It's a Man's World, So to Speak
Last summer, I took the best class I have ever taken in all my years of schooling called Psychology of Women. It was the most intellectually stimulating class I have ever taken. It was so thought-provoking, so relevant, and extremely empowering. Seriously, without this class, I would not be nearly as educated as I am.
One of the most interesting things we discussed in the class was something called "androcentrism." This is a term used to describe how we live in a male-dominated world. And this male-centered view is seen in everything; fashion, health care (women's health being affected by over-generalized medical research that is based on male participants), the principle of double standards, and job opportunities (discrimination in one's household and the workplace creates a catering towards men's careers, which is seen in the gender differences in productivity, scale of production, and investment and growth capacity in careers).
Another common way to see androcentrism in our everyday lives is in our language. I have a few examples I would love to discuss, some that I have learned from my class (thanks, Professor Chesnut) and other examples I have found after closely examining our language. These examples are considered linguistic sexism.
The first example is a pretty basic one. The phrase "mankind" is one of the most basic yet clear examples of androcentrism. We use this phrase to describe both men and women, yet we would never say "womenkind" to describe men and women.
Another example is in the way we address one another. When you want to get a group of both boy's and girls' attention, you probably yell, "Hey guys." You would never address a group of boys and girls as "ladies," though. The same can be said for calling someone "Dude." We use "dude" to address both women and men interchangeably, but you would probably get some weird looks if you addressed your guy friend as "Girly."
I have another example, although this one is a little more extreme. When someone is noted for doing something courageous, usually someone describes that person as being "ballsy," or saying, "that took balls."
When someone is being cowardly or is scared, they are usually described as a "pussy." Here we have a clear example of men's characteristics equating with strength while being weak is associated with women's characteristics.
After learning this example (and how annoying that is because I can push a whole person out of my vagina), I challenged my friends and me to avoid saying the phrase, "that's ballsy," or anything close to that. Instead of saying that, my friends and I decided to alter the phrase by saying, "That has big boob energy."
I know saying that is not as catchy as saying someone was "ballsy," but by doing this, we can break down a piece of that androcentrism that has been built around us for so long. If using the phrase "big boob energy" doesn't work for you, make up your own phrase, one that still empowers women.
Once you stop and realize it, sexism has dripped its way into virtually every aspect of our society (the same can also be said for racism.) The good news, though, is that once we recognize that sexism, we can do so many different things to combat it. A topic I have written on before is how our words hold weight, and this has yet to be proven untrue. Our words have the power to dismantle years of sexism and uplift women the way they deserve to be. In fact, one could even say that combating linguistic sexism has a lot of big boob energy.
Sources here:
https://gsdrc.org/document-library/gender-differences-in-employment-and-why-they-matter/
http://virgil.azwestern.edu/~dag/lol/Androcentric.htm
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088868318782848