"Micro" acts of every day sexism...

[GunpowderGelatine]

...you know the kind of things that, if you didn't look for it you wouldn't even notice?

For example, I'm at hospital today for an outpatient appointment. I noticed that when the staff (Male and female) would call out for patients for their appointment, they would use women's full names (e.g. "Emily Dixon?") and for men they'd use their salutation ("Mr Roberts?"). Every. Single. Time.

I feel like if we look out for things like these we'd notice a lot more? Is it just me going mad or do other people have things like this happen?

Great reaction KristinaM, going to borrow that.

Earlier this week I waiting for the tube, standing in front of where an end door would be. Train pulls in and older bloke standing next to me (in front of the next end door) just walked right in front of me and got ready to get on. Ffs. I didn’t really think, and instantly snapped ‘sorry, don’t just walk in front of me’, he moved without saying anything, I got on, spent the journey seething with adrenaline. Included here because I bet he wouldn’t have done that to a man 🤬

@DCIRozHuntley ooh that would be really annoying. Were you ever tempted to ask them to run a bacon sarnie and make new mates session for the new mums too?!? Would be really tempted to find a few like minded mums and raise it with them as an issue!

Seen another example this morning on my local Spotted page.

The page has posted on behalf of a woman asking for advice about a local school who is threatening her with social services if she doesn't pay the £14 arrears on her child's school dinners 😢

A woman commented saying she'd be happy to clear the arrears for her. A man also commented saying the same thing. Guess which one had no comments and which one has 7 adoring "wow you are kind and amazing" type comments?

Man on the packed train yesterday did that fucking annoying thing where they put their hands on your waist to move you out of the way.

I said "don't touch me" he told me I was being precious.

When men I know socially become fathers, I always ask them if they are going back to work part time.

I

Fabulous, KristinaM.

I worked as barstaff (occasional waitstaff) for years. I never, ever put drinks or food on the table without asking first. And since I am likely to order rare steak while my fiance orders shellfish, I know that there can, unfortunately, be a prejudicial assumption.
However - when delivering a pint and a glass of wine to an heterosexual coupling, I have - waaaaayyy more often than not - been directed to deliver the pint to the woman and the wine to the man. Only for the man (and, yup, despite this essentially being a thread re: sexism, it has ALWAYS been the man) to laugh and say that I have been tricked // fooled // idiotic, and that I have got it wrong...
I give zero fucks what.you eat or drink. If, however, you date a dick who gets their kicks from making fun of mininum wage waitstaff... You can bet your (or their) rumpsteak that I'll judge.

Annoys me endlessly that the class WhatsApp groups are mostly women. I'm always pleased when someone asks for their husband to be added. Then there's always the "Good morning ladies. Just a reminder that today is harvest festival collection week..." and it makes my teeth itch.

They recently asked for people to go into class one day a week to help out. DH stepped up and is doing one of the slots. Which makes me happy because maybe some of these women will realise it makes sense to have men on there too!

At my work, there are three of us (2 women, 1 man) who take it in turns to clean the car park with a litter picker. One day it was raining and windy when I went out and a lady not much older than me asked why we don't make the men do these kinds of jobs. Assuming I guess she thinks women are more feeble?

Very micro, but it makes my teeth itch. DS2 used to love the Cbeebies show Octonauts (talking animals having underwater adventures in a submarine) and sometimes accidentally turned on the audio description on the TV.

It turns out that when you have audio description on for the opening credits, where the characters are shown one by one, the male characters are described by their job roles but the female characters are described by their species. So Tweak is just 'a bunny' and not the engineer. Start your everyday sexism while they're young.

Actually cranberry, I would assume the woman thinks that the women are given the shit jobs!

@BlingLoving

I told her we take turns and she still said it's men who should do that kind of work. I'm sure such thinking has prevented women from getting certain jobs they are more than capable of doing.

Oh in that case, totally agree. Ridiculous

Mine is how in a workplace, it's always women who sort out cards and gifts for colleagues, even if the closest colleague (to the giftee ?) is a man.

Charley50 - used to have exactly this in my workplace. We'd actually go out in a lunch break, trek around town to look for a lovely apt gift. I had done it a few times, and then it came round and i was told ' it's your turn Gara again to get pressie ' , I refused and said why can't 'Fred' go, he's not been out to gift buy. The woman looked at me shocked, 'but it's Fred!' 'And?' I said, until Fred does a gift shop i am not taking my turn again. ' oh but he's a manager'. I then pointed out that i was also a manager in our small dept, with 2 members of staff,and was technically the same level as Fred. The women still looked at me as if i was mad , or thought i was better than them or something. Which i didn't i just thought on principle it was Fred's turn.

Also - when the receptionist was off sick they always used to ask around the different departments for 'volunteers' to be on reception for a stint. I was never asked to do this as i was a manager, but it irked me that only the female admin ladies were expected to help out, not the couple of male admin workers.

Gara - I said to a male colleague, who had received such a lovely, thoughtful and apt gift, chosen by Jill (not real name) 'It's your turn to choose Jill's' and he said 'no, I don't really like presents.'
So I had to do it (3 of us in close team). He knew I had aging parent and kids plus worked full-time. He was single, no parents and worked part-time. Still happy for a women to do the work. He was a lovely guy in general but this so, so pissed me off.

A few years ago I was closing a big deal for a client. I didn't meet the client face to face and only dealt with them via email. I have a unisex name. When the deal went through, he said he would gift me seats in his corporate box at the next football match. I had to ring him about something and he realised I was female. The gift he ended up dropping off was a bunch of flowers from Asda because "I didn't think you'd like football".
I love football.

@SoundofSilence - it's was children's TV that turned me into a feminist as a child. I don't know who remembers the US show, Flipper, about a dolphin. Well, I don't know if it was the first episode or the first one I saw, but he was friends with a little girl, they had a great adventure, then at the end she had to go away to live a safe, normal life, and 2 brothers came along and had all the adventures week after week with Flipper. I was so sad and furious that the girl had lost out to boys. Thinking about it now, it would have been so easy for the siblings to be a boy and a girl, but it was 2 boys instead. Sorry for rant, but such a reflection of our sexist world.

This is more macro than micro, but my office has been making a big thing about how much they value diversity and how diverse they are. It's in Central London and over 2/3 of the staff are female.

So the organisation was bigging itself up on how it employs so many women and something like 13% ethnic minorities.

Er yes - but that ignores the fact that all the top posts are taken by white men, that every time we have all-staff meetings, it's usually about 5 white men standing up to address the assembled (mostly female) throngs and maybe 1 woman or non-white person getting to speak if you're really lucky. And this is in London where a much higher than 13% of the workforce are non-white too.

I've never worked anywhere like this before, where there is such an overtly sexist/racist culture (one token black senior women, no non-white men at senior levels, incompetent white men promoted vastly beyond their levels of competence) etc.

Shocking not only that this still happens in 2019, but that the organisation actually thinks it deserves a pat on the back for it's diversity!

Probably not coincidentally, the top men in charge are all ex-military.

Mine is how in a workplace, it's always women who sort out cards and gifts for colleagues, even if the closest colleague (to the giftee ?) is a man.

At my small workplace, it was always a man (the manager) that did this. But when a new woman joined, she said how she loved doing this, and at her former workplace had always organised the birthdays and christmas parties, and bought the cards, etc. and she'd be happy to do it.
The male manager of course let her.

I'm disabled and experience this from the disabled perspective too. I have an unseen disability that affects my mobility, there are occasions where I use a wheelchair. The contrast between 'seen' and 'unseen' is clear. And relevant to sexism I think. We're told often that these micro instances are nothing important, not to get upset about it, just habit etc. No harm is meant by it. But until you experience it from both sides, you don't really know for sure if it is inherent or you're just being oversensitive.

When I'm in a restaurant in a wheelchair, I often don't get given a menu. I'm obviously not capable of choosing my own food. As a 40 yr old woman, I've been handed the children's menu a couple of times. This never happens when I'm not using a wheelchair.

At the airport with a group of colleagues, having just returned from a business trip. I was the most senior manager present. Everyone waited with me for the wheelchair assistance person to take me and our group through to collect my own wheelchair that had been checked in with luggage. The worker was friendly and asking everyone in the group how they were, then he tilted his head to one side and asked me in a kids voice "have you had a good time?"

Fucking hell those are awful Whatnow!

I'm a trail runner. I have been looking for new running shoes recently. When I Google and click through I always get the men's shoes as default. When I try to find the women's they either dont make them in the style I want, don't do that colour ( a lovely blue and yellow men's shoe will become purple on the women's), the choice is severely limited compared to men's (eg 15 styles and various colours in men's, 4 in women's)or it's not uncommon that they don't have any women's trail runners at all.

I am going to go back and read the full thread but I just want to add mine! I should say, my most recent one. Booked a stay for my husband and I last weekend, nowhere fancy just a Premier Inn. I did the booking and paid, put myself as 'lead guest' Ms PleasureSwing and him as additional guest Mr HisSurname (which isn't the same as mine, as I haven't changed my name). When we got to check in they had amended the booking to Mr & Mrs HisSurname. The receptionist addressed me as Mrs HisSurname! A name I have never used ever, she might as well have called me Mrs Blubberguts for as much as husbands' surname is my name.

It is bad enough that I have family insisting that my "legal name" is now Mrs Hisname, but for a random hotel chain to decide it too? FUCK OFF WITH THAT.