Examples needed please

[FellOutTheLoft]

Hello, I am looking for examples of everyday sexism and misogyny of a, so called, low level. So I’m not talking about sexual assaults or harassment or catcalling but the kinds of things that highlight ingrained discriminatory attitudes towards women from men or women. The purpose is for a hearing I have to attend soon in which I wish to illustrate what day to day life is really like for women in the UK. TIA.

Going to a reception at Google in SW1 for entrepreneurs at Cambridge who’d done brilliant things like breed bees to sniff for drugs at airports.

I was the only woman except for the uniformed waitresses. Luckily I was in a red dress so no danger of being asked to plate the sushi. But it took a good 15 minutes to let me in! The women on the door were most suspicious.

Daughter: performed well in the setting test for Maths but was not put in the top set because 'the teachers were also looking for behaviours that they knew led to success'. She was moved.

Many times, I had to remind teachers that putting quiet well behaved girls beside challenging boys was not appropriate.

I raised a few issues about ingrained sex biased behaviours with DDs school and was invited to a discussion with 4 male teachers. One later sent me an article about the performance of boys in English and said the reason why girls do not choose A Level Physics and Maths is because they are too good at English and if boys were better at English, maybe it would be more equal..

I am part of a parents eco group. We organise secondhand hand sales and look after the school garden. One male teacher was doing something with the pond and specifically asked the male members of our group to help on the day of our sale. I pointed out how important it was for our male members to be visible buying and selling children's clothes and that we were all capable of handling a shovel and it would be much better to have some of the women who help in the garden to also help with the pond.

when I text/ email male workmen I often don't get a response. When my husband does he will invariably get a response. It drives me mad.

2 pages of excellent examples so far today. Each one provoking an 🙄

My son had long blonde hair and played football .. many people said how lovely it was that the boys accepted 'her' in the team. My daughter played on a mixed hockey team, she was one of the best players on the team, when she had the ball, the opposition would back away, because they knew they could not get the ball from her, her own team wouldn't pass to her because she was a girl. They also excluded her from chat and from training. I raised this with a parent who I thought was a friend, she had three boys, I wanted her to chat to her boys about including my daughter, she got her husband to speak to me and he gave me some bullshit about everyone being in the team on merit and gender being an old fashioned idea that should be left behind .. he is a surgeon..

What is intriguing in this is that my actual boy.. who had girls hair, was not discriminated against by people who didn't know him, all of his team knew he was a boy. But my daughter was... not by the opposition, who respected her skills at the game, but by her own team who refused to include her.

I required protective clothing as part of my role for work so had to go to the warehouse. Lots of men around. The man in charge of the clothing started moaning when I refused to try the trousers on in front of everyone and went into the loo cubicle which was right next to where we were standing. He also stated that sadly he couldn't offer me any pink work boots as no doubt that is what I wanted and that next they'll be making PPE skirts as its PC gone mad.

Whilst cleaning in another job being asked to give him (a customer) a wipe down too.

Doctors not listening, talking down and refusing to acknowledge facts in favour of an anxiety diagnosis.

Having to get other people to say my ideas in order to get change to occur.

Getting treated with more kindness and authority in emails when they haven't figured out I'm a woman as my name can be misread.

Trying to buy a phone with my husband in an actual shop and the salesman only talked to my husband and dismissed my complaint about phones being too big and I couldn't use the one he was showing us effectively as I would need two hands. Of course the phone was for me.

Glazing sellers asking for my husband when trying to sell door to door.

"Glazing sellers asking for my husband when trying to sell door to door."

I find that looking at such nuisances blankly for a moment before saying, "Oh, you mean my wife?" works wonders.

I realise now I was put on a table between two boys as some sort of human barrier and to baby sit them because they were disruptive and not interested in learning. It damaged my education and caused anxiety and self-esteem issues.

I’m on a sub-Reddit for something techy and almost everyone who replies to me calls me ‘bro’. I have to remind them every time that women exist.

Oh! Just thought of another two! I used to work in a supermarket. One day I was kneeling on the floor putting some stock on the bottom shelf and a much older man came and stood beside me and said “while you’re down there love” 🤢 I must have looked as horrified as I felt because he immediately apologised and said that was inappropriate. I just stood up and walked away, feeling absolute rage.

Another customer used to come in on the same day each week and would seek me out to help him find something. This was fine at first, but over time he became creepy - visibly looking me up and down, telling me I was a sight for sore eyes, how his day improved after he’d seen me, then one day he tried to give me a hug. I squirmed away and left the shop floor. I told my boss who agreed that if I saw him again I could leave the shop floor until he’d gone. I did this for a while but sometimes he’d appear beside me and catch me off guard. I ended up changing my contracted days because I spent so much time looking out for him.

I have just thought of one.

I was working in a college in September 2012 - this is relevant.

I was waiting for the lift and read a poster, it featured pictures of three men all with huge boxing belts.

As I read on it wasn't actually for boxing, it was to do the training boxers do, and it was open to men and women.

I emailed the department, and I was polite, I said I thought it was 'unintended sexism'. I pointed out that the college students probably had more in common with Nicola Adams, who only weeks earlier had become the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in boxing. And that she will always be the first.

A bit subtle this, long ago, and I didn't now how to deal with it. We had an interactive device in which children could click on an image, in this case a garden, and call up info about various features. A worker bee - pronouns male. How he works hard for the hive. A spider - how she lies in wait and traps flies. The language was distinctly negative, I had developed an understanding that tech guys know nothing of other subjects and never check their facts but this one stuck in memory until I read this thread. Didn't use that program.

Crash test dummies for car seat belts are man-shaped, thus causing higher risks of real-life crash injuries for women because the seat belts are designed for the male form.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41104077-invisible-women

In a career from long ago we worked night shifts. At 9pm the most senior person (which was always a man, as women had not been allowed to join until after the Sex Discrimination Act) would do a ‘draw’. The ‘winners’ would be allowed to go to the bar, leaving the ‘losers’ to do the work. The ‘winners’ were always the men. There would then be another draw for who got to have a nap during the quiet hours of the night shift. Guess who always won that, too?

It genuinely wouldn’t happen now because no one is now allowed to sleep or drink on the job, but this was late 1990s/early 2000s not the 1970s!

The workman who was doing something outside my house earlier told DS and me as we came home that the water was off for about 15 mins and could we please not try and use any until they were done. Of course i said "yes" and he replied "thanks boys"
Im very obviously not a boy. But it made me laugh.
OTOH in lockdown I was playing some games online and someone kept referring to all the other players as "he" when my friend and I told him we were "she" he said that he is a neutral term that can be used for either, and that girls who play online are weird.

Being the only woman in my martial arts club and continually being told ‘keep up with this if you can’ by visiting instructors who are explaining drills, whilst they assume that all of the men will have no problem with the drill. In spite of me being notably more fit than all of them. And also apologising to me if they swear, because I’m obviously a sensitive lady who might be upset by bad language?

My male partner being asked to ‘have a word, will you’ by a male tradesman I was arguing with about a cowboy job he had done. It wasn’t even my partners house. And he knows nothing about DIY.

My mum’s expectation that I should support her in her caring role for elderly relatives despite her also having two other children (male).

My brothers narrative that I am argumentative when I disagree with them about absolutely anything. Presumably because my opinion is less important than theirs as I don’t have a penis.

Males who have never done any boxing or sparring in their entire lives frequently sneering incredulously if I ever express an interest in boxing/UFC.

A male colleague who was a passenger in my car asking me if I would like him to park it for me.

My partner sending me his shift rota for the next few months so I can cross reference this with stuff we have coming up/if there’s something we want to book. No. Look through your own shift rota, I’m not your PA. And then trying to do this several more times in spite of getting the same answer.

One time I was being directed into a car park and bumped the kerb. The male employee said in a fake high voice "ooh never mind, doesn't matter, it's my husband's car!".

Still makes my blood boil 😄

Several doctors, a paramedic and a cardiologist dismissing my symptoms as ‘doesn’t sound cardiac to me. The paramedic one was the funniest as ecgs aren’t sexist and showed him a big, fat fuck off heart attack.

Sexism in the GCSE English Literature Curriculum (KS4) - End Sexism in Schools https://share.google/rwE6gLlubYKfXLuxJ what this organisation had to say about the school English curriculum (among other aspects of education) really shocked me!

Just this morning a young man in a supermarket delivery van complimented me on driving past his parked van, as if I wouldn't be able to. He said 'Narrow gap, nice one', but it wasn't a narrow gap at all. Thinking about it, I've never had a woman try and direct me when manoeuvring a car, only men. I think women assume that if the other woman is just getting on with moving the car then she knows what she's doing and doesn't need guidance for every single turn of the steering wheel. As said up-thread, men doing this just get in the way.

On a horticultural forum I'm on, I've changed my username to my initial and surname and the men now call me 'mate'.

These days me resting bitch face makes me look murderous so men tend not to bother me on the street.

Also these 'one size fits all' gloves. No comment needed there.

My sister had a good one, with an NHS consultant she was seeing for the first time, she asked a pertinent question about treatment and he said " Did you get that from the Daily Mail?" She answered "No, from the Journal of Clinical Pathology"

I have also had that first example when I was kneeling on the floor at work (shelving books at Waterstones in my case)