Friday, May 09, 2008

Gender Bias

This is my knife.The blade is only 1 1/2 inches. It is a nice little lady of a knife.

Wednesday last, I drove my father to Home Depot to buy landscaping supplies. The only bundle of stakes, in the size he wanted, was perched on a pallet, on a shelf, above our heads. A female manager asked a VERY LARGE male co-worker to reach them down for us.

He tried, but the bundle was strapped to the pallet. "Do you have a knife?" he asked.

Woman manager -- no.

Dad -- apparently doesn't share his cutlery.

I handed the Large Young Man, my knife.

He cut open the bundle, lifted it down, closed the knife and tried to hand it back to Dad.

Excuse me, that's mine.

He looked at me like I was a green-haired Goth with three tits and a limp before reluctantly handing the knife back to me.

That's right, boy.

Female.

Armed.

Keep it in mind.

3 comments:

  1. A few years ago I worked as a transportation supervisor in a room with 10 other supervisors, two of us women.

    A semi pulled in, was unloaded, driver got sick. Management came to our office and asked the 9 men, one by one, if they had a class A licence (truck license). Each of them said no, he had let it expire when he had become a supervisor.

    The other woman and I were ignored. She looked at me; I looked at her; we nodded. Both of us--both--had our class A licenses, but if they were going to be bigoted enough to assume that because we were female we were fit only to drive a desk--well, then, the truck could just sit there until they shuttled a driver from the depot. Which they did.

    Amazing how much expectations and assumptions about women drive behavior even in the 21st century.

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  2. Why didn't you speak up and hoist them on their own petard?

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  3. Doesn't change their biased point of view. They label you as "bitch" and "ball-buster" and dismiss the content of what you have to say. Too threatening to their view of the world.

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