But then I’d see men in TV shows, movies, and sometimes real life unabashedly ogle or make sexualizing remarks about women, sometimes even going so far as to suggest that they were “only good for one thing.” I was also routinely told that “women and men are equals” and “girls can do anything boys can do.”īut then, if a girl outdid me in a particular task or, even worse, was picked before me for teams in gym class, the other kids would all laugh. Growing up as a young child in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s, I was explicitly and repeatedly taught to respect girls and women. Male socialization is a mess of mixed messages.
