We read these books all the time where women are in the kitchen
Being outspoken, honest, independent-minded is one thing; being a bitch, a nag, a fanatic is another. The Atlantic on a study of teenage girls:
A number of girls from different middle and high schools reported similar experiences. One girl, Rory, 13, told them, “I was trying out for basketball and I got up to sign the sheet and everyone was like, ‘Oh get back in the kitchen!’” Rory’s initial response was anger—but then it turned to acceptance. “Guys are like that, and you get over it. It doesn’t bother me, it’s stereotypical. We read these books all the time where women are in the kitchen,” she said. (Pomerantz and Raby used pseudonyms to protect the girls’ identities.)
Pomerantz and Raby have both written various books on girl culture and knew that girls’ lives didn’t just amount to the beautiful, perfectly crafted sound bites portrayed in the media. While the authors heard plenty of alpha-girl stories—a girl who was the only female player on a boys’ hockey team, a girl who worried about balancing her popularity and her academics, a girl who stayed up until 1 a.m. checking her schoolwork—the articles made it sound as if society had transitioned into a post-feminism climate. But while they expected to hear about uncomfortable dynamics between boys and girls, they weren’t necessarily anticipating overly sexist commands reminiscent of the 1950s. Both Pomerantz and Raby gasped when they heard the “Go make me a sandwich” comment.
A few girls surveyed pushed back against the sexist statements and were able to clearly delineate what is and isn’t a joke. But more of the girls were reluctant to call out boys for their sexist behavior. They didn’t want to appear bitchy or outspoken or unsexy. It would make them look like a feminist, and feminism was a potentially damaging label. It had too many implications: that you were a prude, that you couldn’t take a joke, that you were a “man-hater” or a “bitch.” It was much cooler to say nothing. To laugh it off.
That. It’s fine to be a rebel, an activist, a fist-waver…but you can’t make other people see you that way. They can decide to see you as a prude and a bitch instead. It’s never easy.
Not to mention these days being a prude can simply mean that you didn’t want to engage in oral, anal, or indeed any sex with the first random male that suggested it.
What gets me is this is worse than when I was a girl. How is it we managed to go backwards?
On the other hand (for those that care) the new Dr Who will be a woman! So there’s that. Cue much wailing and rending of clothes by the Daily Mail et al.
Please forgive me for posting derailing material, but as we both live in Seattle, I thought I would just say the words: Doctor Jennifer McCreight. People reading this may remember how she was hounded from FtB years ago by what one could reasonably call the Thunderf00t crowd. I met her once in passing on the UW-S campus, and inquired into her area of research. Pretty awesome stuff. I also attempted to express my understanding of her decision to quit FtB and regular blogging.
Anyway: I know some people who recently received post-baccalaureate degrees from UW, and I was curious as to whether Ms. McCreight had completed her Ph.D. work. Obviously, she has. Dr. McCreight has just recently published an article in PLOS|One about her research, here.
Again, I am sorry for jumping in with this, but McCreight’s experience at FtB was not entirely different from your own, in my opinion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/us/maryam-mirzakhani-dead.html
Her place wasn’t in the kitchen. What she cooked was mathematics.
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/94695695700/fields-medal-winner-maryam-mirzakhanis
I met her at a conference in San Francisco several years ago. We joked about hijabs. A great loss.
The (British) reaction to a female Doctor is going to be worse than we’ve ever seen… But it’s about damn time.
Claire – even as a man I would agree with that observation (and the Dr Who comment as well – you should see the comments on the story announcing the change…)
Clamboy – agree.
Helene – I read that story yesterday and also felt loss, both for those in her field, science generally and more specifically her family. She sounds like a remarkable person in addition to a remarkable academic. She also starkly highlights the waste of talent that occurs in societies including our own that suppress, sideline and discourage girls and women from reaching their potential. Why so many people cannot see that and consider it a bad thing still bemuses me.
clamboy @ 3 – thank you for that. Yes, and in an awesome turnaround for the ages, Jen just landed her literal dream job: literal in the sense that while in grad school she would frequently say “You know, the perfect job for me would be ______” and laugh. The imagined job combined her PhD and her communications skills at a company she longed to work at. A few weeks ago the company opened up that exact job and Jen went for an interview.
Boom. I particularly love it because she got so much grief from blogging, but in the end it was useful. So ha!!
Rob @6,
I notice that Rouhani (who is a relative “moderate”) said a few kind words about Mirzakhani. In our conversation she wasn’t terribly complimentary about the regime in Iran what the ayatollahs had wrought.
OB @ 7, if you’re talking to Jen, please pass on my congratulations. I really liked her blag and was very disappointed that she was hounded off FtB by assholes. She deserves all the success and happiness she gets.
Will do. We bump into each other on Facebook now and then.
OB @ 7 – It is freaking awesome! Dr. McCreight has a public twitter feed, and I was very glad to read that she had landed this great opportunity. Too bad, so sad, scumbags! And I echo Rob @ 9.
Ah! I forgot about Twitter so I didn’t give details because I didn’t know if they were public – now I see they are. Dream job is “communicating @23andMe research to the rest of the genomics community using social media & more.”
Poetic justice!
clamboy @11, careful. This will be used as evidence we are an echo chamber…
Rob, #1. I always thought that refusal by women of unwanted/unsolicited offers of sex resulted in them being called lesbians rather than prudes.
AoS, to be honest I loose track. There are just too many slurs applied against women and the use varies by region. My general sense is that currently prude>feminist>lesbian. They might swap places in some cases, as confusingly some seem to regard them as synonyms. Of course they’re usually modified by fat/ugly/black/old….
You left off stupid, hysterical, trivial, whiny, and misandrist.
I know. I lost the will to continue. I’m a man that doesn’t get these slurs attached to me and I find it depressing and enervating to think about. I wouldn’t last 10 minutes as a women.