Me Too, You Too?

It seems that every single day, when I read the news, there are new sexual assault/abuse allegations against someone.   This week: Michael Fassbender and Shaun White.  The more I read, the more appalled I become - and I know I'm not the only one. 

Have you been the victim of a sexual assault?  I have not.  But I have been sexually discriminated against.  Honestly: what woman has not?  And even more honestly, I've heard almost every male in my life say things that are so inherently anti-female that I'm aghast. I personally know people - not at my workplace - who will not hire women of child-bearing age for fear that, once they have a child (which they apparently all do, except me!), they will quit. 

In graduate school, in my male-dominated field, I sat through classes where professors made misogynistic remarks and told me to "cover my ears" when talking about the perversions of Roman emperors.  My male classmates, I hope, did not agree, but none confronted the professor; one merely made a sarcastic remark in response.  I was passed over for departmental jobs and other perks because I wasn't "one of the guys" in the so-called "boys club" of the department.   When I complained about this to the department chair (a man), his only response was the I really needed to change my pronouns from boys/girls to men/women.  

These are tiny, tiny things in relation to all the horrible crimes we're seeing in the news.  But my point is that there is an underlying problem in all of society that is anti-female.  Women are catty.  Women are shallow.  Women always cheat.  Women are just paranoid.  They worry too much.  Women only care about money and clothes.  And on and on.  Do I hear women talking this way about men?  No.  I hear things like, "men are fixers" or "men need to feel needed."  I hear discussions about how to better get along with men.  I do not hear the opposite.  

I could also be very, very sheltered.  Maybe this dialogue in not as one-sided as I've witnessed.  Either way...  Maybe if this dialogue didn't happen and if children didn't hear it, they would have more respect for women.  

That's my two cents.