Sexism has been a ubiquitous presence in my life, simply because I present as a woman. Women regularly encounter petty comments, remarks, and even blatantly inappropriate behavior due to their gender identity, especially if they differ from the societal definition of femininity. I’d like to think that I’ve escaped the brunt of it, but, of course, I have not been able to escape it entirely. Through childhood, adolescence, and now adulthood, sexism infiltrates our existences in various ways. No woman is capable of escaping misogyny in day-to-day life, which demonstrates how far our society is from truly treating women with the respect that they deserve.
Reflecting on my earliest memories from elementary school, I remember that the boys in my class were constantly encouraged to take on leadership roles. As trivial as this seems, this was consequential. From the beginning of a girl’s education, she is told that boys are supposed to lead. However, a girl is “bossy” when she attempts to do the same. This was illustrative of my experiences in elementary school. A boy was captain and a leader, but when a girl wanted to take on the same role, she was branded “weird.” When I was this age, I did not realize how this underlying message altered how I thought and behaved.
Sexism undergirded my lower school years, but I had never been told directly that girls could not pursue something merely due to their gender until middle school. Roblox was one of my favorite pastimes, especially the game “Assassin.” Although this was a male-dominated game, I enjoyed it and played it frequently. However, the game soured and lost its magic after, having won a game, I was called derogatory names by a group of male players. I was hurt — I didn’t understand why losing a game was such a big deal. If they had lost to a man, I’m sure they would have reacted differently. I violated their perceptions of traditional gender norms.
As I grew older, sexism manifested in various new ways. During high school, I participated in a male-dominated political club. WhenI decided to run for vice-chair, I was instead told to run for secretary by one of my male counterparts. They wanted a girl who was more White, societally attractive, and skinnier to run for the higher position. I was furious. I was more qualified than her, but they wanted her to attain the position because she was “prettier to look at.”
This wasn’t the only instance of misogyny in my high school. Our school offered electives such as Domestic Arts, Shop, Weightlifting, and Nutrition, and these classes were gender exclusive. Women were only allowed to take “Nutrition” and “Domestic Arts” while “Weightlifting” and “Shop” were reserved for men.
This constantly bothered me. I wanted to lift weights, but because I was a woman, I had no opportunity to pursue this passion. As a thrower on my high school track team, weight lifting was important. I began to go to the gym more frequently to build greater muscle mass. However, whenever I would tell someone, they would warn me against getting too bulky and thereby too masculine, advising me to stay away from heavy weights instead use the Stairmaster. How was I supposed to gain muscle by purely burning calories on cardio machines? These comments hampered my progress as I was afraid of departing from socially accepted norms that dictated that men be strong and women be slim.
Even though I dealt with myriad instances of sexism throughout my life, my mother, a single parent, raised my sisters and I to be strong, independent women. Yet even with her efforts to help us feel confident as women, society’s influence was still too strong. Even now, I often try to take up as little space as possible in male-dominated areas.
However, I have worked to surround myself with individuals who don’t believe that conforming to gender norms is necessarily desirable. I have begun to unlearn my internalized misogyny and have started to work towards being my authentic self, even if that means straying from society’s definition of femininity. Society does not get to put femininity in a box. It is what we make of it.
The original artwork for this article was created by Harvard College student Duncan Glew for the exclusive use of the HPR.
