Ticking Nectarine

Grapefruit ain’t that good.

But your health is.

Georgetown professor says exactly what he thinks about the confederacy culture.

Like, I could add a witty gif or make a smart ass remark.

But I won’t.

(Spoiler warning of course)

Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.

People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”: 

Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity. 

Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.

Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.

One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?

The answer is crushingly, breathtakingly simple. In Russia, the majority of doctors are women. Here’s a quote from Carol Schmidt, a geriatric nurse practitioner who toured medical facilities in Moscow: “Their status and pay are more like our blue-collar workers, even though they require about the same amount of training as the American doctor… medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation ‘naturally suited‘ to women, [which puts it at] a second-class level in the Soviet psyche.”

What this illustrates perfectly is this — women are not devalued in the job market because women’s work is seen to have little value. It is the other way round. Women’s work is devalued in the job market because women are seen to have little value. This means that anything a woman does, be it childcare, teaching, or doctoring, or rocket science, will be seen to be of less value simply because it is done mainly by women. It isn’t that women choose jobs that are in lower-paid industries, it is that any industry that women dominate automatically becomes less respected and less well-paid.

asking people jokingly (or even seriously) if they’re autistic when they’re being obtuse, ignorant, or annoying

calling someone “a bit downsy in the face” as if that has ever been funny

mocking people with abnormal movement/ mobility, nervous ticks, or stim behaviour for comedic value (yes, a lot of impressions and caricatures are ableist)

asking if someone “needs a wheelchair, haha” when they discuss their chronic pain or their mobility issues (i have a close friend that tries to joke about wheelchairs and walkers with me and i never know how to shut it down. i need a cane some days but i make sure she never sees it because she thinks mobility devices are a joke)

jokes about how people who use elevators are lazy

grabbing someone’s mobility device for physical comedy purposes

mocking deaf accents, or repeating things someone says with a stutter to make fun of them

pretending to be deaf or hard of hearing to get a rise out of another hearing person.

jokes about how you wish you were disabled so you could “get special treatment too”

jokes about people being mentally ill whenever they exhibit a social behaviour that you find annoying/ parse as antisocial

any joke about how disabled people are “whining too much” eg: all the “back in my day…” kind of jokes about how accessibility isn’t necessary and disabled people are making a big deal out of nothing.

joking about infomercials, many of which are for products that mostly help people with mobility issues live independently. none of those products are “for lazy people” and the people in the before clips who spill food or can’t get their socks on etc are supposed to represent people with mobility concerns

Saying things like “jeez man stop spazzing out,” calling people who are in distress “spastic.”

jokes about elderly people being “high maintenance” and hard to care for/ relate to.

jokes about disabled people being “perpetual children” and mocking or joking about children and child-likeness as if it’s a deficit in general.

remember that a lot of ageism has strong crossovers with ableism in general. ageism is bad in and of itself but it can be particularly harmful in many ways. (it also often strongly connects/ converges with misogyny and racism too)