Delusions of Gender

A fine book which dives deep into the prevalent social attitude of creating gender differences and how difficult it becomes to disassociate oneself from the gendered identity. The more I think about gender, more and more I become entangled into this weird loop of seeing every social thing in a different light.

Those seemingly-innocent “bro” comments between male friends, saying that the new hire in the team is a “diverse candidate”, claiming “they don't have the balls to do it” as if two-round-eggs-in-a-sac somehow magically makes you superior to everyone else - all of these reinforce the gender stereotypes. Cordelia discusses at length about all the subtle cues that we don't even notice but which has a pretty significant impact on how we treat others. It's amazing how difficult it has become in today's world to not discriminate sexually, more so especially for a parent to bring up their children in a gender-neutral way.

It's all about the mindset, but this benign word is the most difficult to change. I'm not claiming myself to be immune either. I can't count how many times I've said something really stupid when discussing something with my girlfriend, and it's only when she objects on my choice of words that I pause and reflect on how wrong it was. Reading this book was one baby step towards consciously trying to change that status quo, and I'd recommend doing this to everyone else as well.