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[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It's so sad that all these girls and young women are so cowed, fearful and socialized to be "polite" that they can't respond to this sort of everyday sexism by saying - aloud or just inside their own heads - "fuck off" and/or flipping the bird.

Something has gone really awry when girls and women react to misogyny by making it their life's goal to change their own bodies so they look "masc" instead of putting their energies into changing society and telling males it's not okay for them to behave like sexist pigs.

Back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, women routinely called men out for being "sexist pigs" and "male chauvinist pigs," to use the phrasing once in vogue - and a lot of guys got it. We've clearly gone way backwards.

[–]jet199 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Most haven't gone backwards. I think it's specifically those meek and mild personalities who become TiFs (so much for male brains). And thankfully they are still a small minority.

Being called sweetheart has never bothered me because I've known since a teen that within a couple of seconds of meeting me no one's going to be patronising me. They don't have this assurance because they purposely act inoffensive to be likeable so they try to control people through a mixture of cunning disguise and shaming others instead. They don't realise those tactics would only work if everyone was as soft as soap like them.

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well that's good to know. I was feeling particularly desolate over all this today. Seems like some old-school "assertiveness training" would do these girls & young women wonders.

But the focus on changing the appearance of one's own body is just a new brand form of the looksism that has so long been a terrible drain on women's psychic energies and time. Used to be girls & women tried to escape having obviously female bodies by starving, purging, excessively exercising etc in hopes of becoming super skinny - maybe so skinny as to be invisible or slip through a crack in the pavement and be swallowed up the earth, never to be seen again. Now girls and women are trying to escape their female bodies by taking cross-sex hormones sure to be ruinous to their health and getting mutilating surgeries in hopes of fooling themselves and others into thinking they're men. It's absurd, but not in a funny way.