Defining Misogyny is a series dedicated to sharing stories of how misogyny and gender-based discrimination have affected women and gender nonconforming people in our community. If you have a story you’d like to share, send it to arts@thebruns.ca.
I recently had a telephone conversation with my grandmother, talking about this very article that I had been struggling to write. I have been a writer for over half of my life, and I could not understand why the words would not come.
“You’re too young,” she said, as I expressed my frustration. “You probably haven’t had enough experiences. You’re one of the lucky ones.”
I do feel lucky, for it is truly luck that has exempted me from the cruel and painful degradations that those who are not as fortunate have had to endure. Though I have not been touched in a way I did not ask for, I have been made to feel like I was owned, less than, beneath the intellect of those who do not share the same gender as me. I have wondered where the ditzy blonde stereotype had come from, and now I know it was probably a man, who felt threatened if he wasn’t the smartest one in the room. I don’t know what it is about women that seems to make the world think that we are begging to be diminished, for I know my experiences being talked down to are not isolated.
“I will never buy another car ever again,” my grandmother told me, after an experience 20 years ago where she was made to feel dumb. “When a woman walks into a car dealership, they treat you differently. They treat you like you know nothing at all.”
I was in a car accident when I was 17 years old, driving on a one-way street in my hometown. A man had side-swiped me, making it impossible to open the driver’s side door.
“Shit happens, eh? Life happens,” he told me, before promptly driving away, as if I was supposed to agree, climb back into my car, and be happy.
I have struggled with my own self-worth, repeating constantly to myself, “You are not a dumb girl. You are not a dumb girl.” It’s hard to believe most days, because it is true. The world perceives me that way, and that’s the same world that will criticise me, grant me jobs, sell me cars.
It is hard to combat the perceptions people hold of you in their head, especially when these perceptions taint an entire gender. I was born a woman, and have learned to deal with the repercussions of that, but I should not have to fight for my worth in a conversation held on intellectual common grounds, just for the fact that I lack a penis. I should not have to prove my worth to share a seat at the table with my male counterparts, whose intelligence is just expected, a default, factory setting. No longer do we live in those days where men were believed to hold all of the positive attributes in the world, and women were just stewards of gentle kindness. Women have always been the equals of those men.
The reason we are here on this earth is because we were born of a woman, carried and nurtured inside her body. To be a person who hates that very woman, and all women – that is the more unintelligent, at least to me.