Writings

Monday Musings: How women are treated

I have a file on my computer labeled, “How women are treated.” If you open it up, it’s 67 pages of links to stories dating back to February 11, 2017. That’s roughly 13 pages of links per year of how women are still treated like lesser people. I keep telling myself I need to write a long, eloquent piece explaining how anyone who doesn’t seem to be a straight, white male is treated in society, but my list of links keeps growing.

I stumbled upon the screenshot a couple of days ago on Reddit and felt the need to single it out. I’m not going to be eloquent about any of this shit.

When I worked in Gering Public Schools as a paraeducator, a social studies teacher told me racism and sexism no longer existed because a black man was re-elected as president and a woman was secretary of state. He honestly though Hillary Clinton was the first one. A few minutes later, he told his students that giving birth and being a mother was the greatest thing a woman could ever do in life.

After correcting him on the facts of female secretaries of state, I had to decide if I wanted to keep my job or not. It was in the middle of class and 20 students were watching. I shook my head and bit my tongue. Then, I put my head down on the desk to keep myself from talking. A few students, male and female, asked me later in the hallway, “Mrs. North, how much did you want to punch him in the face when he said that?” I didn’t answer the question, mainly because I am short and the teacher was tall. My only option would have been to punch him in the nuts, not the face. And yes, I really did want to hit him over and over again until he fell on the ground. Instead, I praised them for knowing “baby maker” is not the only job open to a female.

Neil in the screenshot above makes me think of this social studies teacher. They think they’re progressive and enlightened when they are actually giant douchebags. As one Reddit comment noted, Neil “sounds like his head is so far up his ass he could eat his meal twice.”

Why would any woman want to be with someone who makes so many spelling and grammatical errors? “You was pose to havw butterflies n shit.” You call that a sentence? Who taught you to write English because I want to go smack them upside the head right now.

I have been hearing, “that’s unladylike” since I was a child in the 1970s. You know what? I like hiking, playing in the dirt, sliding head first into second base, playing with Matchbox cars, climbing trees, getting flat on my stomach in a pile of mud to get the perfect picture, riding my bike in the rain, and jumping in mud puddles just because I can. Fuck your ladylike bullshit and your antiquated ways of thinking.

If I want to eat the whole damned salad, it’s because I’m fucking hungry, ya mook. How come a woman is greedy when she eats her entire meal, but you are not? Were you planning on stealing the rest of this woman’s meal? Is that why you didn’t want her to eat it?

If I happen to not finish my entire meal, I take it home. My husband knows damn well if he doesn’t hear, “it’s okay, dude. You can have my leftovers,” then he’d better keep his damned hands off my food. What the hell? It’s a fucking salad. The only people I know who don’t eat the entire salad is people who don’t like leaves.

Also, how the hell is she going to overeat on salad? Oh wait, Neil, fess up. Are you projecting onto her because you need to go to the gym every day and meal prep? If you don’t make a specific meal with specific calories, are you going to be greedy with food and overweight in the future?

Normally, I try to be a nice person and see things from another person’s point of view, but, damn Neil, you make it so hard to do. You can’t tell someone they are perfect and then list shit they did wrong. Also, no one is perfect. Nope. I know what you’re thinking. I’m not perfect either.

Honestly, Diamond, you dodged a bullet here. Neil’s text is full of red flags. If he wants to control what you eat, gets angry at how much you eat, and is making all these judgments about how you might get fat later on, run the fuck away from him. Run as fast as you can because this isn’t the only thing he’s going to try to control about you.

I am also irrationally aggravated by these two people’s names. Seriously, if they stayed together, they’d never hear the end of the idiotic Neil Diamond jokes.

Seriously, we have a long way to go before all people are seen as equals. There are too many men out there who look to put women down so they can feel superior or whatever the fuck it is that makes them feel better about themselves. Yes, there are women like that, too, but we’re talking about Neil, the social studies teacher I worked with, and the other men like them who are still, somehow, remembering to breathe every day.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go update my business cards from “freelance writer” to “potentially fat, constantly unladylike, and I always eat the whole damn salad.”

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1 Comment

  1. Jennifer Harms

    I liked this, still laughing. And this is the truth!

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