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by astura 581 days ago
Doesn't surprise me even a bit.

I was born in the early 1980s. My entire childhood was filled with people[1] explicitly telling me I can't do this-or-that because I was a girl. Other things I wasn't explicitly told I couldn't do, but I just thought weren't for me because they were zero women doing them.

I badly internalized some of it. I think I've gotten over it now though.

My first job was explicitly sex segregated, this was the late 90s. It was in a kitchen and they only had men do certain jobs even though literally every person in that kitchen was perfectly capable of doing every job, physically. Just some jobs were considered manly and given only to men. My female friend begged to be allowed to wash pots and pans, which was a "man's job" in our kitchen. She was told no, because she didn't have the correct genitalia to wash pots! She was eventually allowed to, after being persistent enough. Guess what? she could wash pots just fine, lol.

[1] the people included everyone but my parents.

2 comments

I long for the day when judging people by their gender will be as shunned as judging them by their nationality, heritage or skin color.

Its 2024 and that day has not come yet.

Hair length, too?
Superficial things in general. Including hair length.

For men, long hair is quite normalized (think viking look, metalheads), but women with short hair could need some action.

I think it bears mentioning that women were probably not excluded from cleaning cookware because it was believed they couldn't do it. They were segregated to maintain a male-dominated society where men call the shots and women are just generally held back.

All the talk about “women are too emotional” or things like that have always been after-the-fact excuses.