It's Okay, I'm Used to it

            Before I took this class I understood and could see blatant sexism, but it’s the underlying sexism that you may not pick up on until you’re really looking for it. In this blog post I’ll share a story from my own life and a story my friend experienced.

            A few years ago I went with my church to help fix and clean up Camp Gilmont. It was an experience I was excited for because I loved spending time with my friends in my youth group, and spending an entire weekend with them was such a treat. The first job we were assigned was to clear the walkway of the many logs strewn about. I grew up camping and doing a lot of physical activity, so lifting and moving logs wasn’t a big issue for me. I began moving the logs, but my friend’s father decided it was not okay for me to be lifting logs on my own, so he took the log from me and told me I should do a job more suited for a girl. In that moment, I was pretty upset, but being raised with a conservative extended family I was used to the implications that I couldn’t perform certain tasks because of my gender. Thinking back to moments like this makes me sad that women, not just me, experience sexism every day and just brush it off as a natural occurrence instead of facing it head on and fighting the “social norms.”

            This next story both my friend Grace and I’ve experienced. When we were in high school there was this boy who would always make crude comments about our bodies and the activities we do. One day he decided making comments about our bodies wasn’t good enough, so when we had a passing period he lifted our skirts and grabbed our butts. It was mortifying and so upsetting, but we didn’t report it. I understand now that I should’ve reported the incident, but sophomore me thought there were bigger issues the school had to deal with than a guy grabbing girls butts. But that is the mentality many people have, and little incidents become bigger and bigger until we’re victim blaming.

            What really makes me upset is that my experiences don’t even compare to those of women around the world. I don’t mean to sound like a total white feminist, but if I’m experiencing these smaller sexist instances, what are my peers experiencing around me? We need to understand that women aren’t objects that men can use for their pleasure, and women need to understand that they can stand up for themselves against sexist comments and actions.

Gender Discrimination is a Strange Thing

**Stranger Things Spoilers Ahead**

This Thanksgiving while most of you were stuffing your faces with delicious meals and probably dismissing blatant gender biases in the kitchen, my day was spent contemplating gender discrimination thanks to my mom who decided to make (force, really) me to binge watch Stranger Things, a Netflix original series that took the internet by storm this year.

Now, I’ve heard some great reviews of this show and one thing I kept in mind while observing the show was how many social implications about sex and gender the show actually highlighted. I found that the series made remarks on gender discrimination in the law enforcement, assumptions on relationships and how no relationship or character is ever as simple and plainly narrative as many shows would have us believe, and I felt that the show did a masterfully interesting way of doing just that.

First, the most noticeable gender discrimination that occurred in Stranger Things was between law enforcement officers and women. It seemed every woman who filed an issue with the police department or had to come in for questioning was harassed or discriminated against for, you guessed it, being female. One character (Nancy), when answering questions about her missing friend, was interrogated about spending time with a boy and asked questions that were completely irrelevant to the investigation for her friend. A mother (Joyce) whose son was the first victim of a missing child’s case was ridiculed for saying her child wasn’t dead, then when the police officers were questioning her, they continued to diminish her concern by judging her for being a single mother and working full time- as if that had anything to do with her child being kidnapped and missing. The law enforcement officers continuously dismissed women throughout the show, calling them hysterical, emotional, and making off handed remarks about their bodies.

Women were not the only ones suffering from assumptions made due to their born gender. One teenage boy (Jonathan), gets into a fight with another boy and with little context, it would be easy for one to assume that he initiates the fight because of his love for a girl. At the police station, a secretary gives the girl (Nancy, the assumed love interest) an ice pack for the boy and after she says he’s not her boyfriend, the older woman tells her, “Only love makes a guy do something so crazy.” Anyone who is a sucker for love stories would have accepted that narrative and thought “Oh no, now Nancy is gonna have to let him down easy. This is awkward,” however when Jonathan engages in the fight it is only after the other boy mentions his mother and starts to trash talk his family that he turns around and beats him up. Jonathan didn’t get into a fight because he loves Nancy, but rather because he didn’t want his family insulted. However, without knowing that small detail, the characters continue an awkward, incorrect understanding of each other because Nancy won’t approach him and the series continues with her under the assumption that he loves her, even though there was so much more going on in Jonathan’s head. Some relationships are platonic or simply never become sexual and this series touches on it in a fascinating way. Rather than change the narrative completely, it seems the writers still follow the classic love narrative but give the viewers an extra bit of information that reveals how complex issues for individual characters really are. People can still follow the narrative if they wish, but they have to try harder to be ignorant to the rest of the information that alludes the truth.

These archetype narratives that so many stories abide by are not only dull, but also widely non-reflective of issues between different characters. Stranger Things was able to use these narratives in a way that helps its audience see issues in gender discrimination that do still exist in society today. I think people become comfortable in their present-day situations and we like to claim that we’re better, more progressive than we were 30 years ago, but despite this claim that’s not the whole truth. There is still a lot of progress that could be reached in the way of gender equality and Stranger Things has played its part.