Time to speak up
Those who choose to embarrass others deserve to be told off.
I'M generally not easy to anger. But once in a while, when I least expect it, I'll bump into someone who is so unreasonable that I imagine myself vapourising him/her on the spot.
For example, I can still remember the first time I encountered blatant sexism in Malaysia. At the time, I was standing at the front of a checkout queue in a Penang minimarket when the electricity suddenly went off.
Unperturbed, the proprietor nonchalantly retrieved a calculator from beneath the cash register and announced that he would add up the cost of my purchases manually.
"It will only take a little longer than usual," he said, smiling apologetically.
Just then, the man who had been standing behind me stepped in front of me and placed his basket of purchases on the counter ahead of mine.
"I have to work," he said to the proprietor. "Do mine first!" He then looked at me in a way that told me exactly where he thought my place was: somewhere behind him.
Initially, I was so taken aback by his audacity that all I could do was stare at him mutely. Then I felt the anger slowly building in my chest. How dare he think his work more important than mine based on nothing more than my gender.
"Excuse me," I said, feeling the blood rushing to my cheeks, "I was ..."
However, before I could finish, the proprietor's wife had picked up my basket and was indicating that I should follow her to a small desk on the other side of the mini market.
"You have to ignore some people," she said, as she retrieved an old calculator from a drawer and began adding up my purchases.
I didn't want to cause a fuss, so I silently seethed out of the shop and all the way home.
That was about thirty years ago, and at the time I strongly believed that no man in my native Scotland would have treated me in such a dismissive manner and gotten away with it.
However, just last week in the UK, I was proven wrong when I encountered sexist behaviour on a scale that made me wonder how far my own country had really come.
At the time, I was making a tour of a coal mining museum with a young English woman and her husband and several other men. As the tour progressed, the sexist remarks spewing out of the mouth of our guide, a retired coal miner, became more and more daring.
At one stage, he talked about his wife waiting for him at home. "Tonight, she'll be attending a yoga class, doing the sort of things that women like to do," he said, staring at the young woman in a somewhat leering manner.
"You wouldn't catch us blokes doing something as daft as yoga," he continued, looking at the four men in the group for confirmation.
No one said anything. But I could have happily vapourised him on the spot.
A short while later, our guide began talking about the time when it became illegal for women to work down the mine. "Women were replaced by pit ponies," he said. "And do you know what that meant?"
No one answered. But it occurred to me that he was going to say something like, "We just replaced one nag with another nag."
Instead he said, "When we told the ponies what they should do, they didn't answer back."
Again, no one said anything.
A few minutes later, he began telling us that he worked part time as a Santa Claus over the festive season.
"The children love me," he said. "They love to sit on my knee and tell me what they want for Christmas."
He then turned to the young woman in our group and said, "You can sit on my knee anytime and tell me what you want from Santa Claus."
Yet again, no one said anything. The young woman just looked at the ground in embarrassment, while her husband stared ahead as if nothing had happened.
I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks again. How was it possible that a man could behave like that and get away with it? Why didn't the woman tell him that his behaviour was inappropriate and improper? Why did all of us keep quiet?
That incident has made me wonder how far we've really come in our pursuit of an equal society? Most of the men I know, both in Malaysia and in my native Scotland, treat women with respect, but there are still pockets of people exhibiting sexist behaviour and getting away with it.
As long as we keep quiet, things will never change.
Check out Mary on Facebook at facebook.com/mary.schneider.writer. Reader response can be directed to star2@thestar.com.my.
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