'Bitch, make me a sandwich' and 'The kitchen = the place where girls belong', two of the many sexist quotes in that site. I think you can see where I'm going now so don't be all "Pshh, what a kill joy" when you finish reading this. You're free to leave any time you want. Remain living in ignorance.
So. You're still here? Well, then. I will continue. Truthfully, I'm a little bit of a feminist. I think I've read enough literature books regarding gender inequality to understand the hardships women have to undergo to obtain freedom back when male dominance was thick in the air. I could feel myself throw up in my own mouth when I read about how women are treated as subordinates and are marginalised by others just because they refuse to back down when they realised that the lives that are controlled by their husbands, brothers or fathers are the lives they do not wish and decide to pursue the lives they desire. I would also like to make it clear that I'm not that kind of feminist who say things like, "We don't need men to fetilise our seeds!" or "We don't need men to attain happiness in life!". Men and women need each other and I understand that. I just believe that women should be given equal respect as you would give other men and shouldn't be taken for granted and that women should have their own rights of deciding the terms they wish to be in.
Therefore, to see comments like, "She knows where she belongs" and with so many people (including females) clicking 'like' on it makes me feel a little sad, that the hard work women and men put into attaining the empowerment women have achieved in the past centuries could (and possibly, would) just go to waste because of such light women are presented in now. Imagine, all the riots, strikes and sacrifices both women and men have done last time to obtain the freedom the women are enjoying now just ends up going to waste because of the way the community takes things for granted. Sure, everyone's laughing and enjoying the meme now but eventually, it won't be so funny anymore when women are slowly repressed again, when everything takes a back turn.
People don't seem to remember that the Internet is now accessible to the young and old. I'm not worried about the old or the people who are old enough to filter information from the Internet. It's the young that I'm worried about. The children who have been exposed to the incredible technology we have today. The children who get iPads and iPhones for Christmas and the ones whose childhood will be surrounding a computer. We have seen how sexualised the younger generation are due to the exposure of sexualised contents like music videos, songs, lyrics, movies, etc. They blindly follow whatever they see and hear because they did not experience the kind of lives we had; the ones when Hillary Duff sings about unrequited love or when 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys were the next-door-neighbour guys we adore. So, when we're presented with a meme that jokes about how women belong in the kitchen, we know that it shouldn't be taken seriously. However, it won't be the same for the children today. They don't have the kind of childhood or life we had because this is their childhood. They have Rihanna who is happy baring everything on camera and Katy Perry who has whipping cream shooting out from her bra. And we can already see evidence from acts like these; videos of young children kissing and groping each other and pictures of young girls wearing skimpy outfits. So, when they see memes like these and how everyone laughs and 'likes' it, they will assume that this is a normal and girls should make them a sandwich because they are girls. They can't differentiate which is good or bad information because they have nothing to compare it with. And what do you think will happen after that?
I understand if the younger generation laughs at these because they are young and do not have enough knowledge. I can't blame them for this. But my generation - the people who shared my kind of childhood should just stop and think about what exactly they are laughing about. You are old enough now. So, tell me, what exactly is so funny about the 'Women are like fridges. They belong in the kitchen.' jokes. Because all I'm sensing is that you are laughing at the insignificance of the role of women. Seems to me that the silent laughter in your heart, the comments you post and the 'like' button you clicked on symbolises that you actually agree that women are the subordinates to men. That we should just remain domesticated and do not need to bother pursuing our dreams and ambitions. That we should depend on men to provide for the family. That we should stay dependent on others because we are unfit and unqualified to decide the kinds of lives we want to live. That we should live like how women lived back then; deprived from the rights we deserve and have today. In Athens, women had no citizenship because they are born with a vagina instead of a penis. Women were deprived from the rights to vote because they can support another human being in their bodies, no rights to publish a book and were forced to be published under a male pen name so the society would read their work with an unbiased heart, not given the privilege to attain education because of their backward theory that women will go insane if they were exposed to difficult subjects. Because they were women.
You might think that I'm overreacting and just plain irrational because this is just for laughs and I shouldn't take it seriously but I am not going to just sit here and watch everyone else laugh about how I should make sandwiches for guys just because I am a woman. How would you react if I expect you to fix my car and everything else at home and support me and my kids just because you are a guy? I don't, if you were already going 'Fuck, that's what all women expect of us!'. Sorry, dude. I don't expect anything from you because you're a guy. If you can fix a car, then I will call you because you can fix a car, not because you're a dude. Saying that women belong in the kitchen is just like saying men belong in the garage.
I quote a very close friend, "I think popular culture - music, movies, TV, books, mags, games, Internet - are an amazing reflection of a particular civilization's value system and what we stand for as a collective." Our pop culture is, to be honest, pretty shitty for women. In fact, I believe that the degradation of a woman's worth in the society based on perspectives and ideas of women presented in the mainstream is worse than ever right now. And this really saddens me. I'm not a big ass activist. I'm just a person who is equipped with a computer, an Internet connection and a blog. And I hope that this can make a difference. Even if it changes the opinion of just one person, I'm happy enough.
I understand if the younger generation laughs at these because they are young and do not have enough knowledge. I can't blame them for this. But my generation - the people who shared my kind of childhood should just stop and think about what exactly they are laughing about. You are old enough now. So, tell me, what exactly is so funny about the 'Women are like fridges. They belong in the kitchen.' jokes. Because all I'm sensing is that you are laughing at the insignificance of the role of women. Seems to me that the silent laughter in your heart, the comments you post and the 'like' button you clicked on symbolises that you actually agree that women are the subordinates to men. That we should just remain domesticated and do not need to bother pursuing our dreams and ambitions. That we should depend on men to provide for the family. That we should stay dependent on others because we are unfit and unqualified to decide the kinds of lives we want to live. That we should live like how women lived back then; deprived from the rights we deserve and have today. In Athens, women had no citizenship because they are born with a vagina instead of a penis. Women were deprived from the rights to vote because they can support another human being in their bodies, no rights to publish a book and were forced to be published under a male pen name so the society would read their work with an unbiased heart, not given the privilege to attain education because of their backward theory that women will go insane if they were exposed to difficult subjects. Because they were women.
You might think that I'm overreacting and just plain irrational because this is just for laughs and I shouldn't take it seriously but I am not going to just sit here and watch everyone else laugh about how I should make sandwiches for guys just because I am a woman. How would you react if I expect you to fix my car and everything else at home and support me and my kids just because you are a guy? I don't, if you were already going 'Fuck, that's what all women expect of us!'. Sorry, dude. I don't expect anything from you because you're a guy. If you can fix a car, then I will call you because you can fix a car, not because you're a dude. Saying that women belong in the kitchen is just like saying men belong in the garage.
I quote a very close friend, "I think popular culture - music, movies, TV, books, mags, games, Internet - are an amazing reflection of a particular civilization's value system and what we stand for as a collective." Our pop culture is, to be honest, pretty shitty for women. In fact, I believe that the degradation of a woman's worth in the society based on perspectives and ideas of women presented in the mainstream is worse than ever right now. And this really saddens me. I'm not a big ass activist. I'm just a person who is equipped with a computer, an Internet connection and a blog. And I hope that this can make a difference. Even if it changes the opinion of just one person, I'm happy enough.
3 comments:
"If you can fix a car, then I will call you because you can fix a car, not because you're a dude."
THIS. If people can just grasp this simple concept -that a person is a person and should not be subjected to assumptions of personality/talent/ability based on their gender, it's like, 51% of the problem solved.
And you're not a little feminist, I think you're a lot of feminist by now.
Also one more thing - you make references to male dominance in "those days" and how women can be repressed "again". I think that's a bit of a flaw either in your perception or how you phrase things. Male dominance is still here. Repression and oppression are still here, as healthy and as strong as it was back in Jane Eyre's day. Yes the strength of male dominance differs from culture to culture and across time, the *type* of oppression also differs for say, a woman in the States versus a woman in Kenya, because obviously other factors come into play as well. Her race, social class, her access to education and a job, etc. Some women are disadvantaged by many other things, not just her gender. But there was never, and I repeat, NEVER, a point in our history where women were ever totally free, equal and respected 100%. If there was, feminists wouldn't exist right now. So I think what you mean to say is that women won't get oppressed AGAIN, because the oppression never stopped. But they will CONTINUE to be, in different ways. It changes, but has never really gone away.
Consider the fact that women can now be doctors. Yay, right? So some people think now that the Women-Can't-Be-Medical-Professionals-brand of oppression has been lifted, and now that a woman can walk around in a lab coat and clipboard, that women have won. We can be doctors now, woot, FTW, etc. Except no, it's not ENTIRELY a victory, because a different kind of oppression kicks in. Because she is a woman, she may not be allowed to take as many cases as she would like to. She may not get promoted to higher positions of doctoryness. She may have people specifically requesting male doctors instead of her, because of some widely-held opinion that women doctors are incompetent or emotional. The discrimination, the repression, it's all still there. It's just a different kind of playing field now.
Anyway good job on this, and THANK YOU so much for posting. I'll probably think of other stuff to post later, so. Yes.
Btw, I should not have said "repression". That's not really the word that fits here D: Sorry.
No more kitchen jokes. :D
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