When I was about 7, I spent a lot of time running around in a T-shirt my Aunt Gloria had given me emblazoned with the words “WOMEN’S LIB” (it was VERY 1975). I may not have fully understood its meaning back then, but I can assure you that I’ve never been afraid to call myself a feminist.
I’ve always been 1/2 tomboy and 1/2 girly-girl—I can participate in a political debate, bake a pie, go backpacking and read through Vogue all the course of a week. I’ve always been like this and never thought much of it because I was brought up to at least believe that I can’t be defined by traditional gender roles.
When I was 17 years old and planned my high school homecoming dance I was shocked and “ohmygod, grossed out” when the 30-something year old catering manager from the hotel called to ask me out. I was outraged when a colleague at the UCLA Daily Bruin newspaper had to drop a lucrative advertising client because his condition for further advertising was a date with her. I was enraged by how I was treated in my first job after university, fetching coffee and answering phones while carefully avoiding the “secretary track”—things my male colleagues were hardly concerning themselves with. I actually stopped going out at night in China so that I didn’t have to endure watching fat, old, balding Western men having their way with cute little Chinese girls. I was shaking with rage over a month ago when I was waiting to meet someone in front of the Telefonica building on the Gran Via in Madrid (dressed in a business suit) and some man waved cash at me asking “How much?”
These are just a few of my small experiences with sexism in a fairly protected middle-class life and they may seem superficial, but they are real. And despite these experiences, my own inner “macho” tends to take over and think that I’ve never been treated differently because I’m a women and forgets that sadly, sexism is far from over.
Bob Herbert (who I love) reminds us of this in today’s column, Politics and Misogyny. I thank him for it and urge you to read it.
(ok, rant over, but girls, please feel free to continue)