I'll start off by saying that at times I can come off as cold or social awkward in general. But, I'm not going to talk about my lack of social skills, I'm going to talk about how I sometimes can't use the few social skills I have when I'm gaming or even in class, because I'm a girl.
I'll start when I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends at one of their houses. There were about 11 people in my campaign, and it made for some chaotic moments, and I, being the only one noticing that we had gotten distracted, (besides the DM, but he never did anything about the chaos), would try to get us back on track.So I would try to quiet the group politely, but that never worked. So I resorted to one thing, yelling at the top of my lungs "SHUT UP!" And it was effective, the room went silent after that and we continued playing. And I know they called me a bitch behind my back, because I kept trying to keep the game going and we could barely play more than five minutes at a time. And I heard them too.
After a while, I got tired of policing 10 boys at a time, and would rarely do it. My newly acquired boyfriend at the time did support me in my yelling for order. But him and the DM were the only ones. Looking back at it, I would bet that if anyone else in the group yelled at them to shut up, they wouldn't have said anything bad about him. But because I was a girl, I was being bitchy.
Fast forward a few months, I'm in my Government class and my teacher is the worst teacher ever. She's not cruel, she's not overly nice, she's lazy and sarcastic. I turn in a quarter of my work in that class and I have an A because she doesn't want to grade most of the busy work she hands out. I played through most of Pokemon Soul Silver in that class, and not in secret, right on the desk. I'm not alone in thinking that there's something wrong about the fact that I'm acing a class that I know nothing about while playing Pokemon. But my friends in that class and myself were scared to say anything. Not because we were girls, although she did make fun of me for being a feminist, but because we were out numbered by the people who loved her class for exactly what we found wrong about it. One girl was brave enough to call the teacher on her crap, and the teacher made fun of her in front of the whole class. She switched classes before the teacher did her public humiliation, but the idea stuck in my head that if I tried to make things right, even if it was common sense, I shouldn't speak up, I would be mocked for it.
My Women's lit class was vaguely similar in the way of challenging the girls who thought makeup was empowering, but I was still vocal in that class because of, well why is it that I was more vocal in that class? Was it because I knew they already thought I was a bitch, so its not like they had anything else I could be called? Was it because I wasn't challenged by an authority figure in my thoughts that were logical? Was it because of the number of guys in the class was so low, and they didn't care anyway? I don't know, but something about that class did make me not fear to stand up for myself.
Today, my friend wanted to give another friend an unfair advantage in a game, and even though both my boyfriend and I both find it unfair, I couldn't bring myself to speak up, because even if I phrase it exactly the way he does, it will probably come of as bitchy with me saying it, versus a guy saying it. Is this not how I should act? Probably, but unfortunately, most girls are conditioned to not speak up for some of the things that matter to us. Whether it be civil rights, or just having a fair game.
