How does Sexism Works

Romana 04/09/2018

Plagued by Ignorance

It has taken me all my life to understand how current human sexism works.  Since I grew up subject to Asperger’s syndrome, I never worried how culture worked, but culture and sexism go together.  I will describe what it’s like to grow up on the autism spectrum in another essay.

I grew up in a very sexist household. My dad was the boss, and my mom was a poor second-in-command, but she eventually asserted herself more.  Clearly, when associating with other boys, I got the message that girls were inferior.  Girls’ opinions could be easily dismissed.  Girls in the Renton School District, where I went to school, were forcefully indoctrinated not to become feminists, despite whatever factory work their mothers may have done during WWII. Many of male-oriented classes were strictly off-limits for girls.  Girls were taught to look to their future husbands for guidance after getting married. 

I only became romantically interested in dating girls after graduating from high school.  I tried to get some girlfriends in college, but I had no dating skills whatsoever.  I met many girls who were planning to be much more competent than they had been raised to be, and I was clueless how to deal with it.

I tried to go along with the culture in which I was raised, where men chased the women, and women selected men from an array of suitors.   Despite the fact that feminism has been around for more than half a century, I think this is still the game plan for cultural dating and mating.

When I returned to Washington State to work for Boeing in 1977, I seriously began to hunt for a wife. I finally married Carolyn in June, 1980. I convinced myself that I would be able to have a relationship that promoted equality; I was shocked when Carolyn told me that I was very sexist, especially after she had repeatedly told me in bed how perfect I was.

Whenever I had an argument with Carolyn, I always got stuck when I had to deal with my emotions, and I also sensed that there were other issues in the marriage.  I assume all the problems were my fault; I was too self-centered to see that Carolyn had emotional problems too.

I had not been raised with social skills; certainly, I had no idea how to discuss anything with my wife on common ground.  This was when I decided to take up crossdressing in an attempt to get around my limitations.  This idea seemed logical, and I had wanted to try it out since the fifth grade. 

Crossdressing was not a socially accepted method for dealing with my issues.  Dressing and passing as a woman was a lot harder than I ever imagined.  I was determined to make this work, but I lacked skills in my quest to get social skills.   It was annoying to my wife and everyone around us.  I did make progress; it seemed time to live full-time as woman in June 2005.  I really did not understand what all the fuss was about at the time.  I was essentially using engineering skills to fashion a woman identity, but it was not working well.

Everything Crashed

Despite wanting better social skills, I was beset with anger management problems. Carolyn had developed a perforated colon in December, 1999, which put her in the ICU.  When she was released in January, 2000, she had developed a balance handicap, which grew worse until she died in November 2010.  My whole world seemed gone, as well as my supportive social order.  In Buddhist terms, this was impermanence in action.

I had a therapist with whom to talk, but I needed to make changes to turn my life around.  In April 2011, I returned a book to my Shambhala Buddhist organization. I decided to stay and resume my meditation practice, from which I had taken an ill-advised twenty-six-year break.

My progress was slow, but I did learn to meditate regularly, and I took helpful classes and retreats.  My point-of-view changed, as I learned to see the world as it actually was.  At the same time, I tried to find a new woman in my life, without any success, but I did learn a lot how relationships and sexism worked.   I developed the ability to be articulate and extroverted, despite having Asperger’s syndrome. Daily enlightenment is now apart of my life.

What I Learned from Observation and Study      

 It is a statistical fact that men create 98% of the violence in the world.  I believe the root of the problem lies in sexism…not just the way men treat women, but also the way women treat men.  It is the way the culture views each sex.  Women are treated like an assemblage of parts, while men are treated as a monolithic whole¹.  Considering that women bear the children, they are allowed to be more mannered and get social skills.  Men are not supposed to be vulnerable or in touch with their feminine side; in fact, many wives work to keep their husbands masculine, while husbands want their wives to be classically feminine.

Human reality has become a dramatic and romantic stage play five thousand years in the making. It is etched in everyone’s subconscious to follow a formulaic script.  However, women have been protesting their place in all the drama and want more equality, but the comfortable and predictable momentum of history is hard to ignore.

Despite all the talk and rallies, boys and girls are still raised to travel different future paths.  As grown men and women, they may not know how to talk to each other.  This especially means that men may not learn to communicate with women, which women find very frustrating.  If men are kept in a box, they may not find peaceful ways to deal with their emotions.  The presence of testosterone means that men may be constantly agitated, often trying to get relief by having sex.  On top of this, men are often assigned macho roles, especially the status of head-of-household.  There can be struggles interacting with other men, fear of failure, loss of employment and status, as well as daily nervous struggles. With few traditional coping skills, aggression and violence can boil over.

In Buddhist terms, this kind of looping behavior is called habitual patterns.  Men and women are caught up in repeating bad behaviors, which will keep going until more people observe what is happening through meditation and contemplation. Everyone involved is very reluctant to make the changes to their behavior to deal with these issues.

A few men use crossdressing as a way to cope. I can speak from experience that when men crossdress, they cease to be a monolithic whole, but as an assemblage of parts instead, and lose power.  Personally, I felt no loss of power, but I’m externally judged to be a failed male.  There is a cultural mindset where men and women pick each other based on looks and roles, which I consider to be sexist.  It is a system where men do the pursuing, and women are prizes.  Men are forced to assume power, while the self-esteem of women is trashed.

If women campaign for equality while keeping men in macho boxes, there can’t possibly be any relief from sexism.  Women are routinely treated as secondary citizens. As a transgender woman, I don’t even count, nor do my improved manners or social skills.

I work on my behavior; I’m the only one I can change.  If no work for serious change is done, expect life to repeat just like in “Groundhog’s Day” for the next thousand years.

Appendix One:  History of Sex

Division of animals into separate sexes has been a feature of many species for the past 550 millions years.  Evolution might be very slow without this reproductive process.  Sexual reproduction guarantees that children will not be quite the same as their parents.  Sexuality along with random mutations is the driving force for evolution.

For many lower animals, mating is strictly for reproduction.  The desire to mate is often obsessive, with way more energy than necessary to fuel the process.  As a Buddhist, I think reproduction driven by emotional thirst, to produce bodies for future incarnations, where karma is transmitted from generation to generation. In this sense, it is an investment in the future, since otherwise individuals would die without getting any direct benefit.

The amount of sexism in prehistory can be hard to quantity.  Females carried the eggs and therefore had a bigger investment in reproduction than males.  There probably was not a lot of one sex oppressing another for millions of years.

Dinosaur life was centered on mating. Males had flamboyant patterns to attract females.  While the young stuck close to their mothers, either sex could equally feed the babies. Dinosaurs went extinct long ago.  This was because the last generations did not produce enough young to replace themselves.

Birds are considered to be very much like dinosaurs.  Males and females can equally care for babies, but not in all species. I suppose a female humming bird can be considered to live in a sexist environment, since the males do not help raise the young.  In some species, like in ducks, females actually chase the males away after the ducklings hatch. 

The rise of mammals was accompanied by the ability of females to suckle their babies via milk glands.  This meant that males did not have to stick around after mating.  I think the female mammal reproductive burden can be akin to sexism.  How much help the males provide varies greatly from species to species.

Human beings evolved from a long line of hominid apes.  Once, we had many related cousins, but they all went extinct.  Remember, extinction is caused by a generation that fails to produce enough new offspring.  There has been speculation that intelligence was the downfall of many, because it was not accompanied by a rise in eroticism.

Homo sapiens have solved this problem, since hairlessness along with sexual dimorphism seems to have given rise to a lot of eroticism.  It also helped that our ancestors changed the mating posture to front-to-front.  Sometime in our evolution, females developed enlarged breasts, which were exceedingly popular with males, but an unnecessary weight problem for females.  Books have been written on the implied sexual contract, where females could have sex all year long, which was supposed to encourage the males to stick around.  However, this does not take into account that human females can be just as crazy about sex as males.

When did sexism arise?  It is said that women were initially equal in hunter-gatherer societies, because they collected 60% of the food.  However, the rise of agrarian societies meant that women were less-valuable due to having less physical strength.

Women were devalued for thousands of years and treated like secondary citizens.   With the rise of the industrial age, women could do an equal share of work, but old habits are hard to kill.  We struggle with this today, because sexism is hard-coded in our psyches.  Boys and girls are still raised differently, way beyond what physical differences exist.  I find it amazing that many men and women can pair off and overcome bad conditioning, but not all couples make it.  There seems to be awful lot of single mothers.

I experienced passionate dating, almost like standard people, but I’m Asperger and can’t actually carry forth a romantic delusion.   I view pairing as 90% hard work and the rest romance.  When I experienced marital problems, it seemed logical to switch gender to get the social skills I was missing.  What I did was taboo, since men and women spend a lot of time keeping their gender identity culturally correct.

 
Appendix Two:  Examples of Sexism

Sexism Toward Women

Women are raised to think of themselves being special people, who imagine they’ll be part of a fantasy romantic adventure.  Life might seem like that at first, but things change and reality can raise its ugly head.  The fantastic person that they partnered with can be radically different than first expectations.

I used to think women were blameless, but I now realize they also create sexist situations.  Still, women are subject to a ton of sexist hype.   Women’s bodies are obviously sexualized in advertizing, in movies, and on stage.  Women often do better if they keep themselves looking attractive; then they are compared to see who wears dresses and skirts the best, or they are criticized for being too attractive.  In movies and on television programs, unless the genre is science fiction or fantasy, women always seemed to have roles that are secondary to male characters.  Sometimes, the pay gap between men and women is astronomical.

Women have trouble getting permission to do anything outside their historical roles, regardless how qualified they may be.  In the words of the late Admiral Grace Harper, “It is easier to seek forgiveness than to get permission.”  If women choose not to be standard and step outside their roles, they can be blamed for problems, in a backlash, that they did not actually create.  Women are often punished far more severely for capital crimes than men.

Women often wear more complicated clothing.  When women have clothing malfunctions, people often disrespectfully stare and even take pictures.  I think this is an unnecessary hyper-sexualized response.

While it is possible for women to dress too provocatively, women get harassed for wearing modest clothing too, especially that which can be described as feminine styles. In the end, even moderately attractive women can be harassed or stalked, as if men have a special license to do so.

In the workplace, women can be subjected to sophomoric behavior from men, such as getting unwelcome sexual advances, being ostracized from the culture, being the subject inappropriate sexual banter, having the boundaries of proper decorum disregarded, and being passed up for promotions and bonuses that their male equals received.

There was a long history of sexism when women instrumentalists were auditioning for an orchestra.  Men who were auditioning at the same time always got the jobs.  So, a system of blind auditioning was set up and refined.  It turned out that all sex-indicating sounds had to be eliminated too.

Sexism Toward Men

Many feminist women claim that men do not suffer from sexism, but I beg to differ.  Men are often raised to be dominant, even if they don’t want to be so.  Men who differ from the cultural norm can suffer being assigned derogatory attributes, such as sissy, queer, effeminate, girly, and so forth.

Since men on the autism spectrum have difficulty being standard, they can be subjected to endless form of harassments.  Young boys on the autism spectrum have been subjected to bullying in schools for years; even with stricter rules, such an onslaught does not seem to have been abated.  Any child in school who is obviously different can be the subject of bullying.

Men are supposed to be self-reliant and know how to handle any situation; yet, they are expendable in war.  Sacrifice for country and family is not just a courageous act; it is expected.  However, life can lead men to unexpected situations for which they were never prepared.

If men are not raised with social skills, they may be unlikely to acquire them as adults.  When men are pushed into macho roles, they may not be able to properly use emotions to get them through trying situations.  Macho roles can be very tiring with no apparent way out, which can lead to extreme anxiety and unhealthy living.

There is often the constant, annoying presence of testosterone in men’s lives.  There can be too much, or too little, but never any medical treatment.  Testosterone drives men to want to have sex; worse, men can feel the need to perform in bed, whether they are able or interested or not.  I personally accompanied a male coworker to a strip show once.  The reason was that he wanted to get worked up to have sex with his wife that night.

Some men turn to crossdressing for relief. Whatever the reason, such behavior can be met with dismay, if not severe punishment.  No escape from manhood is allowed.   Most crossdressers are heterosexual married men, but wives often do not appreciate their husbands dressing down in status, and may even divorce them.

Sexism Toward Me

I developed a libido after graduated from high school, but I found it nearly impossible to get dates with women.  In hindsight, it is difficult for any Asperger man to attract women, once we quickly demonstrate that we are non-standard.  It is a good thing that I never knew what my problem was, or I might never have tried.

 After years of bumbling, I met Carolyn.  We were married, but I was slow to help here deal with her issues.  My lack of discipline, when I took up crossdressing, did not help.

I have never been given permission to use non-standard means to deal with my issues.  Now I live as a woman, and dating is awful.  This was terribly disheartening, until I learned that both men and women are stuck in destructive patterns that kill relationships. I don’t fit this standard model; it is a bad idea for me to even try.  I now practice non-attachment.  I have given up chasing women, which is a sexist idea.  If a woman should chase me, I will consider a relationship, but not get my hopes up.

I’ve had women create all sorts of fuss while dating. They often got sick, and some took up smoking.  They realized that a relationship with me would make them gender queer, and they don’t like it.  I don’t think an anxiety-laden relationship is a good idea for me, especially if it has continual fussing over my gender identity.

In my life, I frequently got rejected and excluded fore being Asperger; it’s still happening.  I have been rejected for being a transwoman, or, in a strange twist, just for being a woman.  The discrimination never stops.

Reference

1. How men and women view each other

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725150215.htm