If you automatically tune out the female speakers at General Conference, then you are saying that female voices don't matter and/or have nothing meaningful to contribute to a spiritual discussion. Which means that you are further marginalizing women and helping to ensure that the women within your religious community feel completely invalidated. Congratulations.
If you dismiss a girl's (likely perfectly legitimate) anger as "just PMS", then you are being sexist.
If you say something like "I never trust anything that bleeds for 10 days and lives," then I don't care if you happen to be a Sociology professor; you are being sexist.
If you tell a girl that whatever she's studying in college doesn't matter because she's just going to be a mom anyway, you are being sexist, denigrating motherhood, and devaluing education. Do some soul-searching before you rejoin society.
If you tell a girl in a competitive, lucrative, male-dominated major that she's taking a spot that should be given to a man (even if he's a future breadwinner), then you are behaving like a sexist moron. This happens with surprising frequency around here. Let's put a stop to that.
Don't tell me that girls are "crazy" or "irrational". I think the more accurate term you're looking for is "not like men". Similarly, don't tell me that my somehow "talking like a guy" is a compliment because it means that I make sense. The idea that men are the only normal ones automatically carries with it the assumption that women are less than that and therefore deserve to be dismissed. So even if you don't think that's what you're saying, that's what I'm hearing.
That person who beat you at Halo last night by a wide margin did not "rape" you. S/he just played significantly better than you did.
In general, if we're not that close and our interaction has nothing to do with my body, then I don't want to hear an in-depth description of my physical proportions from you. Sorry, I just don't.
It's OK if I like high heels and comic books. It's also OK if I don't like either of those things.
Problems that you have are not always problems had by your entire gender, or even most of your gender. Sometimes they're just problems that you have. Please learn the difference so you can stop telling me that "women" do this or "men" believe that when you're really just telling me about yourself.
OK, rant over.
Huh. I feel like I should apologize, and I don't think I've even done any of that...
ReplyDeleteUnless you're counting when speakers say "I'd like to talk to the..." and mention some demographic I don't belong to. It's harder to pay attention then because it kinda feels like listening in, since they just said they weren't talking to me. Of course, that happens just as often in the Priesthood session (talking to the young men) as it does in a regular session (usually to the young women); usually more often in Priesthood. And the last few conferences it didn't happen at all in a regular session...
My friend's professor said, in class, at BYU, in front of PEOPLE, "What's the difference between a woman's degree and a 16 inch pizza? Give up? A pizza can feed the kids for a day. Her degree is worthless"--this is something he regularly says to his wife. It's "teasing."
ReplyDeleteUmm...