i haz a gender
Aug. 10th, 2008 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxI've been struggling for a couple of weeks to put into words how weird it is to work with all dudes suddenly. Most of them claim to not notice that they're in a room full of dudes, for one [I can understand that - without someone pointing it out, there are many ways I wouldn't notice my own majority/privilegedness.], although I suspect from their initial circumspection and silence that they are lying.
It's weird in a surprisingly pleasant way, though. The lack of other women coincides with a general absence of gender-role-play. That thing mixed-gender groups (at least mixed-gender white people groups, which is where I've seen it) do where they divide along gender roles, and there's supposed to be some kind of kinship with your own gender... not happening here. I'm not reminded of any perceived affiliation with All Women Everywhere, so in some ways my network affiliation seems more pure: I am primarily affiliated with the team, the project, the work. It's as if gender doesn't exist in this bubble of the team. It's. I mean. It's strange. It's as if I've inherited that whole male-privilege thing.
By the way. No one has said anything that directly offended me in any way; it occurs to me that more often than not it's been the women at work who've managed to push my fat queer feminist liberal buttons. Men, if anything, are curious about those things. Which. Well, duh.
Stay tuned for: 1000 ways in which I am culturally insensitive and refuse to let my Indian peeps call me "ma'am" and "boss". I'm not kidding. My metaphors and mannerisms are so influenced by American popular culture that I have to work harder to be understood (that is, to not be a jackass). Meanwhile, the guys are accustomed to a more hierarchical model in which I am the boss, so they won't admit that they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
It's weird in a surprisingly pleasant way, though. The lack of other women coincides with a general absence of gender-role-play. That thing mixed-gender groups (at least mixed-gender white people groups, which is where I've seen it) do where they divide along gender roles, and there's supposed to be some kind of kinship with your own gender... not happening here. I'm not reminded of any perceived affiliation with All Women Everywhere, so in some ways my network affiliation seems more pure: I am primarily affiliated with the team, the project, the work. It's as if gender doesn't exist in this bubble of the team. It's. I mean. It's strange. It's as if I've inherited that whole male-privilege thing.
By the way. No one has said anything that directly offended me in any way; it occurs to me that more often than not it's been the women at work who've managed to push my fat queer feminist liberal buttons. Men, if anything, are curious about those things. Which. Well, duh.
Stay tuned for: 1000 ways in which I am culturally insensitive and refuse to let my Indian peeps call me "ma'am" and "boss". I'm not kidding. My metaphors and mannerisms are so influenced by American popular culture that I have to work harder to be understood (that is, to not be a jackass). Meanwhile, the guys are accustomed to a more hierarchical model in which I am the boss, so they won't admit that they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
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Gender at work
Date: 2008-08-11 11:35 am (UTC)For years I was the only male in my office and I enjoyed it, while everyone was in their cubical the women forgot that there was a man around and I learned a lot from over heard conversations about stuff.
In fact most of the tensions in office was from issues like the way some women dressed, their breast size, their behavior (flirts outside of the office) and etc. Funny that I never heard any male bashing by my co-workers or had any negativity projected on me from the women's experiences with other men.
Now I am in another department doing budgets in a all male facility for recovering male drug addicts and it is the men that have the issues with each other. We had one female counselor who was experiencing the freedom of being the only one of her gender in the office. She left for personal reasons, but still stops by to visit.