was to change the prevailing atmosphere so they would have more choices than teacher, wife, or nurse and in ignorance may squander away what was so painfully gained.

Our society in which divorce is rampant, in many states recognizes a woman’s contribution to the marriage. And thus awards her half of the assets (if there are assets to distribute) but doesn’t recognize that this same woman still does not have the earning capacity of her ex husband,; thereby long term driving the standard of living for the wife and children to a much lower level than experienced while she was married.

A woman who fights for that to which she is entitled is a ball buster or a bitch, while a man who does the same is admired for his focus and assertiveness.

Doctors exist who still dismiss their female patient’s symptoms as not real or treat them as children who don’t know where it is that they hurts. My 21 year old daughter had this experience last spring when a doctor refused to consider what she thought was a cause of issues she was having with her eyes. My daughter was right, the doctor was wrong and he is now a fired doctor who has lost three patients for his male hubris.

I am still amazed when white members of my community state that racism doesn’t exist in our town. My friends who are from minority groups can attest otherwise. And so it is with privilege and sexism which breeds misogyny.

We haven’t come a long way baby. I am afraid we are losing ground.