Your earliest memories of sexism

[sandcastle010]

The stuff on here about sex and gender, biology and society, has got me thinking about memories of when I was younger.
I remember being called out of the playground age 6 to put my brothers clothes back on for him after PE every week (age 5)
Not sure if that would have happened if I was a boy.
Also girls played in the infants playground with the young ones to leave the junior playground for the boys to play football
Also we had a teacher in year 5 who used to say ‘girls can’t throw’ and therefore the boys would play rounders while all us girls stood in a kind of dismal line queueing up to practice throwing. We never graduated to playing rounders until we were the next year up with a different teacher!
I remember being kind of irritated by all of this at the time. Now I hope for better for my kids.
Does anyone else have similar memories?

Ah yes, the "all men want a son" thing. I'm still hearing that today tbh. It definitely hasn't gone away.

The unsaid additional exclamation at the end of teachers' statements of "You're top of the class in english*/maths/physics/chemistry/engineering [and you're a girl!]"

( * In the dark ages when I was at school girls were never top in anything)

I knew that as a mere girl I was unusual and perhaps not supposed to be beating boys at academic stuff. As I reached my later teens the pressure became even greater.

How old are you all?!
I'm 45 and was always top of the class in maths, physics and chemistry and always felt that was Right and Proper as girls are cleverer than boys, as everyone knows.

Maybe the Isle of Wight in the 70s and 80s was a hotbed of feminism.

I was genuinely shocked when working in an investment bank in the late 90s and first experienced proper sexism. I'd honestly believed until that point that sexism was history.

I remember going on 'transfer day' up to middle school (I was 9 some kids would have still been 8). We were supposed to meet our new teacher but ours hadn't started yet. We were asked to do a piece of work about what we thought our new teacher would be like. I wrote 'sexist'. Because all teachers were, it seemed more likely than 'funny' or 'strict'.
It didn't help that 'sexist' has the word 'sex: in it and some of the other kids had apparently never heard of sexism.
My other bugbear was 'big strong boys to move chairs' ffs has the person saying this not got eyes? I was head and shoulders above most of the boys, and even a particularly petite 8 year old can move a chair!

Story about sexism and my working class childhood.

When I was about 7 I got thrown out of the bar at the social club because it was for men only. I was looking for my uncle and I still cannot believe that the bloke who threw me out was so invested in gate-keeping a male only space that he would berate a little girl.

Equivalent KS2 - older girls instituting a complaint we all took part in about entire playground being used for football every day - we complained got told to suck it up and made a few protests by taking over playground to play net ball.

Street harassment from 11 + so still at primary school. Hit puberty early and had large breast young - that was pretty constant and being blamed for it.

It's not got better.

DD1 in yr 2 was told maths is for boys - put her off thank god for Carol Vorderman. First week in secondary was told same about science - it was unfeminine that she had highest results - though that was from fellow pupils.

Having said to new school DS was avid reader - their response was boys don't read - they still play up how good he is at science and maths but don't do same for DD2 who is also very good. It makes him think he's bad at English but he gets good results.

That didn’t happen to me in my late 80’s early 90 education till I met my A-level physics teacher.

This isn't my earliest but I did my sixth form at an Upper school which was mainly a boys school but accepted girls in the sixth form. One day a girl got groped up her skirt on the stairs. All the girls were gathered into a meeting / assembly and told to wear longer skirts. Late 1990s.
Actually the whole system of schooling in general. There are no single sex schools at all in many boroughs (including mine, sorry DD). Research (at secondary age) shows that girls do better in single sex schools, and boys do better in mixed. So of course the vast majority of schools in this country are of the type that benefit boys rather than girls (there you go DS, that makes up for you being the baby of the year against your autumn born sister).

I'm sure there are probably earlier memories.. but one that sticks out is at the age of 15 a girl in my year was at a party and had too much to drink. She ended up in some sort of orgy with a number of boys all taking advantage of her.

The next week at school she was shunned, ostracised as a 'slag' and not even her former best friend would speak to her.

The boys? They got away with it scot free and probably patted on the back by their peers.

I feel like things were pretty equal where I grew up, and it was a small, rural primary school in a Tory stronghold... but my parents did used to have very different attitudes towards me and my brother when it came to eating. If he ate a lot, they just smiled indulgently and said he was a "growing lad". If I did it, I got a raised eyebrow and they would wearily say "Are you troughing again?". No surprise that I ended up bulimic, really.

Being told not to lift the benches in PE as the boys did that. I was 5 FFS.

Also (bear in mind here I am a lot older than most on MN) when being asked about careers at 14, I said I was going to be a journalist. I was told "that's for men, it's too rough for a woman". The teachers held and expressed the view that, broadly, if you were clever you would be a teacher, if you were a compassionate type of girl you would be a nurse. Everyone else would do secretarial work. Bugger that. I do believe that was what I actually said to the teacher. She was a nun so it gave me special satisfaction.

So you could say that at least times have changed on this score...

School uniform and pe knickers

Those stupid books where Peter hung out with dad and did things like tinker with the car and Jane helped mum wash up

Not being allowed to play rugby or football (we were allowed like one lesson where we did it in a mixed group)

Not being allowed to do judo with my brother .

Forever being bought Barbie dolls. Seriously I never played with them. Where was my remote control car?

Wow, reading these all at once makes me realise how blatantly sexist a lot of schools were, not even that long ago, 80s and 90s. My dd is too young for school yet. Hope things have got better.
I’ve remembered a few family memories too. My dd loved the Bond films and it was an event for us to sit and watch one on the telly. Once I could follow the plots more I realised how sexist especially the early ones are. And the females that get too involved in the action usually ended up dead!
My parents were loving but quite traditional. Had toy barbies and cookers and liked to play with my brothers transformer robots and cars when I could.
Not sure how much things have moved on cos recently got my dd a toy car set and the advert and reviews were going on about ‘great toy for boys’.

Year dot really. Brother didn't have to learn to sew on a button, i did, etc, ad nauseum.

Most shocking was going quad biking - I was 8 - boys were allowed on their own, girls had to be accompanied. This was 1990! In Britain!

WTAF

littlemissedthesunshine I was shocked about your story of serious sexual assault and the boys getting away with it and not being challenged or reported by anyone. That’s so sad.

I don’t have a specific memory like that but I remember a general sort of awareness when I hit puberty of girls being vulnerable to attack from men. I think that’s one reason why puberty is difficult for girls.

halfwit that’s terrible about the quad biking!
Cos obviously there is so much difference between how an 8 year old boy and an 8 year old girl would handle a bike??!!

The first time I recognised it was when I was ten. I was called tots ten by the boys.

”don't show off how clever you are too much, boys don't like girls being cleverer than them". (I was about 8 ffs} by my mother, the same person who told me that as long as I did my best shed be proud of me. Not sure how that was supposed to work, was I supposed to choose to have "boys" like me our my mother being proud?

As it happens, I never have pretended to be less intelligent, have only been without relationships as a adult when I've chosen to be, and my mother probably is ashamed of me (dunno, we barely communicate these days) but not because of my lack of effort in my education!

The normal cat calling etc from about the age of 10, but one that sticks out is being told that there's no point in educating girls because we just get married about stop working, by a teacher.

I remember being told we were no longer allowed to do proper rugby tackles in PE in about 1993. I thought it was because we played on an all weather pitch but when I realised boys still played proper rugby the penny dropped.

When I registered with an employment agency looking to get some factory work in 1996 to be told that they gave the heavy monotonous jobs to the men and then kept the 'nicer' jobs like putting the lids on the pots of cream when they came off the production line for the women

I don't remember sexism during my childhood other than 1970's comedy...I grew up in a female family and went to all girls schools where all subjects and careers were open to us (they didn't do woodwork but I did pottery). I had toy cars, a garage and a Scalextric. So now I'm an adult I find sexism really shocking and noticeable.

The first time I encountered it was at a boyfriend's house, the sons had male chores and the daughter had to do the womanly chores, which were far greater. I got left behind while the father and my boyfriend went to the pub Sunday lunchtime...that really grated!

I was given eye glasses when I was eight and was informed by an adult that boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses. Considering the number of times I had already been sexually assaulted by boys and men this information came as a relief. t proved not to be true unfortunately.

Boys calling each other 'you woman' as in insult. Driving instructor telling me women couldn't reverse as their brains are different to mens. two that stand out

Sitting on a bus wearing a skirt aged about 7. My mum telling me to close my legs as the man opposite was looking up my skirt. I don't blame her for saying that at all-I doubt many women would have dared confront such a man in the early 80s. But even then I remember feeling indignant like "he shouldn't be looking at me like that regardless of what I wear or how I sit" (in a 7 year old way of course)

Earliest I can remember just now are the clothes - DF was always trying to get me into godawful frilly dresses with itchy petticoats and puff sleeves. They not only restricted what you could do, but were often very uncomfortable too and I felt ridiculous in them. It only stopped after he chose one particularly terrible one for me, which I flatly refused to wear EVER so he realised it was a waste of money and gave up.

But I also remember getting very cross with books which stereotyped the girl characters, such as the Famous Five (and conversely loving the Amazons in Swallows and Amazons).

There was lots in hindsight but I only really noticed it at 16 when I did work experience and the boys were taken off to another room to look at the pornographic calendars they produced while the girls weren't.