In this day and age! A thread for unbelievably obvious examples of sexism.

[blackcurrants]

A thread for "I can't believe that just happened to me! In this day and age!"

Yesterday we spent about 40 minutes in a Toyota dealership, looking to spend about $10k on a used car. The salesman only asked DH's name, only wrote down DH's number, and only talked to DH about the cars available. DH kept referring to me, asking my opinion, and generally looking uncomfortable. Eventually DH snatched back his license from the salesman and said "No, I don't think so. Let's go." And as I turned I added "Joe? Thank you for your help today. I work in sales and I wanted you to know that since I walked in here you haven't asked me a single question, or addressed me directly even once. At one point you walked away from me, talking to my husband about the next car you were showing us, so that I couldn't hear what you said. I just want you to know that I earn more than my husband (actually not yet true, but soon will be!), I know more about cars than my husband (v.true), and you acted like I didn't exist. Which is why we're leaving."

When I got into our car, DH was cheering. We drove 5 miles away and bought a nissan.

As we were doing the dishes last night, talking about this, DH said "I do hope you tell Mumsnet about it." he knows me so well.

Agree blackcurrants.

In fact I will own up to sexist things I have said or assumptions I have made:

• frequently talk about other professionals in my industry as "he" rather than "he or she". "he" is the norm and I try and remember to say "he or she" but sometimes forget.
• got that logic puzzle about the surgeon wrong when I was young (the one That only works if the surgeon is a woman)
• am slightly surprised on my commuter train if the train driver's voice is a woman's.

Etc. But i try not to be defensive, just try to aware of it, watch out for it and try and improve it.

grimbletart - I've experienced similar from older men and am beginning to think that they genuinely have no idea about women's physical strength. Drives me nuts sometimes. Especially when they complain about how much effort it all is!

TheDoctrine I think that's a fair list - I'm sure I share some of them, and have some more of my own. The thing about believing that the patriarchy is an overarching system is that we get to understand that it affects us too - not just as "women, the oppressed" - we're subject to the same obnoxious messaging about women's inferior status as men are, so it's perfectly logical that we'd be subject to some of the same beliefs (often unconscious). I think that's one of the reasons why consciousness-raising is so valuable.

I work in a very female-dominated environment so don't struggle with assumptions there, but I do talk about other drivers as 'he' - no idea why, I've been driving for (gulp) 18 years now; but still it comes out: "Why'd he need to cut me off? The pillock".
Needless to say, 50% of the time the driver is female.

This is a great thread.

Something I've been doing for a while now, is I always pay in restaurants and I always taste the wine if I can. We've got shared money, so it doesn't matter at all who pays, but it is fascinating to see how often they offer the card to DH automatically. The best ones will calmly put it in the middle of the table where we can both reach, or just say 'whose is this', but so many places just automatically hand it to him.

They do not get a tip.

I am still angry about Barclays telling me it was 'illegal' not to change my name when married, and subsequently the guy making jokes about how joint accounts are dodgy because your wife might spend all 'your' money.

I have recently noticed that if I send out emails to people I don't know, or if people email me after I've written something, if I use my first name (identifiably female), I will almost always get emails to 'Ms LRD' (you think this is good, right?). But if I just use my initial and last name, I get emails promoting me flatteringly to 'Dr LRD'. It's true in my discipline there's a drop in the number of women who carry on from PhD to academia, compared to the number of men. But it really pisses me off! I've also noticed that when my male friends organize conferences, they get letters to 'Dr Hisname' and it's assumed they're the person in charge (as if!), whereas if women do it, lots of people will write assuming we're Prof So-and-so's secretary.

Btw ... I am not suggesting Russia isn't a deeply misogynistic society, as it is ... but I am not remotely convinced that's a reason to love Pussy Riot!

I find the way Western media portrays the whole issue with Pussy Riot immensely patronizing, TBH. It irritates me that you have young, attractive, punk-y women doing vaguely feminist protests, and suddenly my facebook is alive with men approvingly patting them on the head.

LRD I was just about to complain about something similar.

If I just sign my business emails (to people I haven't met) with Firsname Lastname, almost always they write back: Dear Mr Lastname.
My first name is not very common and not obviously female, but instead of thinking that hm, I don't know if this person is a man or a woman, most people either assume I'm a man or they think it's safer to "upgrade" me to one.

That's so annoying.

But then, when I had a job where I sent out a lot of emails to people whose gender I didn't know, my (male) boss told me men will be offended if referred to as 'Dear Mr/Ms Smith' but women won't mind 'Mr Smith', so better to go with that option. I had blanked that out of my memory until you mentioned similar, but I assume someone somewhere is peddling this as 'etiquette' or something.

I get called "miss" by my students, despite the fact that I tell them at the start they can either address me by my first name or by Dr Lastname. My male colleagues are all addressed as Dr superior-male-person.

It's the same with babies. I read an report of an experiment that showed that people were offended if you mistook their boy for a girl- but notthe other way round. So it's safer to say "he" if you're not sure.

It's all about male being the norm, and female being the abberation.

In a previous job, I was asked to cover reception for an hour, as the person who worked there was off sick. I was usually happy to do this, and had already done it many times. On this particular day, however, my office was short-staffed, and I was extremely busy, so I asked if a temp from another office could do it. I was in my early 30s, had a degree and a reasonable amount of experience. The temp was about eighteen, no degree, very little experience, but he was male. I was told, "Dont be silly, we can't put a man on reception!" and was given this look

LRD I read a brilliant article somewhere (can't find it now) about waiters being trained to leave the bill in 'switzerland' - the neutral zone riiight in the middle of the table. It's not always right in the middle, over here (depends where/how you're sitting too, right?) but certainly I rarely see a waiter hand a bill directly 'to' someone - it's always left tactfully near an edge.

Of course, I tend to eat out with friends, rarely with DH (one of us is at home!) so perhaps I'm just not au fait with swanky dining dynamics! chance would be a fine thing

Tandems seem to have become really popular recently and I have never seen one with a woman on the front and a man on the back. The same is true of pillion passengers on motorbikes.

I used to work in an old-boys network type of government department.... we had to sit an old fashioned promotion board - I was in computing and the only woman to sit the board....

colleagues responses:

"Never mind - if you don't pass you can always go down the other route"
"other route?!?!"
"Yep go home and have babies"

"They have quotas you know, so you're bound to pass"

"You can always sleep with the board members"

"remember to bat your eyelashes"

damned if I passed and damned if I didn't.... I did pass (and THEN I went home and had babies ;p )

I'm another 'heavy lifting' one. Happens all the time (I'm short and fairly slim). I was at a garden centre last year with DD in a sling on my back. I had loaded bags of compost onto a trolley, paid and was loading them into the car boot. An older man came rushing over to help as he 'couldn't possibly stand by and watch me struggle' (I wasn't) and insisted on doing it, huffing and puffing with effort, despite my perfectly polite 'thanks but no thanks'. How he thought I'd managed to get them on the trolley etc I don't know.
It was the same when I worked in a garden centre (a few years ago) = I was skinny and had very short hair and people always assumed I was a 14yo boy when they asked me to lift stuff then tried to stop me when they realised I was female.

More recently I was helping a friend move house and another friend was moving boxes the end of the truck one he announced was a two man or three woman job. I unloaded and moved it on my own.

I think most women are stronger than they and most other people give credit for.

I have been guilty of sexist assumptions - to my utter mortification, having been on the receiving end many times.

My nadir was some years ago saying to my new American neighbour, "Oh, have you moved here because of your husband's job?"

"No," she replied, "I'm the UK Finance Director Of Coca Cola!"

Coca Cola FD 1, me 0!

at loading.
i'm a bookseller, so do a lot of heavy lifting.
and it makes me laugh when a man of the same build assumes i can't lift the boxes, when they're clearly not booksellers, so don't have the experience.

having said that, the need to challenge these stereotypes made it very difficult for me to make other people lift when i was pregnant.

nickeldaisical - me too, people often didn't realise I was pg with DS1, ask me ot lift something and quickly back track when they realised. I found being pg a bugger for lifting mainly because of the bump getting in the way.

I felt like I had to say "I can't lift because I'm pregnant" just in case they thought I felt "i can't lift because i'm a feeble little girlie"

black - oh, that's nice to know. Good for "switzerland".

nickel - oh, god, nothing funnier than watching someone who doesn't know how books weigh trying to lift them!

The physical strenght is a funny thing. Yes, on average men are stronger, but that does not mean all men are stronger than all women.
I teach Bodypump classes as a hobby. I can handle more weight than most men. So you have new (male) participants coming - I always try to explain that this class is very different, even if they go to the gym and lift weights, we don't do 3x15 reps, we do 800; they should go easy, just take light weights for the first class etc etc.

Do they believe me? Ha. "Silly woman", I can almost hear them thinking, "what do you know". So they will load the bar up with my weights and usually die after a minute. Obviously I won't yell "told you so!" but I am tempted..

I know we can lift heavy weights, and I too hate asking for help. However there is one "women's problem" with lifting things that I have learnt about recently to my cost (I'm in for surgery next week) and that is the effect on the pelvic floor. So although I am all in favour of equality, I would just say watch your pelvic floor, there are a lot of people on the prolapse threads who like me have been merrily shifting heavy furniture, boxes, bags of compost etc but will be unable to do so ever again and it is more common than you think because people are reluctant to talk about it. Sorry, slight thread hijack, but it is important to be aware.

I get called "miss" by my students, despite the fact that I tell them at the start they can either address me by my first name or by Dr Lastname. My male colleagues are all addressed as Dr superior-male-person.

Yes Uptoapoint this happened to me as well. It was one of the most demoralising things about my job and persisted no matter what I said.

Along with lots of other similar factors (male lecturers getting to teach interesting classes for which I was orders of magnitude better qualified, while I was stuck with 'biology for dullards' term after term), it contributed to my resignation.

No, I've heard that. You can do something nasty if you're a bloke, too, but I forget what it is - you end up having to wear a support bandage thingy, though.

My GP pointed this out to my dad because he insists on lifting heavy stuff to show he is stronger than his wife and children, and sadly now we are grown up this is no longer true!

But good warning ... lift with your knees not your back; split into smaller loads if you can, etc. etc.

My friend's husband won't order pints for women. He reckons it "looks bad" and "women shouldn't drink pints".

Haven't been out with them for a long while.