As a young female engineer just out of college, I was meeting with vendors for the first time to shop for new manufacturing equipment to install. I was mistaken for a secretary and asked to get coffee several times.
The true sexism was a fool who didn’t believe I was an engineer, and repeatedly asked who was really in charge.
The salesperson entered the boss’ office behind me. I sat down near the secretary, trying not to blow up in one of my first professional assignments. The visitor said he’d never seen me, boss confirmed I was a new engineer hire, had worked there two and a half years prior as an intern / part time. He said I should have been home barefoot and pregnant, not telling men like them what to do.
The guy didn’t realize I heard every word. The guy tried to do to his sales pitch to the manager, but he didn’t commit to anything. After the guy left, I entered the boss’ office and took the catalog.
When I placed the orders, I made sure not one item of the $100,000 budget came from his company. He even had the gall to call and ask when we’d order items per his price quote. I told him over the phone that I just didn’t have the skills to handle his particular product line, but other vendors were much happier to help explain things to a young girl like me, and that he wasn’t getting our business.
That is true sexism. And I made sure it had marketplace consequences.
What isn’t sexism?
A girl wearing a skimpy dress is not oppressed if she gets guy’s stares - she earns it by the clothing choices she makes.
A girl who acts like an idiot because smart kids are nerds isn’t going to get asked her opinion as often on important subjects.
The girl who plays get along and never takes a stand isn’t taken as seriously as the ones with principles.
Being asked if you are married or how many kids you have isn’t sexist - it is conversation.
Being show courtesy like not cussing in front of you and holding the door is a complement, not an insult.
Being ignored because you are quiet all the time is human nature.
Being devalued for your opinion because you equivocate it and pre-condition it is a result of the way you speak. Speaking with confidence is one part, but so is not minimizing the ideas you want to convey. Say “we should”, not “I think we might want to consider this idea”.
I go ahead and do it but I feel victimized and taken advantage of.
It's not easy being tall.
I’m tired of being judged by the color of my skin.
Leftists are always aggressive
So, what does it mean when black people ask me for directions in a black neighborhood? Am I the micro aggressor or aggressee?
I was micro-aggressed by a fist to the side of the head in the 1970’s when a couple of friends and I went to a McDonalds where a bunch of Trayvon’s brothers were angry because their school lost a basketball game.
Knockout game before it was fashionable.
We got out of there because unbeknownst to them we were on the way home from the skeet range and my buddy, lagging behind, pulled a 12-gauge, racked a round and said loudly, “Okay, who really wants to play?”
1973, if memory serves, in the socialist paradise of Maryland
I don’t do micro-aggression.
If I aggress someone, I want them to know it.
I see people walking down the sidewalk that refuse to yield all the time. They walk like they own the whole thing, everyone else must get out of the way.
People always ask me to take photos of them with their cameras or phones because I have an honest face.
Huh?
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