Hey everyone! By the time you read this, I am currently groaning like a sick llama while being roasted by the fiery flames of Hell Week nose-deep in my textbooks and/or reviewing for exams.
And I will be until the week after next.
*whispers weakly* Please pray for my soul and brain cells.
Worry ye not! If I have the time, I shall take a quick peek in my Reader every now and then. 😉
So anyway! Because of college’s high demands, I’ve decided to schedule a couple of Katie’s Oldies but Goldies* posts. And I’ve recently dug out old posts of mine that are still relevant today. I edited and added a few things but the general idea of each post is still the same.
The one you’ll be reading below was something I wrote in 2015. (See what I mean by old???) And boooy, was I a hotheaded rant-loving beast back then. I’d like to think my character development centered in turning me into a Buddha-channeling rainbow unicorn tho hekhekhek
Enjoy!
*I know I know. I could make some maddeningly good titles
It’s been 4 months since we moved to this kinda peaceful neighborhood that we live now. I was about to come to an overall impression that, “Hmm, this place is okay.”
Until I heard the first of many fights that our neighbors will have.
Look, I’m not saying our family is perfect–far from it. My parents have the occasional fights too. And even those were horrifying.
But one morning, my sister and I were alone in the house and the neighbors started fighting. At one point, I heard furniture crashing and the husband shouting something about how the wife deserves to be treated that way and women should act in a certain way.
Let me tell you now, I didn’t consider myself a feminist back then, when I first wrote this post. I thought I was brilliant, thinking of myself as a “part misogynist, part misandrist, overall misanthrope.” Now, when I think about it, I didn’t make any sense. Typical Kate.
I am, in the very essence of its meaning, a feminist. But more than that, I am a person who is calling for equality among all gender. Men, women, transpeople… everyone. So you know. That’s one thing about me that changed in two years.
One thing about me that hasn’t changed in two years, though, is that I really don’t like the idea of “guys should do this and girls should do that.” This constant need to neatly place every person in a box.
I mean, everyone can have a fair share of everything, whatever gender they may have.
Guys can clean the dishes, too. And girls can be taught how to repair their own car. And transgender people can serve the military if that’s what they damn want.
But I live in a world where you hear these phrases all the freakin time:
“The wives should stay at home while the husbands make a living for the family.”
“You should take good care of the women because they are fragile and weak.”
“Leave the heavy works to the men.”
And it’s not just the men who contribute to the inequality among the genders. The women do too. Which, by the way, I talked about in a recent post about gender bias.
What I’m basically trying to say here is:
We have to be more conscious of what we think of others.
Be more aware of a person’s individuality. Yes, we have established stereotypes for every person based on how they look, how they act or how they dress. And these stereotypes have been imprinted in our mind for as long as we could remember. Which is why it is so hard to defy them.
So defying toxic stereotyping will require a deliberate second-guessing to the thoughts we automatically think of people.
This reminds me of what Rebecca of Hopelessly Strong said in one of her super-enjoyable emails. She told me how, when pronouncing someone’s name, she waits and listens to how it’s pronounced before she says it.
It’s a baby step but I think we need to be more like that when we meet new people. (We need to channel our inner Rebecca! 😀 )
We have to put a pause before that automatic stereotyping part of our brain starts functioning. We have to take a step back and think, “Wait a sec. What if I got it wrong?” And we could start opening to the idea that the person in front of you may not be as bad as your stereotype of them would imply.
Because more often than not, people are more than their stereotype.
YOUR TURN: What stereotype has people thought of you? How are you more than that stereotype? What baby step did you take to defy stereotyping? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Have an awesome day, awesome peeps! <3
