Star Member cilla4progress (11,614 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212388189
Have any other women here felt personally discriminated against for their strength? Resented for it?
Star Member JI7 (74,656 posts)
1. always
Star Member TygrBright (17,404 posts)
3. Well, duh.
Just try being yer intelligent, competent self in a structure dominated by Masters of the Universe who think a few phone calls and telling dirty jokes by the break room fridge is 'a day's work'.
wearily,
Bright
Star Member mopinko (53,554 posts)
4. oh hell yes.
i am like so many witches-
grey haired old woman, dumped my man, kept the property, know all the plants, know all the animals.
when i started my farm, i thought i had stepped into a disney movie.
i got sued, slandered and harassed half to death.
Star Member PoindexterOglethorpe (10,457 posts)
8. I'm somewhat old, 71 next week.
So I came of age in the era when women were routinely put down, discriminated against, assumed to be incompetent. I was often enraged because I knew I was every bit as capable as the men I worked with. Well, okay, I was shorter, smaller, less physically strong, but I was smarter than most and knew more about the job than they did.
In 1970 my company (an airline, I was a ticket counter agent) was having a layoff. The woman who was pregnant (perhaps two or three months along) was laid off, not the more junior agent, who should have been, given seniority rules. I have never fully gotten over that. almost 50 years ago- still not over it...
I will say that more than ten years later, I was hired by another, different airline to work the ticket counter in a different city. When I was at the company headquarters for the pre-employment physical, they wanted to do a back x-ray to make sure I could do the heavy lifting required. I informed them I was pregnant, and they passed on the x-ray and hired me anyway. Things changed a lot in a relatively short time.
So- you couldn't do the job, but they hired you anyway because you are a woman. Now- some other person, prbably a man, has to go do your portion of the job and his.
seems fine.
Star Member PinkTiger (2,526 posts)
9. I could write a book
And still have more examples.
Star Member BadgerMom (1,480 posts)
12. Of course I have.
The patriarchy rears its ugly head whenever slightly challenged.
Star Member canetoad (10,290 posts)
13. Cilla, I'd be surprised if any woman on Du Had not been discriminated against.
Personally, too many times to remember. One example comes to mind. I was chef at one of Australia's biggest sporting clubs. One evening, club office holders election night, we geared up the whole four floors of the building to feed members before the meeting.
I ran the lower floors; in one kitchen I had an apprentice cook assisting me, along with a couple of kitchen hands. The club President came to the kitchen door, walked straight past me and shook the hand of the (obviously) male apprentice, congratulating him on a sucessful night.
This was over 30 years ago. It was as if I didn't exist.
Star Member WhiteTara (25,433 posts)
30. I woke up this morning thinking about an incident similar to yours. I am part of a Buddhist group and we have a teacher from Tibet who lives in a city about 40 miles from where I live. We sponsor and hold events in our little town about once a year. The first year or maybe the second, we were asked to put together an event in a very short amount of time. The nominal "leader" of the group was furious and he refused to participate because it was too much. On the other hand, I thought it was very cool and set about making the event happen. It was wildly successful and raised lots of money for the monks.
I spent about a week working to put the whole event together and after it was over and I was helping to clean up and finish off whatever, I looked up and all the monks and our teacher had taken the man over to the side and was offering him katas and thanks and words of appreciation at his great work.
Frankly I was furious and I walked over to Geshe-la and told him that I was very offended because that man had given and done nothing. It was very un Buddhist of me; but it did shake a change in my teacher and we have a very good relationship. We make each other laugh and of course, he has taught me so much. I have long sought spiritual teachers and he is the only one who I have ever met who willingly gives knowledge to women. (I could go on about that for a year!)
So male chauvinism is rampant in every area of life on this planet. What made me think of it is that I have just been asked to put a film festival together for this year in the fall.
Star Member mnhtnbb (25,376 posts)
14. Oh, yes. Many times. Professionally and personally.
I am 68. In grad school I was one of 3 women in a class of 12. There was the nun, the black woman, and me, the white woman. We were preparing to enter a male dominated profession in 1975: hospital administration.
Several years out I discovered a male colleague with the same title, less experience, and less responsibility had about a 10% higher salary.
After several years of being handed professional departments with heads who needed to be replaced and the work required to get that done from setting expectations, counseling and working with the person to achieve goals, and then documenting less than acceptable performance to finally showing the person the door AND hiring qualified replacements, I was building a team of young and highly capable professional individuals. That didn't go over well with another of my colleagues and I ended up the victim of politics. My group was broken apart by assigning some of them to other assistant administrators and I was handed departments with no power in the hospital ostensibly to increase my experience. Yeah... something tells me you were building a team of womynz who were loyal to you... admin higher don't like that shit.
Then, of course, there were the sexual overtures. The CFO wanted to date me. My boss wanted to date me. In fact, he once came on to me when we had gone out to lunch to do my performance review. Talk about an awkward situation. 
Well, screw that. I was ready to move on and up to the level of a COO. About a year later I ended up leaving the field entirely. Never looked back.
so much more to the story I am sure...
Squinch (27,918 posts)
15. When "Me Too" began, DU paid lip service to it. But the moment one of our own loved white male candidates was called out for obviously sexist and patriarchal behavior, the tone at DU immediately changed.
We should have simply demanded better behavior from our own and moved on.
Instead, the immediate response was, "It's perfectly OK when HE does it!" and "'Believe women' is stupid! I'm not doing it," and "Those bitches deserve blah blah blah (insert sexist rant here) for complaining about that!"
Any woman on DU who thinks she hasn't been discriminated against, even right here on DU, is a damn fool and kidding herself.
Talitha (645 posts)
32. Every day of my marriage...until menopause removed my Ovarian Slave shackles and gave me my Voice back.
The poor guy didn't know what hit him. For decades he (and everyone else) assumed that he ran the family business, but learned otherwise when I finally let them know that 99.9% of the successful ideas were mine. I'd been the one holding things together all those years.
Every time a male would call with a request (or some info) they insisted on talking to him instead of 'the little woman'. Now, they talk to me or get disconnected... the choice is theirs.
HOLY SHIT! This bitch is crazy! Hope the guy survived and got out.
Star Member librechik (29,466 posts)
35. oh,yeah--you betcha the stories I could tell when the restraining order expires...
uh... a restraining order isn't a gag order you know...
