Personal background: I strongly feel just about everyone grows up and has something shitty about them. I know growing up I definitely thought and said some less-than-ideal jokes about women, minorities, etc. And while some of that was the proverbial ‘the times’, and some was growing up in a sheltered hyper Christian southern American conservative situation, I regret my actions and am happy I grew past that. And I do think people, especially younger, can grow past their shittiness, especially with the help of others, which was true for me too… When I got my first W2 job a superior I looked up to helped mold me into a better person by calling me out on things and modeling a better behavior.
Current situation: I’m now the supervisor position, have been for a decade (retail is a trap) and I’ve taken that to heart, calling out jokes that aren’t funny, etc. But recently we hired a new kid who acts really incel-ish, and who apparently has attached himself to me instantly. I’ve had moderate success so far just telling him his ‘lol women dumb’ jokes aren’t funny, and modeling how working with women is… normal? Anyways, I don’t wanna screw this up so do y’all have any suggestions for me to help keep him from going down an unfortunate path? I know at the end of the day I’m not responsible for others’ routes in life, but I feel we should all do our parts.
Just watched that Beau’s video, and it’s pretty good, in a non-preachy way. He only puts up some generic examples of what women were sold on in the 18th century, and how men are being sold on the same kind of stuff in the 21st century, to end with the real truth: anyone telling you how to be a man/woman, is just trying to sell you stuff. Plus a call to think by yourself.
Related to that, I like the history of high heels: from something strictly practical, to a gender-neutral status symbol of non-working classes, to a patriarchal monarchy status symbol, back to a general status symbol with an extra twist of marking women as unable to do any work, to a sexualizing split into an extremely unpractical version for women and a practical looking version for men, with a late addition of a much more practical version for women while still retaining some of the sexualization… all the time being bad for the wearer’s health, with much healthier modern alternatives for the strictly practical uses.