Last year, a young man I considered my friend had the following conversation with me. All names have been changed for privacy.
Luke: Guys don’t ever get cranky. Anything wrong with a guy’s life is usually because of the girl.
Me: What do you mean?
Luke: Women need to get back in the kitchen.
Me: Please tell me you’re being sarcastic.
Luke: Women need to stop trying to do so much with their lives.
Me: What, you mean like, balancing work and a family?
Luke: Yes! It’s impossible to do both. They should just accept that they are supposed to have kids and stop trying to have a career.
Me: Well, I’m a feminist, and I don’t believe in that. Personally, I’m not sure if I even want children. I mean, I’m only sixteen, and-
Luke: You are a part of the problem.
Me: What problem?
Luke: You are a part of the problem. Girls are raised to be good mothers. You’re wrong to want anything but that!
Me: I’ve already decided that I want a career. I made my choice; don’t worry about me.
At the time, I wasn’t sure why Luke spewed all of his sexist remarks at me. Long had I known him to be arrogant and chauvinistic, but he had never aimed any specific comment at me previously. Now I realize that he and his girlfriend Jane had been planning their future together since they were fifteen. He would work and help her through college, which she would complete to make her parents happy, and then they would get married and work for a few years to save money for a house in the suburbs. Then, Jane would stop working and have three or four kids, whose names have already been chosen. Several of their friends, myself included, would be the godparents of those good little Catholic children. How…. sickeningly 1950’s and conformist.
Luke thought it a problem that women wanted to have goals and ambitions outside the home, and I only furthered the issue by being fiercely independent and feministic. But, in reality, he is the one who embodies a much larger problem; sexist individuals who are hampering the Equal Rights Movement in this country. The Equal Rights Amendment was never passed by Congress, and women to this day remain unmentioned in the Constitution. Chauvinists like Luke only hamper women’s attempts to win the right to equal pay and rights in the judicial system. And if having a brain and wanting to use it is suddenly a “problem,” then I intend to raise utter hell.
I say do what you plan on doing. Being sexist is just stupid and I can't see why your friend would be that ignorant.
Women deserve to do what they want whether that is having kids, a career, or both. But we should not be forced into something we dont want and we should be treated equally to men.
The Equal Rights Amendment was never passed by Congress
omgosh are you serious....... I had no idea wow Ill do a blog on this tomarrow
Once upon a time in my little mind.
By me Kaity Kat
or encylopedia dramatica. ever.
full of sexist freaks.
but i guess its just natural for most atheist fat kids to do that.
it is sickening. and really, its the same with racism toward blacks or muslims, in real life or online.
and it's always hilarious when people "plan" their future before their at least 21 or older. I mean, planning your future with a high school girlfriend/boyfriend? and 15 years old?
there is no end to the bucket of stupidity that society spews/
I just read a fantastic article about the decline of feminism in America, and it made me angry all over again. To think that people still maintain the archaic ideology as your friend "Luke" is sad and frusterating. I'd say more, but I'm sure I'd just be preaching to the choir : ).
Here's the article, if you're interested: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080526/pollitt