The X and Y Dilemma: A Treatise on Sexism

When I was a little girl, I used to enjoy pretending to be a boy; I would sneak into my brother’s room, borrow his T-shirts, and cover my feminine curls with a baseball cap.Though at the time I did this just for the childish fun of being something other than myself, I realized as I grew up that I was rapidly becoming a woman in a man’s world. I finally understood how dire the situation was when I heard the joke that “IronMan” is a superhero and “Iron, Woman!” is a command.

The older I got, the more I realized evidence of sexism, particularly that which favors men, is everywhere in society; from the media, to classic literature, to our own personal cognitive styles. I attended a creative writing workshop a few years ago, and the speaker had us perform a very simple exercise; our instructions were to write a short story about a squirrel. She gave us a few minutes to brainstorm, then stopped our progress and asked everyone who had written about a female squirrel to raise their hand; only two hands were raised, out of a group of about thirty–five,mostly female students. The speaker referred to this as the “Automatic Boy Phenomenon”. She also informed us that in the writing industry, it is generally recommended to write about male protagonists. Girls will read about girls or boys, yet boys statistically show very little interest in reading about girls. Though this may not be the only difference between, say, Harry Potter and Twilight, it certainly has a profound impact on modern culture. Of course, sexism is not limited to modern culture… the play “Ajax”, written by Sophocles around 450 B.C. likens women with criminals, suggesting that certain traits are shared by the two and that most men are excepted from these negative attributes.

Girls will read about girls or boys, yet boys statistically show very little interest in reading about girls. Though this may not be the only difference between, say, Harry Potter and Twilight, it certainly has a profound impact on modern culture.

Being female, I was immediately appalled by the chauvinistic trends around me. However, further exploration into the issue revealed that gender stereotypes can easily be imposed on either gender. For example, since the days of Catherine Beecher, who worked to “feminize” the teaching occupation in the late 1800’s, many people assume that occupations such as “teacher”, “nurse”, or “secretary” ought to be held only by females. When the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912, women and children were loaded into lifeboats before men (a practice that still exists today). Though men earn more money than women for the same amount of work, we also expect men to pay for things like dates and wedding rings. Even statistics which make men appear better off can be misleading; for example, depression has been shown to be more common in women than in men…. yet men have higher rates of suicides, and recent studies have shown that the difference in depression percentages could be caused by the fact that many cases in males simply go undiagnosed. This is due largely to the “macho” stereotype that we impose on the testosterone-laden half of the gene pool, which seems to suggest that men are not allowed to be sad, and that crying is women’s work.

How do we stop oppression, bias, and gender discrimination? If I knew the answer to that, I would be on a fancy yacht by now, and if anyone else knew the answer to that, the problem would be solved already. So for the time being, I suggest that you simply embrace your X or Y chromosome; because someone, somewhere will favor you for it.