The presentations of the views of three different females and their experiences really stuck out to me. I believe that it opened my eyes to many different things that we thought were simple things that held no meaning to us men. Even though men feel indifferent to the things occurred, they can be viewed as very hurtful for females. This talk I believe one of the most interesting conversations that we have thus far.
One of the interesting things that i got from this talk was when we said things like “She is mine”. They showed dissatisfaction when we said things like this because this showed possession. As men, we just see it as another thing that we say casually. I, before the talk, through things like this pose no real problem towards other people. Mainly, like most men, it's not often told to us that this isn't necessarily the nicest thing to do. This, in my opinion, is privilege of the males toward the females of how we can just say things and not understand how it affects them.
Another thing i found very interesting was the experiences of one of the women during their time in the government. I was in shock when she told us that our government, the ones we view as the best and greatest people that will represent our ‘wonderful’ country, would say things like “she must've slept with many guys to get to where she is now” or “why does a girl have to work at this position where a guy would be better”. What is the real problem with women getting high positions? Is it really that bad for women to accel at things at the same rate as guys typically do? I mean it's bad enough that women get paid less than men because of the gender wage gap in United States of America, with the wage gap being women making seventy seven cents of every dollar that a man makes. Now they have to bear the criticism of the insults and rude comments made by other people of the opposite sex.
What really disturbed me was one of the experiences of her being taken advantage of by people working for the government. She was drugged and abused, but what really disturbed me was her being so confused by what to do. Since she's been accused of sleeping with people to get her position, she wasn't sure whether or not calling the police would be a good thing to do. In her mind, it would be confirming people's suspicions on how she even got here in the first place. It's beyond me how someone can turn down help if a case was a serious as this. The thing is, I can't be like “I would call the cops immediately” or something like that because I can't possibly imagine the struggles she was having at that time. I, luckily, have never had to experience anything near that in my life so i couldn't truly understand what she felt or what was going through her mind at the time.
These are REAL experiences of REAL people. This gives me a lot of questions to think about after this in-class discussions. Things like asking why can't people just leave others alone with things of this matter? What's the real threat of women gaining status? When can we truly understand the struggles of women? Some of the questions i have i hope to find answers to some day.
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