Since I'm seeing lots of MyTakes on sexism as a result of International Women's Day, I thought I'd attempt my own. As I see it, the ultimate end to sexism requires unity and friendship between the opposite sexes.
Background
As a brief background, I'm a rather odd person in that I'm mixed (Japanese/white American) and also bounced between the United States, Japan, and Singapore throughout my youth. Any cultural identity I have is somewhat ill-defined, and potentially a bastardization of all three cultures. I observed a lot of tendencies among these three cultures.
Sexism
All three of these cultures face their share of gender inequality and a history of sexism. All three are far, far from perfect in this regard.
Nevertheless, among these three, I would have to say the United States is the very worst. This might seem counter-intuitive since the United States has such a great constitution focused on equality and human rights.
What I'm talking about is daily kinds of discrimination and hostility among the opposite sexes, from catcalling to women being paranoid that every guy who greets them is after their body, to females being excluded and made fun of in a team environment at a workplace or school simply on account that they are female.
Friendship
There's a simple reason for why I believe this is a much greater problem in the United States than these other two countries:
Men and women, and boys and girls, aren't often close friends in the United States.
This is the biggest problem as I see it. If we contrast this to Japan, for example, the average male has his fair share of both close male and female friends. The same naturally applies towards the average female.
This applies even from an early age. It's not uncommon to find close friends of the opposite sex who have been friends since childhood. Furthermore, there are no romantic feelings there. The male will find his own girlfriends, the female will find her own boyfriends. This isn't an exceptional case, this is the norm.
This applies, to some degree as well, to Singaporeans (though perhaps not as much as Japanese people).
The idea of males and females being close friends in this way actually seems preposterous to some Americans. I've described this and they often looked at me in disbelief, believing that there's no way a male and female could be close to each other unless one or both were completely unattractive to each other.
It became easy to understand this mindset once I lived in the United States as it became obvious that males and females aren't typically close friends there. I also started to believe, for a time, that males and females typically could not possibly be close friends.
Cooties
"Cooties", as I see it, are one of the key ingredients behind gender discrimination. I did not even know what they were originally when I started in Japan until I set foot in the United States.
Originally in Japan, like many males, I had both male and female friends. To my birthday parties, I invited both my share of males and females. When we hung out after school, I hung out with both males and females.
When I went to the United States, I tried to befriend girls in school only for my male friends to say, "Stop talking to the girls!" I asked why not, and the response was that "girls have cooties!" What are cooties? Is there a cure? Why don't our parents seem to suffer any symptoms?
I wanted to ask these types of questions but simply caved into the social pressure. I avoided interacting with and befriending females for the most part. Over time I started to buy into more and more of what the boys, and even grown men, said about girls. I started to discriminate against females myself to some degree, seeing them as an alien species.
This all continued until puberty or so, when suddenly the males started showing interest in females. Yet it was purely in terms of sexual and romantic interest. There was still a very predominant absence of ordinary and friendly interaction between males and females.
The Rift
The result of this social phenomena in the states leads to this massive rift between the opposite sexes.
In the U.S., I saw all kinds of things that pissed me off as a male, like women writing all kinds of nonsense about men in magazines as though they're authorities on male behavior.
In retrospect I saw men doing the same thing, saying and writing all kinds of shit about women as though they're authorities on female behavior.
This just breeds misunderstanding after misunderstanding between the opposite sexes, and the misunderstanding is obviously going to be there when there's a massive rift that's segregating the two sexes and preventing them from developing mutual understanding. They're seeing each other like alien species, oversimplifying and stereotyping like crazy.
Now take this giant misunderstanding and imagine the case where a female joins a male-dominated team (academically or at work). She's obviously going to be discriminated in some way for the sole basis that the men in this team are going to see her as this alien creature. The same would naturally be expected if a male joins a predominantly female team. He's going to be perceived as some alien creature.
Sexual Objectification
"Sexual objectification", as I see it, is one of the biggest red herrings when it comes to gender discrimination. It's just another case of women misunderstanding male behavior as I see it while claiming authority on the subject.
As a red-blooded male, I get turned on by seeing some sexy female ass on a billboard or a scantily-dressed girl twerking in a music video. People working in the media understand this demand and the demand is not going to go away. It's simple supply and demand, and expecting that demand (and therefore supply) to go away is largely futile in today's society. It's a hopeless battle.
Seeing some sexy ass on a billboard is not going to suddenly make me see all my close female friends as sex objects or treat a female colleague as one.
Discrimination Example
I remember a case of clear discrimination against females. It was in one of my early jobs in the United States as a software engineer. Our team consisted predominantly of males except one female engineer.
The males treated her like an outcast. They weren't hostile to her directly, but they did not make her feel like she belonged in the group and talked behind her back. They made her feel like an outsider.
I tried to breach that rift by trying to welcome her and make her feel like a part of the group, but it was largely an exercise in futility. The rest of the males in the group saw her as an alien creature. She wasn't "one of us boys."
This is the exact same pattern of behavior I saw in the playground in the U.S. when the boys were discouraging me from interacting with girls on the account that they had "cooties".
It wasn't the result of seeing her as a "sex object". If that were the case, the males would have been trying to hook up with her. She wasn't even considered attractive among our group as far as I could tell.
It was the result of seeing her as an outsider. It was the result of xenophobia, and any time we have a case of xenophobia where one group of people shuns another, it's almost always the result of failures between these groups to interact with each other throughout their upbringing.
The key to fighting against xenophobia is unity. The key to fueling it is segregation. I have never seen a place where males and females segregated from each other as voluntarily as the United States, reducing their interactions to a predominantly sexual and romantic form of interaction.
Unity
If we want to fight against discrimination, we must unite the opposite sexes and starting as early as possible.
My suggestion to Americans is to start off eliminating this absurd notion of "cooties". Encourage boys and girls to start interacting with each other more from an early age. Girls and boys can cooperate with each other, compete against each other, and realize that they aren't a threat to each other.
For the males out there, try befriending more females closely. For the females out there, try befriending more males closely. Make close friends, have sex if you want, have fun, but most importantly, communicate and interact with each other.
Let's build mutual understanding. Let's stop looking at each other as alien species, as those who aren't our "own kind". As we develop and refine that mutual understanding, perhaps there's some hope for a fairer society.
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