What is gender discrimination? Wikipedia defined it as a discrimination a person or group on the basis of their sex or gender. When we talk about discrimination, we could not help but to arrive with another word, sexism. So, what is sexism? Sexism is commonly considered to be discrimination and/or hatred towards people based on their sex rather than individual merits, but can also refer to any and all systemic differentiation based on the sex of the individuals.Unfortunately, we are usually being fed by only certain gender discrimination, which is female gender. We sometimes forget that there could also be other sexes (male and the intersexed people who are born with a mixture of male and female characteristics) that being discriminated. I could search and list out many movies, highly publicized court cases, articles and case studies. I am not an opposer of female, but I think we should also look into other gender discrimination.
I tried to find cases of male discrimination in internet, but only came by two (!) of them. Compared to hundreds of female discrimination. This may be an indication that female was marginally discriminated, but it also could be that male discriminations are less exposed. Well, of course this is because not many people wanted to watch men bodybuilders competition compared to Donald Trump and his syndication of Miss Universe.
One of the cases is about a male nurse, that was sacked after overstaying his medical leave - he stated that he was discriminated. But the case was dismissed. The other one is about Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them! T-shirt production that was later removed from market. The slogan was printed next to a cartoon image of a boy running away from 5 stones flying in his direction.
(click to enlarge)People magazine even ran a story on the T-shirt with a quote from a 10 year old girl saying, "I want to make boys feel bad because it's fun." Glenn Sacks, the designer of the shirt said that it was because of boys are now seriously left behind against girls at all level in school. By high school the typical boy is a year and a half behind typical girl in reading and writing. Girls get better grades than boys and boys are more likely to drop out of school or to be disciplined, held back or expelled compared by girls.
Boys are four times as likely to receive a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as girls and the vast majority of learning disabled students are boys. Boys are less likely to graduate high school, go to college, or graduate college than girls. Shock isn't it to read about it, even though we all realized that the situation does exist. Some said that feminists are the one who try to keep the matter under the carpet.
According to Diane Ravitch, author and former US Department of Education official, "The American Association of University Women's 1992 report "How Schools Shortchange Girls" (a report of a "girl crisis" that was widely publicized) was completely wrong. What was so bizarre is that it came out right at the time that girls had just overtaken boys in almost every area.. it was like calling a wedding, a funeral.. There were all these special programs put in place for girls, and no one paid any attention to boys."I am sure that we all have the same problem worldwide, but some of the countries are still busy trying to change the impression of woman to highlight the boys discrimination. Nevertheless, I do hope we are aware of this situation and consider it as a problem. How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself, so always think positively about it like these:
1. Stop sending your boys to school
Your son will has less homework, less detention and will not complaining about the how he has to be around girls (as girls are usually more in his class). You could always home school him or if you're rich enough, you could hire a home tutor for him. The worst he can be is to become a geek/nerd or a psycho killer.
2. Men could find more excuses to stay at home rather than work
Who are we to resist of staying home all the time? Not like we need to take care of our children - they invented maid/babysitter for that already. Plus, it isn't a new trend for those modern countries
3. You could design a T-shirt saying "Girls are Cleverer" or "Boys are stupid, we throw rocks at them, and they never know!"
Which would probably become more hit than a bag printed with "I am not a plastic bag". An answer that was arose from not a question statement. Yeah, we know they are not a plastic bag, should we necessarily printed it out loud?
My wonderful design, call me to order(click to enlarge)
In the end, I am not saying that female should continue to be discriminated (which they were and that is a fact), but we should all seek a gender equality rather than blaming each other for what we have been. A boy will be a man, and a girl will be a woman. Only time could tell whether we will ever achieved this gender equality.
