While it is true gender is more fluid today than ever before, that doesn’t mean sexism isn’t still inherent in everyday interactions. Whether a comment, a gesture or an impression that situates you firmly into a stereotype you chose not to be cast into, you likely notice the implicit biases in daily interactions that occur in class, in the workplace and in your personal hours—and there’s something to be said in the things unsaid.
These everyday encounters with sexist language and stereotypical thoughts constrain the advancement of the individual in his or her respective pursuits. What is spoken, and acted on is a reflection of the type-casted social roles between the sexes that represent society at large, and it creates friction and frustration for the affected party.
In a society that still regurgitates gender roles with an isolating pink and blue tint, there is always at least one rushed assumption to treat others a certain way because of whether they identify as a man or a woman, be it intentional or not. Sexism is a social disease.
In investigation of how to identify these occurrences of sexism in our community and offer a means to acknowledge toxic sexist thought and shift the pattern towards greater understanding—Her Campus Virginia Tech has partnered with the Virginia Tech Women’s Center!
Resources on Campus:
The Virginia Tech Women’s Center was founded in 1994 and aims to create a safe, equitable and celebratory center for women. While the Women’s Center obviously encourages women to utilize services like: counseling, advocacy, educational programming and gender-based violence awareness, these services are also available to men.
In collecting responses, we noticed two overarching themes: stereotype threats and negative bias to women in STEM and the continued persistence of traditional gender stereotypes. These stereotypes are often relating to generalized biological traits and more often than not negatively portray woman as weak, inferior and less logical– which is far from true!
Likewise, men face sexism in the social expectations to fit into the mold of what defines “masculinity” and masculine behavior. And with that, men are often deprived of an emotional outlet, feeling the constrains of a hyper-masculine environment. Before we delve into the series where we take a closer look at what our responders said about their experiences with and solutions for everyday sexism, let’s see how to identify sexism.
What is Sexism?
According to Merriam-Webster’s definition, sexism is “prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially: discrimination against women” or “behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.”
Sexism has been around forever, and was a popular trick for 1950s and 1960s advertisements. This one by Volkswagen in 1964 infers that all women are bad drivers, and is sure to offend. That’s sexism for you— stereotyping based on sex.
Gender roles and limitations exist on both men and women.
Even so, hyper-masculinity is another product of everyday sexism. A very clear example of this is in hyper-masculine hip-hop culture where misogyny and violence are intertwined with concepts of masculinity. One of my favorite examples of the rejection of this image of masculinity is in the andyogynous fashion of male rapper: Young Thug. Controversy rose from Young Thug’s album cover for No, My Name is Jeffery (or more commonly referred to as Jeffrey), in which he wears a lavender, ruffled dress by designer Alessandro Trincone for VFiles.Recognizing sexism as a set of imposed gender roles and assumptions created by society enables discovery in our everyday interactions. This series hopes to create greater awareness in our community and greater fluidity, while exploring our collected responses. Stay tuned for the next article and more content!