Dudes, you’re all, like, so ignorant and sexist, like

So to preface, I greatly dislike public speaking. This is after acting in several plays, after taking a high school creative writing class all about class presentations, and after being one of the most talkative people in my classes last year (for the most part). The process freaks me out. The only reason I was able to do Vagina Monologues these past two years was because of all the amazing energy generated by my castmates. And Sleater-Kinney’s song ‘Male Model,’ which is my pumping-up music.
So you can imagine my dislike of the fact that Speech is a core requirement here. And you can imagine why I’d put off until my junior year what is usually done as a fish.
Mmm.

So today I go to class and after I walk in and sit down, these five fish dudes come in and pretty much surround me. And they are loud, and obnoxious. Baggy shirts, baseball caps, cargo shorts. My professor walks in, and she’s this lady who I actually know a little bit. She’s performed some of the older woman parts in V-Mons. So I know she’s an actress and a feminist and generally awesome and brilliant, and I didn’t know she was even teaching the class, as when I signed up there was a completely different name attached to it. But I figure I lucked out.
She goes around the room, gets peoples’ names, the dudes are being obnoxious, hurr-hurr-hurr-ing at everything she says. Their own names were fucking hilarious to them, as if they hadn’t been living with them for over eighteen years. The fact that one of them was from Georgia was hilarious, as if he hadn’t spent his entire life being from Georgia, and that therefore the idea of coming from such a strange place was ridiculous.
I’m scribbling away in my notebook in a mixture of German and my invented language about what idiots they are throughout this, by the way, but that’s not important.
So my professor passes out an article from the New York Times all about how people shouldn’t use the word ‘like’ (as in the way I used it in that there title) during job interviews. And we’re all asked to read it and discuss it with people around us. So I discuss it with the girl sitting behind me, and the seemingly one nice dude in the entire class. And we come to the conclusion that ‘like’ is the word used by the ‘stereotypical dumb blond’ in media representations to make her sound dumb.
And so one of the Loud Guys decides that when it goes to class discussion, it is time to say, “I don’t want to be sexist or anything [um, giant red flag there dude, would you really preface your argument that way if you didn’t know it was sexist?], but I think girls use ‘like’ a lot more than guys, and it makes them sound less smart.”
So then Supposedly Singular Nice Boy chimes in with our argument as to the ‘dumb blond stereotype,’ and Loud Guy says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” pretending, of course, that SSNB just called all blond women dumb, when in fact, he didn’t, he just brought up the stereotype that they are. And he continues to be utterly obtuse, and the other Loud Guys are chuckling again, until SSNB caves and says,
“Well, I didn’t say it, she did.” She being me.
So then time for me to fight. And I argue that no, the usage of ‘like’ is not gendered, I’ve seen just as many dudes use it as girls (and in fact SSNB used it about as many times as me and the other girl), and that Loud Guy only thinks it’s gendered because of media representations of women, certain women, as being dumb and using that word a lot as a shortcut to convey their dumb-ness. Only I used ‘like’ because I was nervous, and I couldn’t find the right words near the end. So it didn’t sound as cool as I wanted, but I was still pretty proud of myself.
Of course, at some point in here Paris Hilton was brought up, my professor said something along the lines of, “she’s never exhibited a talent for anything” and the dudes just couldn’t contain themselves. Oh wow! She had a sex tape…a sex tape released without her permission by some ex-boyfriend of hers. How wonderful! She’s really talented, ain’t she*, being taken advantage of like that?
And okay, here we go: I don’t believe any of the stereotypes of women actually exist. I believe some blond women might be dumb, but plenty of others are very smart, and the girl I knew in high school who most exhibited the typical ‘dumb blond’ characteristics (big hair, loves makeup, fashion-conscious, bad driver, uses ‘like’ a lot) was actually quite scholastically brilliant and now attends UCLA. She just had a fun, silly side to her as well. As for women like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, their lives are highly publicly scrutinized. I don’t think there are many people out there who know what they’re really like. I’m not a huge fan of tabloid/gossip magazine culture.
The ‘ballbuster?’ For all you know she enjoys poetry and long walks on the beach and kittens, when she’s not trying to get ahead in her career. The woman I know who most fits this stereotype is a lawyer at the firm–a lawyer who used to be a nurse, loves to read, and has political cartoons all over her office door, as well as a very calming fountain and some books about the 1960s counterculture in her office.
The whore? One of my favorite blogs is written by your ‘whore.’ Renegade Evolution is a stripper and a porn star. She also has two degrees in History and Theater from Duke, has worked as an editor before, was a star athlete in high school and college, used to identify as a feminist (and I’d still call her one), and is extremely knowledgeable about pretty much everything. I respect the lady.
And oh, so many others. Me? What has been applied to me? Well, again, whore. Got that all the time during most of high school. Lately, man-hating baby-killing hairy-legged bra-burning feminist. First of all…only one of those descriptors applies to me (I don’t shave my legs). Need a bra to be ‘decent,’ plus I can’t stand fire; have a boyfriend, thanks, and hating men would be gender essentialist and hypocritical and a bunch of other bad things; never killed any babies (or had any abortions, which is generally the implication…haven’t had the chance, never having been pregnant due to my pill usage); and well, yes, I’m a feminist, but that doesn’t mean I’m serious all the time or that I don’t watch stupid reality shows or that I can’t laugh at myself.
Dudes like this? I think they generally get the interpretations of female behavior from media sources, and take that as truth rather than filtering it through what they have seen in real life. Or they filter the real life stuff through the media sources. Therefore, if a woman acts like a dumb blond, she cannot be deep, she cannot have true emotions or desires or feelings, and if she does, she’s an anomaly, and nothing that can be recalled the next time a blond woman is introduced into their lives. Same with any of those other stereotypes: ball-busters must always be cold, whores also stupid and not worthy of conversing with, and we feminists are all crazy man-haters.
And this is the kind of thing that makes me want to strangle these dudes–but also makes me want to write and present the best, most feminist speeches in the history of the world, and kill them with my brain.
*I do not intend this to be an indictment of real sex workers, which Paris Hilton is not. I’d rather this be an indictment of dudes who think they’re so cool for laughing about exploitative pornography in a class taught by a late-middle-aged woman.