Tag: gender bias

Equality

by eileentroemel, posted in Life

First let me say I’m a feminist.  This is going to be a feminist rant of sorts.  If you’ve read my stuff or you know me personally you know I’m not a big sports fan.  I think we treat our male sports figures as gods and let them get away with things they shouldn’t get away with.

My daughter was telling me about a young football player who was going to school on a scholarship.  He had a confrontation with a woman and hit her.  As a woman I find this horrible.  No one has the right to hit another person.  The school kicked him out and revoked his scholarship.  He was charged with a misdemeanor.

I think the school overreacted a bit if this was his first incident of domestic violence.  However, I can understand why they did it.

I’ve looked up the video – yes I actually looked up a sports thing.  I watched the video.  He bumped into her at a bar.  She turned to him with her fist raised.  He grabbed her arm to stop her from hitting him.  She then hit him with her other fist.  He slapped (I think) her.  Now he’s a guy and should know better than to hit a woman.  However, she wasn’t charged with anything.

Women are not above the law.  She assaulted  him.  He assaulted her and should be and has been punished.  As far as I’m aware, nothing happened to her.  If we as women want to be equal we have to know that our action have consequences.  So when we do something wrong, we should get punished for it.

He did something wrong.  His team, school, and the police took appropriate action and he’s dealing with the consequences of his actions.

She should have to deal with the consequences of her actions as well.  Why wasn’t she charged as well?  She should have been charged with a misdemeanor as well.

There were all sorts of wrong things done in this incident.  He was wrong to hit a woman – I can’t say that enough.  She was wrong to hit anyone.  He was punished appropriately.  She was not.  This is not equitable.  She should also have been charged and should be punished appropriately.

As women we cannot expect to get away with doing wrong simply because we are women.  Yes we need protection from the violence but if we commit violence, we need to pay the price.  Woman up!  Woman up and admit you did wrong and take your punishment.

Coloring Outside the Lines

by eileentroemel, posted in Life

I LOVE to crochet.  I love to make beautiful and practical things for people I know are going to appreciate them.

This is your only warning about my rant.  On facebook, I joined a Crochet Addicts group.  I love it and am inspired by it.  Except when someone goes on and says, how can I make this more girlie or are these colors boy colors.

First, all colors are gender neutral.  It is our society which has deemed girls must love pink and boys blue.  Please spare me this.  I do not like pink.  I’ve never worn it.  I hate getting mother’s days and birthday cards that are pink.  On top of which – there are a ton of beautiful colors – ha ha a whole rainbow of them – that all kids can enjoy.

As for adding flowers or other decorations to make it girlie.  Okay again PLEASE!  Boys can like flowers and often do.  While I love flowers, I don’t necessarily want them on everything.

Can we please stop putting a gender on things that don’t have a gender?  Can we please stop assuming that all females will like pink (or other stereotypes)?

For some of these posts, I don’t say a thing.  It just isn’t worth my time to tilt against a windmill but there are times when I want to smack them.  A woman posted a picture of a beautiful afghan she made for a girl.  It was – shockingly – blue and white.  This is what her customer asked for but she wanted to make it more girlie.

Girls like to play with trucks and cars just as much as they do dolls.  Girls like all colors.  Let’s allow our children (regardless of gender) to decide for themselves what colors they like.

The more freedom we give our girls to do and be what they want the better they become at being themselves.  I would imagine the same could be said for boys – I raised girls so I’m speaking from experience.