“In all sort of ways, our society views women as if they are of less value than men.”

[raccoon]

(Quoted from article http://socialistworker.org/2009/03/18/facts-about-violence-against-women
In DU thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=434180&mesg_id=434198 )


I’m a woman. I grew up believing that women/girls are of less value than men/boys.

How about you?

[seabeyond]

1. i was born in 61. and yes, it was a given. my mom was strong and independent

but culturely we were taught things that made it a given for all of us. took the 70's and growing older to understadn the bullshit. to really grasp the conditioning being done to all of us. then, being independent adn free in my 20's and partial 30's the concept of less was ridiculous and an outrage. i understand it and how it is done, now older, watching my children grow in this society. we may not have the old ways of the 50's and earlier where womens role was to "take care" of male, but we do have a new way of suppressing female in that we are here merely to "entertain" male. was a slight of hand the last decade. this seems even more insideous to me in that females are being dehumanized and will result in more violence.

[Scout]

2. agreed. born in 1959.

my parents were pretty conservative for most of my life ... as i and my sisters have grown into adults, and my parents see and hear from us how we are treated, they've become somewhat enlightened. they are in their 80s and have come about as far as i think they are going to. they have been better with how they treat their grandchildren as far as gender expectations and roles, which i've been glad to see.

[blueraven95]

3. I was born in '82

and I grew up knowing that society viewed women as lesser, but I never felt that I personally was.

My family is very matriarchal, so that might have been a factor.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. i grew up around career women and its not till much later did i find out that women

had lesser worth and more restrictions

i lived in a house full of women, went to an all girls school and my grandmother had a powerful career

[Captain Hilts]

10. I grew up in the navy community. Navy housing. We moved 10 times in 12 years...

Mum could not have had any career with moving around like that.

[musette_sf]

5. i was born in 1953

first born. they had a boy's name picked out, not a girl's. i ended up with two popular names of the era, last minute choices, nothing significant on a familial level, one of the names was in a popular song of the day.

second child was another girl, and third a boy.

one of my earliest memories is that my parents said that they had to "keep trying for a boy".

another one of my early memories is figuring out that as far as growing up and working went, i could be a teacher or a nurse, until i became a mommy, and that i really didn't like any of the prospects.

you bet i was born believing that my intrinsic value was lower than that of a male.

[Brainrazer]

11. the opposite was true for me

My parents had a boy and two years later had another boy, me. My mom has told me many times that she wanted a girl her second time, and time and money prevented them from trying for a girl. I grew up trying to somewhat fill the role of a girl for my mother, while realizing at the same time that I was fully a boy and had value in that masculinity. It hasn't affected me too much, though sometimes I wish I could somehow make my mother happy by reversing time and being born a girl.

[ismnotwasm]

6. Not exactly.

It would take to long to explain. Lets just say that my father says things like "there are no real men left" and told us that we were "fat" (we weren't) and needed to be a certain size to "catch a man" at the same time encouraging us in non-traditional roles, because "you can't rely on men" and "Why buy the cow when the milk is free" He hates everybody. Mom hates him. They love each other.

So obviously, I was left to draw my own conclusions. What I thought we the two biggest truths learned in the long strange trip that is my life is that women have lesser value when they aren't Following The Program. Lesser if A)not breeding, ala "motherhood". Or B) Lesser if Not Preparing Proper Fuckablility, (or plain not having it, although an unfuckable woman, given the conflicted personage of man, still manages it. Or can be raped as quick as anyone else.) as in make up, shaving legs, wearing the occasional dress, any ol' bastion of "femininity" Even down home backwoods Country boys I've met who don't appreciate make-up can't stand what they perceive as dykyness. You might be forgiven if you're an actual dyke, of course.

The "lesser" views on women that everybody "knows" ie. women aren't mechanical minded, are more emotional, can't lead, can't fight, are bad at math and good at cooking and cleaning unless a male wants to take over and become a master chief or sell vacuum cleaners-- add your own stereotype--, I've never bought into or ignored, being placed in that position of learning for myself and starting on the street, were such things weren't practical.

Everything I know about being a woman in a woman hating society is anecdotal, or is from books and studies I've read or classes I've taken. Being a cynic I became a nurse and was set free. In a field dominated by women I found what we really are, which is sensible, impractical, risk takers, rule followers, intelligent enough to take one's breathe away to box of rocks stupid, wonderful and joyous with laughter, beautiful and gorgeous at the end of an intense 12 hour day with grey hair sticking out of a ponytail not touched all night. We cook we don't cook, we have kids, we lose them sometime tragically, we raise the children of others, we can't stand kids. We often delight in being grandmothers. We innovate, we compromise, we overcome, we push, we shove, we give in suddenly, we write books, we invent useful things, we change the world. And we do it in a state of ugliness, of unfuckablility and of invisibility. We do it in a state frozen patriarchy fodder, of pampered nails and hair spa's and salon's, gym's and personal trainers and unnecessary plastic surgery.

And we change the world with the apparent inherent lesser value that we hold, that our religions teach, that our media promotes, that our governments reflect. We do it all anyway. We don't get any props for it, no street cred, no credit, but we do it anyway.

You ever wonder what the world would be like if our actual value was acknowledged and appreciated? I do.

[redqueen]

7. Well of course.

In everything... from religion to labor laws - no question.

[marybourg]

8. No. Born in New York City

in 1942 and was only vaguely aware that some people thought boys might be more important than girls. In 1987 moved to the midwest with some wrinkles and gray in my hair and found out that yes! even in stores, where in New York I was a valued customer, out in the mid west sales clerks and cashiers couldn't even see me, until my husband came up alongside of me. What an unpleasant revelation. I still mouth off in stores when it happens to me, after 22 years. I did it just today when a clerk who was ringing up my sale walked away to help a man find something.

[Captain Hilts]

9. Born in '59. My parents were pretty progressive, but everything around me was not. nt

[seabeyond]

12. .

[Qanisqineq]

13. No, I was lucky

I grew up in a family of all three girls, no boys. My mom has three sisters, no brothers. My cousins are overwhelmingly women. I don't think any of us believed we have less value than men.

[BlueIris]

14. Born in '79. No/Yes.

I went to a private elementary school run by some ex-hippies/yippies, and that shielded me from a lot of society's sexism during the Reagan years. But as soon as I transfered to public school in 1990, that changed, and I became painfully aware of how differently girls and women were treated in the mass culture.

[Kitty Herder]

15. Yes. I remember the first time I realized that I had that belief.

I was eight years old, sitting on the school bus, thinking and watching the scenery go by and it hit me that I--a girl--thought boys and men were better than women and girls. It struck as profoundly fucked up that I would think that, but I didn't know what to do with that realization so I stuffed it back down inside. I knew I wasn't supposed to think that. But I did. And I knew that everyone around me felt the same way.