Sexism Stoplight: Stop Blaming My Gender For Your Inadequacies
November 13, 2009
by Optixmom
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Thanks to Cynthia Ruccia and pacific-cali, the TNA would like to present its first installment of Sexism Stoplight.
This blog (and future blogs with this title) will tackle a sexist comment or situation and give a sample of advice on how to handle it. It is our hope that all of our members will chime in and give advice from your perspective. We welcome you to use whatever means necessary to make your point; whether it is with humor (my bag) or a biting, confrontational, in-your-face correction. We all have different styles and ways of handling a situation. It is the hope of everyone here that we can learn from each other and STOP! sexist behavior in its tracks.
Dear TNA,
I recently was accepted to a very competitive university and received a scholarship. One of my male friends had also applied to the same school and he was rejected. When he found out that I was accepted, instead of being happy for me he exclaimed:
“That is so unfair! They probably only accepted you because you filled some sort of girl quota.”
Do universities have “girl quotas”? I don’t understand why my friend made that comment. Is this really my fault?
Sincerely,
Ms. Ivy Leaguer
What can you say to that?
Dear Ms. Leaguer,
To my knowledge universities do not have “girl quotas”, whatever that means. Most universities look for students with strong scholarship and diversity of interests. Your friend is jealous and he is covering up for his inadequacies by blaming his misfortune on you. I would have responded to him by saying,
“That is wrong and you know it. It is not my fault that you didn’t get accepted and if you were a true friend you wouldn’t be blaming me, you would be congratulating me.” [Then I would probably add, "go blow it out your ear." but that additional wording is up to you.]
So TNA peeps, how would you have responded to Ms. Leager’s male “friend”?
For quite a while, many universities have been openly giving strong preferences to male applicants in order to maintain balanced classes. “[T]he standards for admission to today’s most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men,” wrote Kenyon’s dean of admissions. That’s really the only response needed.
This is a GREAT idea optixmom. The people who come to this blog are very smart and I can’t wait to get all of their terrific ideas. the15th was the perfect starting comment—thanks to both of you!!
I can feel for Ms. Leaguer because this very comment was given to me a few weeks ago regarding something within my physics discipline. I couldn’t believe that the adult male actually had the audacity to say this to me. Jealousy isn’t very becoming and that is basically what I said to him. I am typically non-confrontational so I try to keep myself low key. But I would love to have a great retort because since my field has so few women and minorities that we face this comment more often than not when we are in some type of competition with our peers.
Love it Optixmom. Thanks for the morning laugh.
First allow your full facial response to his nonsense to happen. Then say “well too bad you didn’t make their male quota” in a snarky tone.
I love the15th’s comment above.
But I’d probably have blurted out “They probably only rejected you because they already filled the stupid/jerk quota.”
I think universities have a plethora of successful female candidates, statistically many more females than males are being graduated, so, no, there’s probably not a “girl quota.”
Wow – this is wonderful! Thank you Optixmom for adding this feature to the TNA blog!!
“What can you say to that?”
Fuck off?
I would have said to him that his rejection might have had something to with the receptors in his brain cells.
Janis you crack me up!
I’ve found a cold dead-eyed stone faced stare (think Jaws
) to be very effective. If you hold it long enough they will either get embarrassed and walk away, or start back-peddling and explaining “what they really meant.”
My response would be “perhaps they filled they already filled the small penis quota I am so sorry about that.”
Beaten by a girl. These are the same people who say sexism doesn’t exist. If a woman is rejected it is because of her merit, but if she makes it somewhere, anywhere, she must have done something tricky. OF course sexism can exist when it’s his genitals.
A Vice president of a (mostly male) college once said to me “Well, we are sure you got in here somehow”
I promptly left.
I’d also like to add that I do not know of ANY universities that have a woman quota, but they really should! The fact of the matter is, as a female, you out qualify males; statistically, for every male that applies, there are several females who out qualify him, but because of sexism are not accepted or are not encouraged to apply. So congratulations! And just remember that you, as a woman, probably out qualify most of your male peers. Go get em!
It’s also worth remembering that even though we outperform them and are overeducated compared to them … we still earn less.
The fact is, men don’t NEED to go to college to earn way more than we do. We attend college in larger numbers for a very simple reason: we still have to work twice as hard to earn half as much as they do.
That’s true Janis. The value that people place on men has nothing to do with their credentials. Whatever men do, by virtue of the fact that men do it, it will be lauded, whether that is education, or war. What women do, becomes devalued in society; that includes education. The wage gap has actually increased. I know the effects of the wage gap first hand, and the so-called excuse that women do not ask for more. I know from experience that it is bullshit, and I have learned that to keep my job, or to even get a job, I cannot negotiate or ask for more. I am currently earning $40,000 less a year than my male colleagues.
And you know the Anthropologist in me wants to dissect it. I think it is because we have this attitude ingrained in us that women’s work should be free. So whatever women are doing, the idea that they should be paid is counter intuitive. And trust me, the men I work with and for are complete sexist asshats. Men hate working with women because they don’t like the idea of “women’s work”, and they feel, rightfully, considering societies opinion, that it devalues their work. It does. The dickyness, the attitudes, and the idea of “how’d a woman get in here?” does not stop once you enter the workforce.
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