There is a special place in hell for men who diss women just because they're women. It doesn't matter what the age of the man or the woman, nor does it matter whether they're wealthy or not. I've seen this behavior at social functions, parties, dinners, and at work. Men can deny all they like that this behavior goes on; it does, to the detriment of both sexes. Dissing is a power play; it says that men are smarter/better/more articulate than women. Dissing women in front of others is reducing women to nothing and making sure that 'they know their place'.
Does this really occur in 2022, you might ask? It does indeed. It happens everyday. Men and women are in conversation, mostly one-sided from the start (a man is talking), a women tries to insert her viewpoint only to be told that 'no, that's not the way it is' or even better, the man just keeps talking over her. He dominates the conversation and criticizes any attempt on the woman's part to contribute to it. You might think this happens mostly among older couples, but no, that's not the case. I've seen it in younger couples as well, where the women concede to the men's behavior rather than challenge it. If women have an opinion about what might be wrong with a car/plumbing/stove/oven/electrical gadget, their opinion is overlooked or pushed to the side in favor of men's opinions about what might be wrong. It also can happen with certain male doctors, those stuffed-shirt types who think they are high and mighty; the ones who dismiss you before you've even had a chance to make a statement or express your opinion. They know best. Achtung. Dismissed. Or what about those men who write emails with no greeting or no signature, just an order 'barked out' in an email, like the one I got recently from a man who shall remain unnamed, who wanted me to send him data files he could open easily. This is what he wrote: 'Send me attachments that I can open without any problems'. No 'hello', no signature, no 'I'm sorry to bother you but I'm having problems opening the files that were sent to both of us'. These rude emails are the kinds of emails I got on a routine basis from a former boss who never addressed me by name. Achtung. Do as I say. Dismissed. How much intelligence would it take for these men to figure out that basic courtesy and respect would go a long way toward dealing with and getting results from the women from whom they want/need something?
Dissing is one of the main reasons I let my husband handle all of the problems relating to car engines, oven repair, instrument repair, etc. Whenever I have tried to explain a problem that has arisen to a repairman, I've been pushed aside or ignored by the men involved. When my husband takes over, they listen. Simple as that. Maybe repairmen feel more comfortable talking to men. I don't know. It happened early on in my career as well; when I called a major flow cytometry company for service and explained the problem, only to be told that I should check to make sure the instrument was plugged in. Achtung. Dismissed. What I knew then and know now is that I didn't and don't like being treated this way. But protests are often to no avail. The same company blamed the women in my department who were running the instrument for its failing to work; but one of the service engineers they sent out (a man) told me the truth--that the company had marketed a half-assed product that didn't work optimally. So not all men diss women. When my husband looked at the instrument and concluded that it didn't work, just as we women had, the company took the problem seriously. So if my husband complains that he has to handle all of these things, I say, yes you do, because they don't listen to me. Simple as that.
Two years ago there was a renovation of the bathroom in the apartment above us. The couple involved had hired a Norwegian firm to do the work, but this firm employed foreign workers who could not speak Norwegian and who had a rather outdated view of women to put it mildly. I have no problem with foreign workers generally, but I do have a problem with them when they cannot speak the language of the country in which they are working and when they diss women. These workers fit that bill. I called them the Neanderthals after I had dealings with them; they behaved crudely and were hired simply to do a wrecking job, in this case, smashing a concrete floor to bits. The problem was that when they did that, all of the small bits rained down into our bathroom that was directly below the one being renovated. When I went up to talk to the workers about my concerns that something was wrong, they and their leader did not take what I said seriously; the head Neanderthal was particularly rude and 'in my face'. Achtung. Dismissed. After that I called them the Neanderthals. When I spoke to the woman whose bathroom was being renovated, she told me that she had problems talking to them and she let her husband deal with them. What a great world we live in. What happens to women without men in their lives? Do they get pushed around all the time and get ripped off? Update, two years later; as I predicted, there are problems with the bathroom upstairs. The job that was done at that time by these workers was shoddy and there is now a mold problem in the floor tiles. Which means that the tiles need to be taken up, which means more hammering and smashing and removal of the smashed pieces. Which means more noise and bother for God knows how long. What about if my concerns had been taken seriously two years ago, when I wondered if these Neanderthals really knew what they were doing? It might have been possible to get rid of them then or to have changed to another bathroom renovation company (they're a dime a dozen in this country now). Because obviously they didn't know what they were doing. And in my experience it's always the case that when you ask men who really don't know what they are doing about what they are doing, they get angry and dismiss you as a know-nothing woman. So here we are two years later; I only hope that the mold hasn't made its way all the way through the concrete floor such that it ends up in our bathroom ceiling at one point. What could have been a minor problem has now become a big problem all because one Neanderthal controlled the show and refused to communicate with two women who expressed some concerns about the work he and his team were doing. He would never have admitted he was wrong. I blame him and his team of Neanderthals, but mostly I blame the Norwegian firm that outsources these jobs to illiterate foreigners in order to save money. You can bet that I will make quite a stink if it turns out that our bathroom ceiling is teeming with mold.
And don't get me started about my former workplace. Three of the men in my former department had very low opinions of women; I know for a fact that they had pretty much decided among them that they did not want to hire women for career development positions when they could hire men instead. Why? Because women got pregnant and disappeared for a year or more on maternity leave. You ask again, does this really happen in 2022? Yes, I'm sorry to say that it does. These men were also experts at ignoring women in other ways, regardless of their age. The only women they didn't ignore were the young ones who were pretty and with whom they could flirt. So those young women had some advantage, but not much in the final analysis, not once they got pregnant or moved up on the career ladder and suddenly posed a bit of a threat to these men. Because that's when men get testy and start to diss women, when they feel threatened. God forbid a woman should be smarter than they are, or question what they do or how they do it. Crisis. Achtung. Dismissed. Such men just have to bring those women down, and my former workplace allowed/condoned that behavior by never confronting these men about their Neanderthal behavior.
The older I get, the less interested I am in conceding to this behavior. I don't want to be nice anymore or ignore the behavior or turn the other cheek. I will call out men who diss women and who generally behave badly. I'm tired of the bullshit they dish out. In the cases where I have been dissed by men, nine times out of ten I was right about a particular problem. But I'll never get the credit for being right. If women experience enough of this treatment, they become disempowered and that is not good for them or for men. You can dismiss me or make light of this problem, I really don't care, because I hope there is a special place in hell for Neanderthal men and for the women who support them, because they deserve to exist there for eternity.
