"Micro" acts of every day sexism...

High heels for news presenters and politicians really piss me off. I agree that women should wear what they want, including stilettos if they like them. I also know that more and more women are mainly wearing shoes that are comfortable now, including for professional jobs. So when I see Cathy Newman on Channel 4 standing around in heels, or Jo Swinson standing in front of an audience for an hour wearing stilettos, it really winds me up.

Wavescrashing I can fully see that you intend it to include men and women, but sirs is not gender neutral or unisex and it quite clearly does not include women.

Exactly this, and I am quite astounded that anyone can think it is unisex. This is one of the easy ones.

Wow, I'd never spotted any of this, thank you for highlighting and I'll be watching out now and following up.

Actually I thought that hairstyle was unprofessional and would think exactly the same had she been a man. In that role you have to give the impression of competence and to my mind anything other than uniform doesn't.

Her hair looked good and away from work; great. In work, no. Just the same as I wouldn't expect a mohawk and loads of piercings on a council's front desk, no matter how good they look. You have to give the impression of consistency and reassurance. People make instant judgements and when they are scared, which is the likelihood when they see the police, they want to know things are being taken seriously.

I hold men and women to the same standards in this. The clothing can be identical (except to fit!) And no need for heels or make up for anyone!

^^ TRA types would claim her as trans.

😂

children's TV boils my piss on a daily basis with its lack of representation of women.

I still have really strong memories of watching Pigeon Street as a child and seeing Long Distance Clara drive her lorries all over the world before returning home to her husband who’d cooked her dinner. And that was around 35 years ago.

Need more of this representation in 2019.

This: female police officer doing her job extremely well and somehow her hair (wtf?) becomes the story:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-50501203

As a lot of people have already mentioned, children's TV boils my piss on a daily basis with its lack of representation of women. The amount of Smurfetteism that has either gone unnoticed or unchallenged by the conceptualists, screenwriters, producers and commissioners is ridiculous. As if having one pinkified token female should be enough in 2019. Only since having my son three years ago have I realised quite how bad this still is - it doesn't seem to have moved on that much from my childhood in the 1980's.

In a similar vein, (and another way to ruin your viewing habits) see the Bechdel Test. To pass this, a piece of work has to manage the following three things:

two named female characters... have to have a conversation with each other... about something not concerning a man.

Sounds easy, right? Except it apparently isn't. So many films fail. People tie themselves in knots trying to explain how it really is actually so very hard to do this. One quickly realises what bullshit this is when you apply the REVERSE Bechdel test to the same movie (substitute "man/male" for "woman/female" in the above) and it passes within the first 5 minutes...

Some of these are horrendous

Wavescrashing I can fully see that you intend it to include men and women, but sirs is not gender neutral or unisex and it quite clearly does not include women.

Getting called "darling" at work by a particular older, male senior member of the company.

Asking for the bill and having it given to my husband when it was me that asked for it

Me paying the bill in a restaurant for example and then having the change/receipt given to my husband

People talking about car related things to my husband when in fact he doesn't drive and the car is mine

We have quite the opposite to a gender stereotype relationship!

That's not to say I pay all the bills or anything but I believe the person who asks for the bill should be the one who is given it, and the one who pays the bill is the one who should be given the receipt.

Went to a store to buy some very expensive professional power tools and specialised machinery. I researched exactly which brand and model I wanted and priced everything before going. Took a mate to help me load up, as some of the equipment is rather bulky and I don’t take it for granted that staff would lift heavy stuff. My mate knows nothing about tools/machinery. Sales assistant ignored me from the moment we entered the store, even though I am the one asking for the various items. Shop dude only addressed my mate who kept telling him that he hasn’t got a clue about any of the tools and that I am the customer. Shop assistant tried to talk my mate into a different machine, one which wasn’t selling well. It becomes very clear that beyond rudimentary knowledge, the salesman does not really know about actually using tools. Continued to ignore me when I told him that the machine, he tried to push on to my mate has shit reviews throughout the entire industry. Eventually, all the equipment and accessories were piled up at the sales counter and the shop assistant rung it all up gleefully, as he was on commission. I had my business card ready to pay, he once again turned to my mate and handed him the invoice. I have worked hard to set up my own business and we were talking several thousands of pounds of equipment. Mate told him that he wan’t the one buying. There is a long pause, till the shop assistant finally took notice of me for the first time in an hour since we entered the store. None of the jovial friendliness shown to my mate and something snapped in me. So, I used the ‘Pretty Woman’ line about him being on commission and added ‘Big Mistake!’ and left the store. Called the manager later that day and told him that his business lost out on a sizable purchase that day, as his store still had a Neanderthal attitude. Ended up buying it online from abroad and made a small saving. No wonder that these specialist stores struggle to keep afloat. Not sure I would call it micro sexism. Noticed a positive change though at timber yards. A few years ago, staff there would try to sell me the wrong stuff and make out it was the only type of product they had, even though I could actually see what I wanted. Nowadays, I haven’t come across sexism there. I hope it has sunk in that a lot of the renovation drive comes from women these days. Still struggle to get safety boots in a size 3.5 though

Oh, another one.

I had gallstones (undiagnosed but suspected, was on the long waiting list for a scan) which unfortunately led to acute pancreatitis when a rogue stone blocked my biliary duct. I spent over four days unable to keep down even a sip of water and being sick, on average, every twenty minutes. For over four days. My sick was black and dark red, it was basically acid and my stomach lining, it was burning my throat. I was in constant pain. I wanted to die.

These four days encompasses two blue-light paramedic visits plus two GP appointments. There were mutterings about gastritis. I was given anti sickness tablets that I threw straight back up. Eventually I burst into tears in the GP’s office and she finally agreed - reluctantly since she was certain it was gastritis - to ask the hospital to bring my scan forward, they managed to fit me in the following day.

Turned up for scan, still throwing up black stuff, in so much pain I was banging my head off the wall. I was booked in for a scan with “gastritis?” written on the note. They then told me there was a long wait for the scan as a staff member hadn’t turned up. I had a total meltdown. This was day five.

They took me down to A&E as I was making so much fuss.

After a few hours, doctor came in to see me. I was still throwing up black stuff, contorted in pain. She took one look at my hunched posture, checked my eyes (first person to do so), found I was jaundiced and had me admitted immediately. I was put on a drip with IV anti sickness meds and painkillers, and I felt better within an hour. Had my gallbladder removed, pancreatitis treated, and I slowly made a full recovery.

At the same time, a male friend of mine who lives round the corner from me woke up in the night with symptoms of severe pain and vomiting, no previous history to suggest gallstones. He called an ambulance and was taken straight in to hospital where he was also diagnosed with gallstones and pancreatitis within four hours of his first waking up in pain.

Four hours.

Dear Sirs is when the letter is addressed to a company not an individual. It's sexist that companies are treated as men in this regard, but doesn't have anything to do with the sex of the person for whose attention the letter is marked.

Sorry ALivingDeadGirl I didn’t realise you’d made that point before me.

Past*

When men want to get passed they gently touch a woman's lower back to guide them I guess, never do that with other men.

50 emails a day is not very many at all, and if you're really that short of time, why not just write Hi ( no name necessary) - 2 letters, gender neutral, fine on an email.

Tbf we did usually just use Hi. Im just saying i personally never found Dear Sirs offensive and IME it has been used by myself & others in a unisex manner but im happy to agree to disagree. This was quite a corporate company with a lot of females in senior management so it wasnt some stuffy old boys firm.

My DH always does that too stripeypillowcase- partly as a small act of rebellion/redressing the balance and partly a more old-fashioned ‘ladies first’ approach. I never write the Sir/Madam sort of email so don’t get the opportunity myself!

If ‘Dear Sirs’ applies to both men and women, it would be interesting to see how ‘Dear Madams’ goes down. After all, it’s gender neutral.

not entirely the point, but I always reverse to 'Dear Madam/Sir' in generic emails/letters.

DH and I got married purely because we'd bought a house and decided it made more sense financially and with regard to wills etc. (had co-habited happily for years before that).

At the register office the registrar smilingly directed me to sign the register with my own name 'for the last time'. I did have to sign of course, while gritting my teeth, and have continued to use my own name ever since. Wouldn't dream of using DH's. Not that the message has got through to certain family members (MY family, at that) who still insist on sending greetings cards to what I always automatically assume is DH's late mother

I don't think I've ever received an email addressed to "Dear Sirs".
The only place I ever see that is in letters to papers like the Times, which usually marks the sender out as a retired Colonel...

I teach formal letter writing - Dear Sirs hasn't been standard for ooh, 50 years??

Of course it's sexist!

50 emails a day is not very many at all, and if you're really that short of time, why not just write Hi ( no name necessary) - 2 letters, gender neutral, fine on an email.

Dear Sirs is likely to be losing your company business so is very poor practice if in the private sector; if in the public sector would breach equality/diversity rules.

Dear sir means you are applying a male default . It is the Male form of the word even if you don't realise, that's because male default is so normal it takes effort to see it.

That Male default is responsible for the deaths of women. Try the book invisible women as a starting point

Oh and 50 emails a day is not necessarily a busy office. Using sir just looks lazy and unprofessional