Blue is for Boys

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…and a man asked, “Why are girl geeks so rare?”

…and all the women in IT and other geek fields raised their heads just far enough to roll their eyes, give the ‘for real?’ look, blink, sigh, giggle, give the evil eye, laugh, rant about feminism, turn it into a ‘your mom’ joke (“…because we were all too busy with your mom for her to have a daughter after giving birth to you”), etc.

A similar question could be asked about a LOT of things if you just missed the fact that all kinds of sexism is still out there.

Some of the hottest topics in the U.S. right now are womens’ rights over their own bodies and whether people who don’t want to have and guy-girl marriage have a right to do so. Some of the hottest topics in the world are whether or not women have the right to even make their own decisions and live if they try to.

It is always surprising, yet not surprising, that people miss what gender identities other than strait male, go through. They want to know why they don’t see it, and my easiest answer is that it isn’t happening to you or you’re so conditioned to accept it, that it is no longer an issue.

Women accept that they are no good with technology, or cars, or sports, or other ‘guy things’ from a young age. And then there are people like me that you wonder if we’re into it just because it was implied that we weren’t supposed to be.

Not all sexism really bothers me. It’s not worth my life, my energy, being negative to get worked up about even little thing. Some people do that, and in doing so miss the real stuff. They are too busy concentrating on the small symptoms rather than the real disease. I’m not talking about a ‘your mom’ joke or ‘that’s what she said’, though those sorts of things exist instead of ‘your dad’ or ‘that’s what he said’ and one wonders why even if just a little.

Just like homosexuals are more concerned with having equal rights, getting and keeping jobs, and feeling safe than whether or not they say ‘gay’ in a certain way at purepwnge.com, I am not going to care if you hold the door for me or not.

I’m talking about the sorts of things that allow the initial question to be asked. How does it happen that women have an extreme less of a chance to have certain careers, that are well within their abilities, in their future?

I could fill this post with stories of my own experiences. Explain I’ve seen sexism and sexism be enabled by guys and gals alike. Yes, many women help sexism along plenty. But I think really what I am trying to say is…

Really? You don’t know that sexism is alive and well?

If that’s the case, open your eyes a bit wider, read a little, listen a little harder. Even if it is not happening to you, you should be able to see it and empathize and even help stop it in some small way.

Since you’ve asked the question, I guess you’ve decided for some reason to care. Asking this question has likely lead you to see it (or marked your really seeing it for the first time). You don’t need to look far to get some whys.

However, there is no real satisfactory answer to why are world is filled with prejudice. Why don’t people don’t treat people as just people? I don’t know.

Why do we have to arbitrarily label, categorize, and judge each other as being inferior?

I don’t know. I wish we’d stop, or at least try. I think that’s where I get mad and pick my battles is when people don’t even care enough to give a sincere effort to be more sensitive to what fills someones shoes. Take a moment to think about what it takes to walk their mile, especially since we have the power to make that easier for everyone with so little effort.

And with that, I will vacate my soapbox for the time being.

To change gears into something more silly while maybe getting a glimpse of walking even a tiny bit in a woman’s shoes, check out this Smartest Man in the World podcast. It’s one of my favorites. That Rory is one funny guy. :)

  • Well, it’s not entirely arbitrary, I’m completely convinced that women are better at some things than men: i.e. breastfeeding.

    It’s a curious thing though, equality seems to be highly unstable, and it only takes a slight push to crystallise the whole caboodle. Like, I earn more than my wife, therefore it is more important for us to consider my job prospects than hers, because I de-facto earn more. But because my job prospects are more important She has to follow me should I get a new job, and because she has to follow me around in my career, she doesn’t get to carve out her own career path.

    (Note to readers: my wife will follow me should I get a new job, not because I’ve told her to; but because we worked out between us that of the two of us, it was more important I have a good job I can commit to. This isn’t just, but it is for a large part, because I get paid more than she does. It’s also because she’s already decided that she wants having children to interrupt her career. So as she’s planned in a hiatus into her career, and I’ve got to keep working full time until I drop dead from exhaustion – it makes sense that I have the job I can keep working at.)

    Which means she’ll never get a really good job and be paid the same as me. So we’ve built sexism into our marriage already, and we’ve not hit our second anniversary yet.

    So from a couple of minor differences at the start (I get paid slightly more, and she’s less bothered about long term working) we’ll end up that by the time we retire I’ll probably be earning twice what she is.

    Inequality is easy to slip into like that.

  • You bring up some interesting points.

    Women and men are different, ie: breasts. It’s true.

    As far as you marriage, is that sexism or is it just the way you have distributed things between two people in a marriage.

    If she doesn’t make as much money because she wanted to take time to be home with the kids, and not because she felt like she had to be, was expected to, or was forced to or something like that, it’s not sexist to have taken time from a career for kids.

    Things between two people can be distributed differently without it being due to gender, race, etc.

    Getting paid less could be a matter of sexism or it could be a matter of just having different careers and positions in them.

    Having different roles in a marriage I don’t think is inherently sexist. I think that forcing a particular role, that is not based on the anatomical differences between man and woman, is sexist. Not all traditional roles are forced though.