My neighbor was being sexist earlier and it was frustrating.
He asked me what I was doing with my life now, which is a perfectly reasonable question. So I told him that I just graduated with a degree in biology, am currently an MFA student in writing. Staying with my mom for a while.
He said he “doesn’t read female writers” but that he thought it was “cute” that I was attempting such a task. He said he doesn’t usually care for the “soft” topics women write about, like motherhood and children.
He said more stuff but it was all useless. I felt invalid and dumb. I dismissed him as quickly as I could.
Several hours later, when I regained the ability to talk like a normal person, I told my mom this because damn. That kind of hurt. She replied, “You should have asked him if he could even read.” She was only slightly kidding. Apparently he’s illiterate. He hasn’t wanted to go to any classes because brown, yellow, and black people are there.
What a f*cking ignorant idiot.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened, either. His father once tried to hire me to do his dishes for him, after he chased his wife out of their yard with a rifle. Said I was a nice age. That man’s other son once told me I couldn’t go tell my little brother that dinner was ready because women weren’t allowed in his garage. One time they called the f*cking police on me because I had Brandi’s mom help us with weedeating and he assumed she was a criminal because she was a woman weedeating (literally what he said to the cops). Once they parked in the road and when I mentioned it, they told me I didn’t know how traffic REALLY works, as a woman. Once, the youngest son pointed at my mom and asked her sexist husband, “Where do I get me a female?” They’re just an incredibly unbelievable family.
Luckily karma struck Larry. He has a black granddaughter now and his dog is gay af.
I hope they feel like idiots when I get my PhD in either Huntington’s or Zika and dengue research, both of which I have experience in. And they don’t. And won’t. Unless they drop that senseless attitude.
Sorry, I needed to vent that. Thanks, y’all, for not being sexist. <3 It hurts to be invalidated for something so stupid. Too bad I’m not black, because then he wouldn’t have talked to me at all. (Why are they so stupid?)
Brandi’s mom was Native American and hated black people. I wanted to ask her for years if she’d still have excepted my help moving if I were black. Brandi warned me not to ask her. Her mom has several assault charges related to questions like that, apparently.