Gender
Gender microassaults can be described as overt sexism: "being called a sexist name, a man refusing to wash dishes because it is 'woman's work,' displaying nude pin-ups of women at places of employment, someone making unwanted sexual advances toward another person." Gender microinsults and microinvalidations can be less apparent.
Microaggressable themes have been identified through research and scholarly reviews (Sue, 2010):
- Sexual objectification
- Second-class citizenship
- Sexist language
- Assumptions of inferiority
- Denial of the reality of sexism
- Traditional gender role assumptions
- Invisibility
- Denial of individual sexism
- Sexist jokes
Read more about this topic: Microaggression
Famous quotes containing the word gender:
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)