Roar

11-6-12

Yeah, there's an election going on. It's definitely not what's been at the top of my priority list today.

For Monday's capstone reading, I read (well, skimmed, actually) Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit," written in 1843. I was intrigued by one section, which reads:

         But early I perceived that men never, in any extreme of despair, wished to be women. Where they admired any woman they were inclined to speak of her as above her sex. Silently I observed this, and feared it argued a rooted skepticism, which for ages had been fastening on the heart, and which only an age of miracles could eradicate. Ever I have been treated with great sincerity; and I look upon it as a most signal instance of this, that an intimate friend of the other sex said in a fervent moment, that I deserved in some star to be a man. Another used as highest praise, in speaking of a character in literature, the words "a manly woman."
        It is well known that of every strong woman they say she has a masculine mind.
        This by no means argues a willing want of generosity towards woman. Man is as generous towards her, as he knows how to be.
        Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone forth in any ideal of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with triumph. Their encomiums indeed are always in some sense mortifying, they show too much surprise. 

So, I was like, "Wow, that seems familiar," but really didn't pay attention to it.

Until today.

I was at work, tutoring a student. His paper was for a class that I took last year, and so I could really give good suggestions on structure and what not. He seemed appreciative, but was super worried about how stressed the paper had made him. So I gave the example that when I was doing the paper, I was also doing a history paper that gave me a hard time because it turned out to be mostly original-ish research.

He asked me what my paper was about.

"Oh, the structure of Cromwell's New Model Army compared with the structure of pirate societies in the Golden Age of Piracy," I answered.

"Who's Cromwell?"

So I told him who Cromwell was. I mean, it's not something I expect everyone to know.

"You don't sound like a woman," he said, and then instantly backpedaled. "I mean, no offense. But it's just that women aren't interested in that, so it's weird to hear you talk like that."

I politely kept on with the session until it was over and then I went to class.

But--seriously, dude? I don't sound like a woman? You sound like an idiot. 

Maybe I'm spoiled to have male friends who appreciate the fact that I'm intelligent, but you, sir, are an idiot. Just because I'm educated does not make me not a woman.

I guess it bothers me because it's the first sexist remark of which I've ever been the direct recipient.