I teach in a community college. Most of my students are between the ages of 18 and 21, and I simply cannot believe how sexist they are, even the women. The kinds of assumptions they have about what men and women should be like really seems to have regressed considerably, not necessarily in terms of things like employment, although I wouldn't be surprised if there's some of that there, too, with these kids streaming themselves into different aspects of various professions, more or less strictly sex-segregated. Mostly they have really regressive attitudes about the performance of gender. Almost all of my female students come to class wearing a lot of makeup and fairly styled hair, much dressier and girlier clothes than people my age wore to school, and some of them even always wear high-heeled pumps (with jeans, oftentimes). Their ideas of gender performance seem to have come from the 1950s, filtered through MTV.
Don't even get me started on the topic of IVF and stuff. As an adoptee, I find the preference of childless couples to try to create their genetically own children through massive medical intervention to be marginalising at best. In my most misanthropic moments, it really makes me want to sneer at them and say, "What's the matter, any of those already-born kids who need homes not good enough for you?" Biological determinists get my dander up, too...
Yup, I have issues, but at least I know it. (I keep them in sets bound by volume number.)
(no subject)
I teach in a community college. Most of my students are between the ages of 18 and 21, and I simply cannot believe how sexist they are, even the women. The kinds of assumptions they have about what men and women should be like really seems to have regressed considerably, not necessarily in terms of things like employment, although I wouldn't be surprised if there's some of that there, too, with these kids streaming themselves into different aspects of various professions, more or less strictly sex-segregated. Mostly they have really regressive attitudes about the performance of gender. Almost all of my female students come to class wearing a lot of makeup and fairly styled hair, much dressier and girlier clothes than people my age wore to school, and some of them even always wear high-heeled pumps (with jeans, oftentimes). Their ideas of gender performance seem to have come from the 1950s, filtered through MTV.
Don't even get me started on the topic of IVF and stuff. As an adoptee, I find the preference of childless couples to try to create their genetically own children through massive medical intervention to be marginalising at best. In my most misanthropic moments, it really makes me want to sneer at them and say, "What's the matter, any of those already-born kids who need homes not good enough for you?" Biological determinists get my dander up, too...
Yup, I have issues, but at least I know it. (I keep them in sets bound by volume number.)