Any good examples to help point out sexism to my DH?

[BertieBotts]

As he announced this evening that I am "just looking for sexism everywhere" (Nope, not looking, it just is there) and he was upset that I saw the world as such a black dark evil place (I don't).

I'm not particularly interested in explanations of privilege like the video game difficulty setting thing, just examples that he will "get". I used the example that a man might be upset if a man he knows wants to date his sister whereas a woman would never be upset at a woman wanting to date her brother, unless she thought the woman was a total psychopath. Well, that didn't work because he has 3 sisters, all an entire generation older than him so of course they have been overprotective and ridiculous over every GF he has ever had So I called "Friends" and he started making up arguments.

He gets the "big stuff", but he doesn't see the smaller, everyday type of feminism, and that's what I'd like to open his eyes to if possible. I know that a lot of it is just that it's invisible to him because it happens so often to women that we don't mention it and men, especially if they don't do it, don't realise that it's happening at all.

Sorry, I feel I was really rude.

I just feel like ... it'd be so much easier on a new thread where I could follow what you meant without feeling as if it was all going in circles.

Sorry. Just my manner. I'm new and didn't follow etiquette. I just kinda started talking and typing. My bad, and my apologies to OP.

Oh, don't worry, it's not really an etiquette thing, just the way the thread went. And I was an arse jumping in when others had been so much more patient.

I don't mind :) I got what I needed from this thread so if it's gone in a different direction and others are getting something interesting/new from it then debate away! Equally feel free to start a new one if you want... this is not one of those forums with hugely strict rules about threads.

We cannot change the way men are, as a gender

Well we can. And we are. And we are changing ourselves too. One hundred years ago I would have been expected to be entirely dependent on a husband or father. But thanks to the huge strides in the way women are permitted to behave, I run my own business, employ 32 people and am a single parent - defiantly being head of my family. This is because our concepts of femininity have shifted and women have changed in response. Masculinity is going to change too. And it's not a zero sum - we are all better off if we are able to live life outside of these ridiculously narrow gendered constraints.

ITA. You only have to look at different societies around the world to see how much 'gender based' behaviour is a cultural construct.

"I think my issue is that the things which are clear he notices, and the things which are more muddy but totally obvious to me, aren't to him. Because, oh, well the Daily Mail is a terrible paper, or that bloke is just an arsehole, or those men who don't do housework are bad husbands. He's seeing individual incidents of dealing with sexist/arsehole people, not the whole pattern which shows how endemic sexism is."

The personal is political!

Why are some jobs/tasks allocated by gender? How can this make sense?

Is there some real difference in the X and Y chromosome which means ironing can only really be done by one gender?

Anyone can iron if they know how, ditto hoovering, washing up, buying a birthday card.
Yet surveys show that 70% of the time it is women who do these things. Men with a female partner get to drop or never even engage in huge amounts of work (generally dreary work too, such as mopping floors).

Why is it expected that domestic tasks should be done by women, especially if both partners work?
Why is assumed men will be better at maths? DD spends more time countering sexist stuff about how girls are not usually good at maths than she does doing maths sometimes.

Men's lives run by expecting women to do the majority of unpaid work that daily life entails.

When a job becomes female dominated it is downgraded and seen as easy: secretaries, shop staff etc.

I do wonder what will happen now more women qualify as doctors than men...

Miggsie: here's your answer to your last sentence and that's from an article over 10 years ago. I remember the furore about at the time.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1468464/Women-weakening-medical-profession.html

Do you work?

You will stop being paid on November 4th tgen for the year.

But a man gets paid all year..

You will lose £200k in your lifetime just for being a woman.