By Houston Hilton
Whenever the topic of discrimination is announced, it seems to me that several people think of some of the most unoriginal words ever – namely racism. But if it is really thought about, discrimination does not necessarily pertain to stuff like racism all the time. In fact, discrimination can relate to many other factors, such as how rich somebody is – trust me, I have experience with that first hand. But perhaps one of the most prominent bases of discrimination today is sexism – discrimination based on either the sex or gender of person – and yes, there is a difference between gender and sex, technically. Don’t believe me? Well, gender is actually defined as the "role" of a person when comparing him or her to the rest of a culture or society. For example, if what many consider to be a man physically were to perform, say, raising his children and staying at home, he would be considered to have a gender of a female. Sex, on the other hand, is the factor that most of us consider the difference between a girl and guy as being…that physical distinction…need I go on? Anyway, getting back to the main subject, this sort of discrimination seems to have its own fair share of publicity these days. But is this publicity justified? In my opinion, it is not. Let me elaborate…
For starters, I don’t think that this new publicity about sexism is justified because there are still plenty of other modes of discrimination that still generally go about unnoticed. If it is really thought about, some of the most seemingly innocent happenings can technically be bits of discrimination – as known in that typical offensive sense. Take post-school systems, as an example. When someone receives a degree after completing a certain number of courses, they become eligible for more higher-paying jobs than someone who doesn’t have such a thing. As a result, there is discrimination on who can and can’t work in this respect. Some may rebut – arguing that this is not discrimination, but instead a reward system for achieving so much. But this probably isn’t so, as some of those ineligible people maybe had other reasons for not going into college besides effort – namely money. Sometimes people are forced to be inapt for acquiring a degree simply because they do not have money to pay for college in the first place! And where can that stem from? A lack of feasible, household income as a result of parents not having those higher-paying, "college only" jobs in the first place. Basically, it’s a cycle of keeping the "lower" members of that aristocracy at their current place – strikingly similar to how African Americans used to be considered lesser than White Man in the archaic Colonial American Era. But at the same time, similar to today, such discriminations pretty much went unnoticed as a political problem.
And speaking of the socially unnoticed methods of discrimination that happened throughout history, here’s another argument against the modern, comic exaggeration of popular feminine sexism: what about its opposite bit of discrimination that still widely goes out unnoticed? I mean, it is heard all of the time about women being denied jobs because, well, they’re women, but what about the men? Do not men, at times, be discriminated against for wanting to, say, do a girly job? And even if there’s not direct discrimination on the matter, there is still a general, societal conform that causes many boys to only do boy things much more often than girls - I am perhaps one major exception, as I deliberately to beat this conform by wearing pink shirt at least once every one to two weeks – anyways, getting back to the point, take Goddard High School as a local example for what I mean. Though GHS volleyball technically allows men to join the team, it still doesn’t seem to be part of GHS Volleyball culture to have some testosterone on the volleyball court - aside from managers. In fact, it wasn’t until quite recently that more estrogen was added to the, say, wrestling team was it?
So, with that said, it can be seen that sexism can, and does, go both ways. Furthermore, it can also be reasonably said that the exaggerated publicity of feminine sexism as a standalone mode of discrimination is essentially Ludacris. However, the possible publicity of that mode of discrimination, in combination with masculine sexism, and all other possible bases of discrimination is not ridiculous. I am not favoring either party on this matter. I am just stating my belief on sexism and discrimination in general.
