@microaggressions / www.microaggressions.com
I am an Asian woman. It's Halloween today and I walked by a white woman dressed as a geisha, with her face painted and hair darkened. We made and held eye contact for a few seconds, and I think she looked embarrassed. It made me feel me angrier somehow. If it was so easy for her to recognize that this was an embarrassing thing to do, why did she still do it?
Every summer or Christmas I come home from college to see my family, no one ever asks me about classes, only if I have a boyfriend yet. The summer I got my first girlfriend and was public on facebook about it, all of the questions have stopped about my relationship and the subject is always changed to my degree and my classes and where I'm working.
When I'm meeting my partner's extended family for the first time, his rather well-off aunt latches onto the fact that I might be from a different socio-economic background and takes the opportunity to grill me about every life detail: who are my parents; what they did for work; what sort of house I lived in as a child; where I attended college...you get the idea. Much to her chagrin, I reveal that I didn't go to college and did in fact grow up poor in rural America. Another family member has to tell her to leave me alone.
A friend and I are talking about what it would be like if I got dreads. I tell him there's no way my parents would let me have them. In response he says, "They'd probably be glad you're finally doing something black!" How the hell is some South Asian kid going to tell me what it is to be black? It's not the first time someone had the gall to presume they knew more about my race than me just because I'm not down with the latest rap music and get good grades, either.
I am a 62-year-old female associate professor who has been teaching with technology at a state university since 2002. Most young people under 25 working retail check-out think I need them to explain how to use the card-reader screen.
My world history teacher, mocking students for living in a generally wealthy town.
I am talking to the owner of a towing business. He says, "Oh, the phone companies are just raping me..." I am a survivor of rape and sexual assault. I email him later to ask him to consider changing his language - that using a term of violence so casually contributes to a climate of seeing rape as "no big deal." He said he's not politically correct and that I should learn self-defense. He tells me to "Grow up, kiddo." Then he complains that I didn't consider his feelings when I told him what had happened to me.
A female resident to me during my annual gynecological exam when I was in my early 30s. Macro fail for assuming every woman wants to get married and have kids. Smaller fail for her clueless remark just a few months after my SECOND date rape.
The prefect coordinator at my high school when she catches sight of my braids (which looked bomb, might I add!!!), before instructing me to tie it back before my photos. She goes on to explain, as though it should be obvious, that as a representative of the school I have a responsibility to uphold a certain image. She later complains about my "stupid braids" to the school and vice captain. btw, this teacher is also head of wellbeing.
A male cop in who walked into my office, speaking to me, a woman.
Kids in middle school to me.
When my father (who is Mexican) picks me up from school, the people in the office assumes he is the gardener or custodian. The yard duties are also not as kind to him like how they treat the white parents.
My supervisor at a new job, about my name. I had frequently repeated my name in order for coworkers & supervisors to learn it.
In Houston, there is a nasty, classist habit of deliberately mispronouncing Spanish-language names and words. I used to hear people who self-defined as "upper class" mispronounce "San Felipe" (a street) as "Sen Flippy", mispronounce the names of Latino/as to their face, and pretend in Mexican restaurants to not know how to pronounce the items the menu (really? they're Texas-born adults and they can't say "enchiladas"?).
A man while I was discussing politics with a group of people.
On multiple occasions, when I tell people about how I'm secular, but still culturally Jewish, they tell me, "You can't be culturally Jewish, it's a religion." Yes, please dictate to me my own cultural and religious experiences. One man once told me, when I explained my situation, "Oh, then I don't consider you Jewish. You're an atheist." When I told him, "You can't tell me what I am or am not," he said to me "I just did."
My last semester, while working on my associates, some of the guys in my psychology class were jeering about how gays were disgusting. I instantaneously felt uncomfortable. When I asked them if their opinion of me would change if I was openly gay, two of the boys just laughed. They said it was impossible, that lesbians had a certain look, that someone 'like me' apparently wasn't able to be gay just because I was polite and had long hair. They said that I couldn't be anything other than straight as if it was their right to decide. One of them said, 'If she was a lesbian, wouldn't it be hot, though?' I dropped the class shortly afterward. To this day, I have never felt more objectified.
When I was going through puberty, I had a major growth spurt that left me with stretch marks. I was embarrassed about them at the time and complained about them at home. My stepmom would always ask if they were from gaining weight, as though I, a preteen who was a perfectly healthy weight, had suddenly gotten fat. She also tried to get me into a fairly toxic diet culture because she thought I was fat.
I have OCD. The level of anxiety and depression involved, as well as the fact that I don't learn in the same way as many neurotypical people, makes it very difficult for me to function in the workplace. Invariably, when I explain to people that the reason for my behavior is that I have OCD, their response is, "Oh, I'm like that too." What they mean is that they're moderately nit picky, not that they suffer from a fairly debilitating mental illness.
