{"id":556,"date":"2013-05-26T10:11:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T10:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/?p=556"},"modified":"2015-03-12T11:18:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T18:18:53","slug":"woman-or-girl-exploring-hidden-sexism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/2013\/05\/26\/woman-or-girl-exploring-hidden-sexism\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman or Girl? Exploring Hidden Sexism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Art by Aimee Miller SC ’16<\/p><\/div>\n

What do a male masochist and a lesbian have in common? They both appreciate and respect strong women. Our society, in general, does not.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t believe me?<\/p>\n

Think about every time\u00a0you’ve\u00a0used the word \u201cgirl\u201d to refer to a grown woman. Or if\u00a0you’ve\u00a0ever heard \u201ca slut is just a woman with the morals of a man.\u201d Or when you see a man hold the door open for a woman even though she was already holding it open for him. These show we don\u2019t know what to do with an independent woman.<\/p>\n

Our double standard with sexuality proves we don\u2019t like women with sexual power. The idea that a \u201cslut is just a woman with the morals of a man\u201d\u00a0shouldn’t\u00a0be brewed down to a one-line joke. When you can laugh off a significant inequality then something is wrong. I think that glorifying one gender for an action while the other is villainized is a problem.<\/p>\n

The only reason sluts are sluts is that people are uncomfortable with women having sexual freedom. When women feel truly liberated you can\u2019t use sex to control them and they start wanting things. They start demanding full reproductive rights and access to birth control. Some people just aren\u2019t comfortable with that.<\/p>\n

As a society, we still\u00a0aren’t\u00a0comfortable with women liberated in any way, especially sexually. Women with sexual power are scary. I read a blurb about Elizabeth Taylor the other day and how her portrayals of the classic femme fatales were empowering, not sexist as many feminists like to think. A woman\u2019s sexuality is an unparalleled force, so naturally it makes society fearful and eager to suppress it.<\/p>\n

We just don\u2019t know know how to handle strong women. We still call a woman of any age \u201cgirl;\u201d it\u2019s pretty ridiculous. In my experience, calling someone out on this\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0elicit a particularly enthused response. The nicest I\u2019ve gotten is an \u201cOh… whatever, you know what I mean\u201d when I told a friend that Eva Longoria is not a \u201cgirl\u201d he \ufb01nds attractive.<\/p>\n

To me, it\u2019s not \u201cwhatever.\u201d It matters when you trivialize a person by using the wrong word. No one would refer to Joseph Gordon Levitt as a boy. But any grown woman can be called a girl without hesitation. Almost everyone I know does it, even though girls and women are not synonymous. A girl is a dependent child. A woman is an independent adult. There\u2019s still an idea that being a woman is being weak.<\/p>\n

You still hear \u201cdon\u2019t hit girls\u201d or \u201cI would never hit a woman\u201d instead of \u201cdon\u2019t hit someone weaker than you\u201d or \u201cI would never hit someone I could easily overpower.\u201d Women are not defenseless. Many of them would kick your ass if necessary\u2013personally, I will not hesitate to punch someone in the throat if need be.<\/p>\n

All this paternal chivalry is pure chauvinism.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0had friends who have been in class with a room full of raised hands in support of gender equality. When asked if women should not be exempt from the draft their hands were some of the few still raised. In the U.S., we still don\u2019t of\ufb01cially allow women in combat, even though other countries have women in all levels of their military. It\u2019s ignorant to perpetuate the belief \u00a0that women are physically inferior to men because we have less muscle mass. Lower muscle mass means increased stamina, so women frequently have superior endurance. We can make up for any instantaneous strength with being able to perform longer.<\/p>\n

Our society\u2019s lack of appreciation for strong women is inherent in everyday actions, even by people who are not intentionally sexist and may even support women rights. We need to be more conscious about our actions and hold everyone accountable for the damage sexism in\ufb02icts. It may be 2012, but our attitudes are stuck in 1952.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a society we still haven’t fully accepted gender equality. Today, our sexism is shown in our social habits and the way we react to strong women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,246],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-volume-5-issue-1"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/05\/sexism-e1369691682175.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}