Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

 

I remember detecting a microaggression a time in my life. This particular microggression happened to be a gender microaggression. One day, I was in a store and I noticed one of my old friends that I grew up in my neighborhood with that I hadn’t seen in over ten years. As we had a brief conversation, I noticed he had on a uniform shirt that read a logo, “Greenville fire dpt.” And blue khaki pants. I asked him of his occupation as a fire fighter and if his company were currently hiring for new trainees, and he bluntly stated, “You don’t want to do this type of work, this is a man’s job. You should be sitting behind a desk in an office instead.” After hearing this comment, I was instantly caught in a “catch 22” phase. I was so caught by surprise that I did not know how to respond to such a comment from my old friend. Therefore I quickly changed the subject and spoke no more of it. Although my old friend’s intentions may have been good with no intent to harm, I felt that he thinks women can’t complete any tasks that men can and that women are made for inside a more feminine jobs only.

After experiencing this kind of gender microaggression, my perception of discrimination, and stereotypes have been affected because the encounter that I had with my old friend was one of the many examples of how women are discriminated against in society. There are companies that will not hire a woman simply because she is a woman. Women tend to be stereotyped as feminine individuals who are unable to work as hard as a man. My opinion on this stereotype is that I feel that this stereotype is more of an ego and pride issue. Men do not want women to be seen as tough as them. We are usually expected to be dependent on man, when there are some things in society that we actually do better than a man and is done on a regular basis this day in age.