Do you remember a specific moment where you realised that being female put you at a disadvantage?

[ChickensHaveNoEyebrows]

I have three.

1. I was about 8, and my best friend was a boy. We went to his house to play and I remember being so envious of his toys. He had lego, a real tool kit, a chemistry set, a metal detector etc. These were Boys Things, and I remember thinking how unfair that was.

2. From the age of 9 I begged my Dad to teach me to play 'Risk', because he often played it with his friends. He fobbed me off for years, and then one day I came home and found him teaching my 9 year old brother. Apparently, 'Risk' was a Man's Game.

3. At age 13, I was moaning about washing up the lunch things. My mother and aunt laughed and told me I'd best get used to it. When I said that if I got married, my husband would also wash up, they practically wet themselves with mirth.

All of these events made me feel so frustrated and angry. In fact, I spent a large part of my childhood thinking I must have been born in the wrong body because 'proper' girls didn't hanker after a saw, or desire to conquer america, or find washing up boring as fuck. You?

I think the first genuine example of when I realised that some people see men and women as fundamentally different to the point of valuing them differently was when I was talking to XP one night and he said that he wouldn't have ever spoken to me if he hadn't found me attractive, and he wouldn't bother to form a friendship with any woman who he didn't initially fancy. I never realised up until then that some men do actually put men and women into completely different categories before they had even met or spoken to them. Now of course I know he's the kind of man whose friendship I wouldn't miss anyway - but at the time it made me question every interaction I'd ever had with a man, wondering if he had seen me as a person first or a potential shag first.

Looking back as well my first ever boyfriend had two categories on his msn contact list: "Friends/bonkable" and "Other" - at the time I assumed that the friends label covered his male and female friends, but now I'm slightly more sceptical and wonder if the separation of the first list meant separation by gender, as well. He didn't come across as particularly sexist in general though, he was just boring.

Bertie i think that a lot of women also categorise their male friends as potential partners, ex-partners, or unattractive (or just don't have any)..

you see a lot of people on mn genuinely believing that if you haven't slept with a man yet then he's just your friend because he wants to... and they also seem to believe that if you have slept with a man you can never be friends..

i genuinely do not consider the gender of my friends.. they're just people to me, with different personalities but not linked to their gender.

But Bertie's ex did.

I think it's human nature to notice whether someone of your preferred sex is attractive or not (and if you are single, whether they are available/off limits) but to actually not bother to even find out what they are like as a person beyond that is appalling. And as you say, it's a common belief about men, so there must be plenty of men who subscribe to the theory.

I don't consider the gender of my friends either which was why it shocked me so much when I realised that ex did.

Have no brothers and went to an all girls primary school. Secondary and university gave me no problems along the lines of the OP's question. So school in general was fine.

The first time I really felt 'bloody hell, that is just not right ' was when I was at mass in a little church in the Irish countryside and noticed that the men sat on one side, and women and children on the other. We sat together as a family and stood out like sore thumbs from Dublin. After that, the fact that girls weren't altar servers in Irish Catholic churches really rankled. The next time was when I was overdue with DD1 and my doctor was telling me he always induced at two weeks past the due date. Slab of meat feeling, and the sense that I was being told I was failing the baby somehow and in the wrong to object to a painful and possibly unnecessary procedure that was being contemplated for my body by a doctor who seemed to think that a shrug and reference to the calendar would be enough as an answer to the question 'Why?'

Lots of run-ins with exH and his family

Well, lots of times as a kid but one standout moment was when I was in secondary and a few girls had wanted to switch from home ec to Technical Drawing. There was a big drama about it until eventually the Technical Drawing teacher relented and came to our home ec class to say that we girls could take tech drawing as long as we "don't come crying when you break a fingernail". Nice encouragement. I didn't do it after that because it was obvious that we weren't welcome. I wish I had.

Conversely there was a boy who wanted to do home ec because he was going to be a chef. He was teased by the other boys for being a "sissy" and a "girl" like it was a huge step down for him to take a girls subject.

Oh and when I asked my history teacher why all the girls did Social and Economic history and all the boys did Political History (no choice involved) and he said that it was because Political History was too hard for girls. ( I eventually got a degree in it so screw him ....)

Catherine: Have . It might help you swallow some of that bile you are choking on.

I'm with Catherine on this one...LOL!!

I was astounded to find that my English secondary school (to which I moved after living in Australia for a year; we later moved back) had segregated sports, and I couldn't play football and the boys didn't do swimming. Actually I'm still astounded. What was the point of that?

Now, remind me, folks; are MN still deleting comments for questioning whether someone who uses 'us women' in anti-feminist comments is actually female?

When I was raped.

Catherine - aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - nice try. Your domestic violence thread was a better, if more offensive, effort. Twat!

I have had a thread trolled in feminism. I have....arrived

catherine - oh dear, someone needs to listen harder at school! Meantime, us ineffectually communicating women best struggle on as we can ...

Ohhhh.... she's just pretending. That's OK. Phew...

CY

When I became a mother, two children in and realised that nothing I had done before meant anything and being a SAHM completely defined me.....then again having a daughter really opened my eyes further....

Then discovering feminism again....holy crap.

But my household was pretty equal, my education was too and my friendships. I had a garage, cars, Sindy, cabbage patch dolls, I played Star wars, had lego, played with dolls.... I did Technology and Physics at GCSE (only girl in both classes), I also did Maths at A'level. Lived with men at Uni.

Married a sexist man though, so it all evens out!!

I was 7ish. Mum and dad worked FT but our grandmother lived with us and was the responsible adult during school holidays. After lunch, every day of every summer holiday my brothers were sent out to the garden again to continue whatever game we had ALL been playing before lunch, and I had to stay in and wash up. It was a girl's job. So while my bros were carrying on without me in the sun, I was slaving over the sink.

Boys' jobs included washing the car which my brothers did together and so had loads of fun splashing and mucking about. She paid them 6p each too!

My mum was furious when she eventually found out - I should have told her before I got to 11

My brothers and I got on brilliantly by the way. It didn't affect our relationship, and I kind of understood where my grandmother was coming from as she was born in the 1880s and had had servants.

Interesting how everyone seems to be politely ignoring the rape comment.

growing up, I never noticed sexism or felt disadvantaged by being female, because I have only sisters and parents who were very pro-working women and they taught us to excel and work hard. The workplace was a different matter....

I worked in a fairly male dominated career, at least in senior positions. I was at the same level as two men, all with the same level of experiece and we were all going for promotion for one promoted post. I'll never forget my old boss telling me, with grave seriousness, that the company would have to consider []'s and []'s applications very carefully, because "they have families to support", the implication being that I had a husband to support me and I was being viewed as a less serios candidate, despite better appraisals. This was three years ago.

cheerfulyank that's awful. Can't say any more than that.

As a child I was something of a tomboy and tended to hang around with the boys and play boy game. Which was fine until I went to secondary school and found I had no friends.

The general feeling that as a girl your body isn't seen by others as really your own and that there is something wrong with you if you want to keeP it your own. Hence the 'lesbian' taunts when I steadfastly refused to shave my legs, wear make up or high heels.

On my MSc course and attempting to do a group project with 3 men. Only to find there were differ standards of behaviour expected from us within the group. So if Mr SpoiltBastard didn't whine and swear during a meeting that was fine.'but if I hadn't done a weekly email update (never read) arranged experiment and written up the work before breakfast that simply wasn't good wnough.
I ended up going on strike and only doing the bare minimum (I was still on course to pass even with a fail in that compOnent). No one in the group noticed!

The general feeling if you want to look and dress a certain way there is always the nagging feeling that some men think it's for THEIR benefit.

No, Viking some lovely people have private messaged me about my post and a few have mentioned it here. I'm not feeling slighted. :)

I didn't mean to be blunt, but it really was the first time I felt...afraid for being a woman. And terrified, and furious.

First year of my engineering degree. We had to do a course on using equipment such as lathes etc. The guy taking the course started it by saying that he didn't think women should be allowed on the course and not to expect any help from him .

Rather than give me the size of boiler suit that I had put on the form, they were just handing them out with no regard to size. When I told them mine was too big and could I have the right size, I was sneered at and told it wasn't a fashion show. That was until I put it on and showed him that the sleeves hung down several inches longer than my arms and that it would be dangerous to operate s lathe wearing it. Twat.