As one of the few women posters on this board, it sure feels like it. The amount of putrid sexism we have to wade through on a daily basis is astounding.
You'd think Tennis Warehouse would want to make this forum a friendlier place for female customers, since we women probably make up the bulk of their sales.
It's also amazing that the men on here who are NOT sexist pigs let all kinds of filthy or degrading comments about women go by without objection, while there are still a few posters who do speak out against racism and homophobia on the boards. It actually makes it look like all the men on here *are* sexist pigs, when logic and statistics indicate that this must not be true.
Are women the last group that it's OK to oppress and demean? Around here you'd certainly think so.
There's no sexism here, woman! Now go in the kitchen and make us sandwiches! [/sarc]
OK, I'm not serious with that--trust me. (If I were, I know plenty of girls here at college who would have murdered me by now.) The thing that we men have to remember--and remember well--is that we *don't* know what it's like to be women in 21st century America (or the rest of the world, for that matter). The point of that
very bad joke was that people who aren't sexist still might act like complete ****es to women without realizing it--and make similar jokes.
We have a lot of insults like "You throw like a girl", but don't understand the harms that those statements have. There are others which don't even lower the expectations for women in sporing--just the expectations for women in their character. If you're afraid to do something, you're "acting like a girl"--synonymous here with being a wuss.
We objectify women, consider them sexual objects, and laugh at them for being strumpets. If a woman and a man each sleeps with the same number of partners as the other, the first is a *****, the second, a player. (I'm not encouraging sexual infidelity, and I think both are equally wrong; my point is the double standard here.)
Women have lower average wages for the same amount of work. They are based less on potential, and more on achievements, than men. Women are less frequently at the top of their fields or at the top of the job force. They are a minority in politics.
I don't take the double standards or sexism well in reality. In high school (less so in college; I tend to not be in any actually sexist situations), I would constantly deride my classmates for sexist remarks, as well as homophobic and racist remarks (if they were lighthearted jokes, it was a different story; but boys at an all-boys Catholic school are less likely to make lighthearted jokes than I would have liked).
The internet, though, is different. There exists some concept that this is a "man's" thing (as if any gender has greater right to the internet than another). There is a joke about some Rule 37 or something: "There are no women on the internet." Like drinking beer while watching football, culture dictates (and I'm not saying it's right to do so) that the internet is a man's dominion.
So, why don't people like myself go around haranguing those who make sexist remarks? (For the record, I am about as active on the racist and homophobic fronts, too.) Unless the comment is directly toward me or someone else, there is generally no need to get in. It's a waste of time Haters gonna hate. Don't feed the trolls. Bigots will be bigots, and there's not much you or I can do to breath reason into a stone man.
Just ignore (block if you have to) the sexist morons. If someone comments to you or another in a fashion that is extremely insulting and uncalled for, then you respond. Otherwise, don't feed the trolls.