Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Lots of women have sexist views of men and are either just as ignorant or just don't care.
It goes both ways.
Like what? Is it degrading views?
Yes, degrading views. There are really fucked up perceptions about masculinity. In both cases, many people can point to examples that back up their opinions and consider those opinions to be validated. I notice this especially in discussions of parenting and sex. It's generally assumed that men need women to teach them how to parent. When my first child was born, I didn't know anything more about raising children than my husband did. We learned together. It was always assumed that I was the expert and he was simply a student of mine, which was hardly the case. When it comes to discussions of men and sex, it's generally assumed that men are just all sex all the time. Little allowance is made for men who want to feel emotionally connected to their partners.
I think that the difference is that sexist opinions about women are more dangerous. Workplace discrimination still very much exists, as witnessed by the story earlier this month about the IBM executives talking about how they don't like hiring women because they'll just go get pregnant over and over. Sexual violence does happen to men, but not at anywhere near the rate it happens to women. Men are not generally targeted because of their gender - for street harassment, for violent crime, etc.
If there is one thing I learned during the #YesAllWomen fad earlier this summer, it's that many men are actually oblivious to the misogyny that pervades our culture. The converse is also true, though, in that it's often hard for women to understand and relate to men's experiences of discrimination.