What sexist behaviour would be the most shocking if reversed?

[GrumpyOldNag]

I was thinking feminist thoughts to myself (as you do ), and I was thinking about how this belief that sexism doesn't exist anymore creates a huge backlash against anyone who speaks out against it, which in turn makes people who do in fact believe in equal rights for men and women try to distance themselves from feminism because it's perceived as crazy and unreasonable. The problem is that a lot of it is so ingrained in our culture and society that it is completely normalised, and the majority of people don't even notice it anymore.

So what would be the most obvious, outrageous sexist behaviour, if we swapped the genders? Would it be men being followed, harassed and intimidated in the street, or on the music channel men gyrating and grinding dressed increasingly revealing clothing while women are all fully clothed? Men dancing in the windows of the red light district, or the overwhelming majority of politicians and CEOs being female?

What in your opinion would bring about the most uproar if one day sexism suddenly switched genders?

Sorry if any part of this doesn't make sense, I had a beautifully written OP all typed out and then my iPad lost it all for no apparent reason...

Going to parents' evening with your son and hearing teachers joking with parents of daughters about their disruptive and loud behaviour, then being told your son was too quiet and easily intimidated. Being told your son was doing okay when the parents of girls with the exact same grades were being told their daiughters should aim for STEM courses at top universities.

A man who works in a STEM field being told by a female office worker that he should show gratitude to women for all the scientific and technological advances that women have avhieved so that men can be pampered, because it doesn't occur to her that he might work in a STEM field because he has kids and isn't 'ugly.'

As DH and cleaned up the results of Don't explosive arse this morning, it occurred to me that housework, especially the more labour-intensive stuff like scrubbing carpets, is bloody hard work, and is easier for people with greater physical strength, ie men. So in our reversed word, it would definitely stand to reason that men are the natural choice to do the majority of the housework.

DDog's, not Don't. Stupid autocorrect. I fixed it once and it just re-autocorrected!

Oubliette I can't believe that science ad! It's ridiculous.

I ended up having an argument with my DP last night off the back of a comment about the Beschdel test when we were considering going to the cinema.

He's adamant that there isn't really any sexism these days because he knows lots of successful women in his industry and that things are near enough equal except for where biological differences inevitably cause issues such as maternity leave impacting women's careers etc.

I mentioned some of the scenarios on here but, as I haven't experienced some of the work-based sexism myself (being self employed) it is difficult for me to fully convey why I am so uncomfortable and passionate about these issues when they don't relate personally to me. I'm grateful for all the examples on here that remind ME why I get so worked up about it!

In fairness, having watched a trailer for 22 Jump Street I'm not sure that the poster shown on here accurately reflects the film, as there weren't really any clips of semi-clad beach babes in the trailer that I saw! it seems that the poster was edited to lure in men being led by their dicks their target audience still looks like a dumb film though .

Doing. Paragraphs your dp can explain why women only earn 79 cents to each dollar earned by a man? That is the figure that is quoted after adjustments made to allow for maternity leave etc, so a like for like comparison. In fact, even for graduates with same degree same industry same job an same boss there is still a discrepancy of 7 to 11% for female to make earnings.

If he doesn't believe me he could look up articles by Forbes which reports in these things.

The figures cited are bars in 2012 earnings, the most up to date ones we have. 2013 earnings reports will be out later this year.

So here's another one. When men start earning within 10% of women's earnings then people will gladly declare that equality has been reached.

Pretty much every male presenter, newsreader, actor in an advert looking like a buff, trimmed Brad Pitt, Jude Law, Johnny Depp type. Everywhere. And the Daily Mail castigated all those poor men who didn't make more of an effort to look like them.

After work, socialising with his senior, almost exclusively female colleagues, a man would sit through hours of boring conversation about women's sports and, I dunno, baking, and other stuff in which he hadn't the faintest interest. Every now and then, someone would notice his boredom and womansplain for his benefit the rules of rhythmic gymnastics or how to clean an oven.

He'd be expected to sit in the pub for hours but not to get tipsy or become loud —unlike his colleagues. Afterwards they'd all go out for a meal together, where he'd eat less than the others but have to pay an equal share of the bill. If he ordered dessert, he'd be subject to extra intensive scrutiny of his waistline for the rest of his professional life.

There are women who go through lives literally never thinking about washing or ironing any of their clothes, or where the food they or their family are going to eat are going to come from, or how the time will be found to prepare it, or ever washing a floor or cleaning a toilet. They will move from childhood, through adolescence, into adulthood, in a serene drift from meal to meal appearing on the table, from clean garment to clean garment appearing in the drawer. The literal years (cumulatively) of physical labour and mental energy that have gone into this – and if they have children, into them receiving a clean, secure, nutritious upbringing, with the benefits to their health and happiness that will stand them in good stead their whole lives – will have been provided for free, and unacknowledged, by a body of workers numerically equivalent or even greater in number, whose labour, skill and talent is utterly ignored and elided (men).

In fact, the men who accomplish all this at the same time as having many other activities and achievements in their own right, will be habitually belittled and assumed to be stupid and inadequate relative to women.

Women are not good at many of the things that men appear to do effortlessly, because they have not learnt how to do these skilled things – but somehow being good at these certain things reflects poorly on the men, not on the women who are bad at them. Bizarrely, however, the things that women are good at, reflect well on them. The lack of logic here is a puzzle, but not one that women have ever noticed or questioned or thought about.

Despite men noticing the illogic of this – by having their noses rubbed in it every day – they are assumed to be the illogical sex and if they get angry about anything – including the assumption that they have years of free labour to offer to women and are willing to do so – this is seen as evidence of their illogicality and stupidity.

Men are allowed to work sometimes in the same industries as women. But anything that is left undone or not done completely is seen as reflecting badly on them. This reinforces the well-known truth that men are not thorough, tend to be scatty, and are generally not suited to work and should not be promoted.
If they become very thorough indeed, to combat this view, they are just demonstrating their unsuitability for seniority in a different way – being obsessed with petty administrative detail is just pedantic and shows that they don’t engage with strategy or big picture stuff.
If they do engage with strategy or big picture stuff, they are uppity and need to be crushed, if necessary by sexual humiliation.
Women at work leave things undone – things which they are not interested in, or which are not directly relevant to their main objectives, or that they have just unilaterally decided are trivial enough to be handled by men – with impunity, because this just demonstrates that they have focus.

DDog's, not Don't. Stupid autocorrect. I fixed it once and it just re-autocorrected!

And now random second post? Oh phone, what are you doing to me?!

And 2 men every week are murdered by their partners. 85,000 men are sexually assaulted every year by women. Most of them are too ashamed to report it to the police. If they do, their clothing, drinking and behaviour will be questioned and held against them. Wearing shorts, tight clothing, aftershave etc would be seen as a sign that they were leading women on and asking for it.

And 2 men every week are murdered by their partners. 85,000 men are sexually assaulted every year by women. Most of them are too ashamed to report it to the police. If they do, their clothing, drinking and behaviour will be questioned and held against them. Wearing shorts, tight clothing, aftershave etc would be seen as a sign that they were leading women on and asking for it.

Bugger, double post! Oh well, maybe it needed saying twice...

A single father would write an enormously successful series of books about a schoolgirl witch fighting Lady Voldemort under the benign guidance of an elderly headmistress. When turned into films, the DVD extras would have a feature called "The Men of Harriet Potter"

DoingItForMyself I know - and it was an EU funded ad to try and encourage more women to pursue a scientific career. I think they totally misjudged their audience. I can't remember anything that inappropriate aimed at men.

There would be a best selling book about a man calculating his calories, alcohol intake and cigarettes every day. Who was obsessed with the size of their thighs and who had to leave their professional job because their boss had slept with them and then dumped them for a slimmer man. Who felt rubbish about themselves because they were single and when they went to dinner parties were both challenged and ridiculed because they were still single.

Generations men would spend a large portion of their waking lives fretting that they did not look good. They would spend hours figuring out what they were allowed to eat, spend money and time looking at pictures of photoshopped men wearing expensive clothes and expensive and toxic makeup in order to ascertain what would be an appropriate "look". This would be taken as evidence that they were vacuous, while failure to participate.would be looked on with a degree of pity, as evidence of a crisis of confidence or low self-esteem.

"Bitching" would relate to sexual promiscuity, sex with or in the presence of strangers. "Dogging" would refer to men who criticised other men. There would be no correlative term for women who criticised women.

Men would continually be addressed in the street by random.strangers and charged with smiling or expected to engage with whatever inane conversation any passing women felt like. People would openly and unguarded stare at men; whereas it would be uncommon and thought of as directly challenging for.people to make and hold eye contact with unfamiliar women.

Make over programmes would be predominantly about men and every single Grand Design would have been attributed to the female partner, with the occasional gutsy man having input on more than the fixtures and fittings.

Any artistic work made by and about men would be deemed a minority interest, masculinist work.

Websites devoted to cataloging many photos from media showing "men, alone, smiling and eating salad"

Men would be much poorer as they are paying the majority of the childcare costs so they could return to work.

Men would be constantly worried about whether they were 'beach ready', 'photo ready', 'bikini ready' and would be willing to put themselves through various painful and expensive procedures to ensure they were ( just seen a Wilkinsons Sword advert that has inspired this post/ really pissed me off)

Sticker books and flags would be available everywhere. Pubs would be decked out in patriotic colours and buying in new screens and extra Chardonnay. Bosses would be expecting high absenteeism. TV schedules would be rearranged completely.

For the Netball World Cup.