Sexism has been a rampart part of many cultures I have studied. It doesn't seem to matter what time period, there is always some form of sexism somewhere. As a passive and mostly tuned out radio listener I browsed radio stations for examples of sexist language. The radio didn't fail me. A car commercial came on saying, "Hey guys, come on down..." which is classified as sexist. The "Hey guys" section is only addressing men when women also buy cars. The people who wrote the commercial just cut half of their audience out. They should have done the commercial by starting with "Hey everyone..." which would eliminate the sexism.
One thing I learned this week is the concept of ageism. I always knew that yelling age specific insults at the elderly would be considered bad. But it never crossed my mind that saying, "She is still vigorous at 70." is ageist. I always thought it more of a compliment, but apparently it is a very subtle insult to the elderly.
This was something I found interesting as well. What could be a compliment for one person could be a veiled insult to everyone else. We really do have to be very careful with our words!
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