I'm angry about gender inequality.
Actually I'm angry about all inequality, and for some reason I picked tonight to feel this anger so acutely. It all started, more or less, when I read an article this afternoon posted on one of my favorite blogs, which mostly focuses on what I like to call "non-news": celebrity gossip, relationship advice, fashion articles, and periodic real news updates on "women's issues" around the world. The blog has a definitive left lean and tends to cater towards an educated audience of working women and college students, and usually their rants against paycheck inequality or pro-lifers or objectification of women in advertisement provide me with some nourishing food for thought. Today, however, they posted an article entitled "20 Things Men Don't Know About Women," or something along those lines. I'm fairly certain the article was meant to be taken lightheartedly, but I found it so offensive and it made me so angry that hours later, I still haven't recovered from seeing red.
My issue with the article--other than the fact that the author was making gross generalizations about women, and the vast majority of items on the list did not even remotely apply to me (the first was about how much women enjoy peeing outside and in the shower. Um. No. Pretty sure I haven't done that since I was potty trained)--was that about half the things on the list involved the objectification of women in one way or another. For example, the author claims that one thing men don't know about women is that we all enjoy catcalls from construction workers, as long as they aren't too lewd. Another claim was that all women secretly want their guy friends to lust after them, so we deliberately dress up so that they'll want to sleep with us even though we don't want to sleep with them. Yet another was that all women hate waxing body hair, really, really, utterly hate it, but do it anyway so that guys will go down on them. Her bottom line, perhaps without intending it to be, was that women actually like to be objectified.
Catcalls aren't innocent, even when they aren't lewd--they're disrespectful, and designed to remind a woman of "her place." They aren't compliments, even if taken out of context they might sound like they are. A construction worker--even a female construction worker--would never whistle or yell at a man in the same way he would a woman, and for that and that alone, it's not okay. I put up with more catcalls than I can even count when I was in Morocco, and let me tell you, they were not flattering, they were not intended to flatter me, and I did not enjoy them in the least. They made me feel intimidated and nervous when I walked by a group of men, and I spent so much time wishing I were invisible so that strange men would leave me allow that I finally called it quits and left the country three weeks early...which was likely exactly the thing they wanted me to do. A catcall is intended to relegate a woman to the same position in a man's mind as a mostly-naked pin-up girl in a motorcycle calendar: an object to be drooled over and fantasized about, not a human being who would, at least in my case, be much more likely to confront a catcaller and give him a piece of my mind than to sleep with him.
As for the notion that all women want our guy friends to want to sleep with us even when we don't want to sleep with them, well, there's a very thin line between that and the fundamentalist notion that all women are hedonists who exist solely to tempt men into sin with our sexuality. The author of this article was implying that, yes, women do have a secret agenda and are trying to lure men into lust, that we're incapable of conducting a platonic relationship with a man without ulterior motives. Personally, I want my friends--male or female--to treat me as a human being, not a sex object; how on earth is dressing myself up and trying to subliminally hint that they should sleep with me working toward accomplishing that goal in any way? Not to mention the fact that the author is betraying a very low sense of self-esteem and self-respect on her part, and then imparting that same lack of confidence onto all women: it's not enough for a man to like you as a friend and enjoy your company and conversation; he should want to sleep with you, too.
And finally, the issue of the waxing. Having grown up in the Midwest with a prohibitionist prude for a mother, I'm somewhat uncomfortable discussing the details of genital grooming, so I'll treat this one in more general terms. The decisions you make about your body--hairstyles, clothing, even what you put into it--you should make for yourself, not for your friends, or your boyfriend, and certainly not because you want sex. I would never dream of changing my appearance by, say, getting a different haircut, because some guy wanted me to. Ultimately, the only one who has to be happy with my appearance is me, so why would I--as the author of the article claims--be willing to do something I really, truly hate, for the sake of someone else? To bring it back to precise terms, if a woman really hates getting Brazilians, then she should damn well stop getting Brazilians and instead just find a sexual partner who doesn't mind a bit of hair. Why on earth would you cost yourself time, money, and pain for something you don't even want to do? Because you're a woman, that's why--according to this author, anyway.
You know what makes me the most angry, though? Even more than ignorant articles like this that are posing as humor, even more than the fact that people think it's okay to write degrading and objectifying things in the name of humor, it's the fact that if I were to point out to someone how unprogressive and anti-feminist this article is, they'd berate me for being too PC and taking a humorous article too seriously. I'm angry about gender inequality, and articles like this--just as much as people like Sharron Angle--are upholding that very inequality, whether they intend to or not. But by expressing my anger, I suddenly am labeled a radical. It's okay to want equality, but when I express anger at the continued marginalization, objectification, and lack of equality that so many people face, or when--heaven forbid--I try to speak out and stop those things, somehow that makes me irrational. So yeah, I'm angry about gender inequality, but I'm even more angry at being told I have no reason to be.
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