The history of today’s word describes a semantic drift toward an ever-broadening meaning… these days it is most widely used to refer to societies convinced that males are better suited for important, decision-making roles.
Why is it socially acceptable for the males of the drinking/dancing/clubbing generation to be loud, rowdy, and do whatever they do? Maybe it’s not socially ‘acceptable’, but it is expected nonetheless. When I rarely see a drunken female dancing on a table or cheering on a fight in the street, I think to myself, and usually verbally to whoever is nearest, about how she is such a tryhard slut, and so on. Okay, she’d get arrested for unruly behaviour as would anybody. But that’s the law, which is basically as black-and-white as something can get when humanity is involved. Do drunken, unruly males love drunken, unruly females? It seems to be, once again, expected. Males are the unruly, females are generally more passive, quieter, well-behaved.
I get the feeling I am, in a way, about to have my very own two sided debate. Everybody is different, everybody is entitled to their opinion. It’s amazing how your understanding of such things can dramatically conflict with your beliefs. Hardly the point, though…
I work in retail. I am assistant manager of a small electronics and gadgets store. The store is located in a lovely little community that wishes it was trendy, hip and attractive to today’s life and world. It is an old community, as in historical… which by default seems to make it also full of retirement villages, and little old people living in the homes they have owned for 40+ years. On the 500metre or so main drag, where my store is located, there are more optometrists, chemists, dentists, and boring shoe stores than you’d find in a city shopping complex. Suffice to say, there are a HUGE ratio of old people to trendy young people.
Old people can be lovely. But I have learnt that, as times have changed over the decades and generations, their opinions and beliefs have not. In the 30′s and 40′s, it was unmistakably a world where the man was the breadwinner of the house, the mechanic and the handyman and the driver and the farmer, known to the big wide world, with his big ideas and big ambitions. The lady cooked and cleaned, and lived her little life in her own little world, providing for her little family in her own little way. Fastforward to the 60′s and 70′s – oh how different were things already? Feminism came along. Free love and freedom in general came along as well. Chivalry was still expected.
Fastforward, again, to now. There have been campaigns and major plans to attempt to create an ‘equal society’ for years. I believe that now, it is as equal as it can get. It is SO equal, in fact, that it seems as though the ‘chauvanistic’ approach is being reversed too, with some major companies setting up plans to promote ‘positive discrimination/chauvanism’ – favouring females and people of colour for important roles in employment. Females are helping to run the world, are CEO’s of companies, and it is not unusual today for a male to be the stay-at-home or part-time-employed parent. It is all just ‘normal’. Expected, even.
How about we try to get the oldies of the aforementioned comminuty to fast-forward to today? It is NOT going to happen. This is my point, my reason: On a daily basis, dare I say perhaps, 30% of the old ladies I attend to in my electronic gadget store, will automatically look around for a male? These old ladies will become irritated, and if I cannot help them (repairing their doorbell, for example), I will simply explain to them that “Yes, we do SELL this doorbell, but when they stop working they are just a throw away item”. I am SICK of hearing the response “Well where’s the man? Surely he can fix it. He was here yesterday. He has to be here now, he is the only person that can possibly help me. The man I saw, he’s your technician.” These people seem to have faith in the assumption that men are better than women.
Generation gap?
I have to agree with you. Working in computers I encounter this sort of prejudice all the time, usually from male customers who assume they know more than me by mere virtue of being male. It’s extremely frustrating.
I think it’s important to remember that male and female’s have a different genetic disposition to certain types of behavior. Where people often go wrong is the fact that they base all their assumptions on the delusion that we’re some sort of special entity on earth, separate from the forces of nature and evolutionary natural effects.
Example, you mention the way men can behave in unruly ways and how it’s wrong that it’s accepted for them and not for women. This is easy to answer when you remind yourself that we’re just sophisticated animals, men are genetically and hormonally programmed to naturally have certain behaviors instilled – and the sad fact is that if this wasn’t accepted, then our society wouldn’t even exist as we know it, our little tribe 500,000 years ago would have been destroyed through some sort of calamity, but men fight and protect, that’s what they’re there for.
In today’s society men and women have forced their own natural skills to become almost taboo, how dare anyone think that lady that lives at number 43 is actually proud of being the cornerstone of a successful family? and how dare that the man at number 43 feel proud to leave his family constantly, spending more time gathering funds to keep his family going? both roles are extremely important and in my opinion to be respected.
What ever happened that made being human, something to be ashamed of?