Reverse sexism

It isn’t a thing, you know.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, given my profession. I’m a woman plasterer in a sea of tradesmen who look at me and ask if I need a hand carrying the bags of plaster around. I usually just heave the 25kg bag onto my shoulder and wander off going ‘No, thanks, I got it.’ Some simply watch to see if I’ll fail, and look disappointed when I lift the bags without much difficulty, and wander off into the house I’m working on. Many are surprised that a women would want to be a plasterer. The more obnoxious ones have been asked the question in response: “Would you have asked that if I’d been a man?” to which I generally get referred to as an uppity feminist (no they don’t use those words. Yes, the word they use has four letters and begins with a ‘c’).

But yes, I am an ‘uppity feminist’, and quite happily so.

When it comes to my clients, the majority so far have been women. Old, young, married, lesbian, or any other option you care to name,  it doesn’t matter – I seem to overwhelmingly have female/not-male clients requesting my work. I’ve spoken to people about this, and asked them why they chose me (other than the good pricing and recommendations from other clients, obviously!) and it seems that it comes down to trust.

Women trust women. Women in this business are seen as more reliable, more trustworthy, less likely to mess up the job, more likely to communicate effectively and so on. It’s been put to me (mostly by men) that this is reverse sexism.

It’s not. Reverse sexism doesn’t exist, because quite a large portion of men (in this country, at least) have a disproportionate amount of power.

Yes, things are slowly becoming more equal and that’s fantastic – I hope I live long enough to see true equality for everyone regardless of their status within society!

I do have a point by the way!

When you get down to it, reverse sexism can’t exist. People who aren’t men do not have enough power in their voice to be able to be sexist. We cannot oppress men (specifically the white men who have the majority of the power) because we’re not heard, and laws are made to suit men more than anyone else on the planet.

Let me say that again for you:

We simply do not have enough power to oppress you.

We can of course be horrible specimens of humanity, but we’re societally incapable of oppressing (the vast majority of white) men. Until we’re governed by people who feel that women should have more of a say in how the country’s run, until the laws work for everyone (I am including things like custody, paternity etc in this because those are unfair laws which unfairly favour women), until I am no longer called a c***, or told I should stop being angry about people who aren’t men being given the shitty end of the stick, I’ll continue to be an uppity feminist plasterer who just wants to do a good job without it being thought somehow different, special, weird, that I’m working in a trade whilst being a white woman.