Tenth grade theater production class: last month of school. I work on a final project with two of my guy friends and fellow classmates. One brings up the recent news report that another woman in the movie industry has been discovered in pornography from younger days. The two of them keep talking about breasts and legs, and I'm pretending to ignore them because I'm a girl - what am I supposed to know about porn? - but I listen because I'm curious. Then one of them mentions that he likes to watch MTV during the rap and hip hop music videos because the girls dance "all hot-like" and are "very sexy", and the first thing out of my mouth is, "But they're black."

Naturally, and for good reason, their responses were "So?" and "What?" followed by "What does that have to do with anything?" and "Is that important to you?" At first, I had wanted to defend myself, to explain that I was just more attracted to white people, perhaps because that was mostly what I saw on a day-to-day basis, and had simply assumed they were in the same boat. The fact that I'd almost done just that was sufficiently disgusting enough to quell the urge. I held up a hand. My next words: "Hold on, don't say anything; that was just as surprising to me as to you, if not more so." That was the day I started to really question myself.

Only recently, however, have I begun to notice the similarities of racism in other biases. I've always considered religious diversity a good thing, but I knew that a lot of people didn't agree and we all know there have been too many wars because of it. Homosexuality, transexuality, and transgenderism, in my mind, are also horribly disrespected all too often. Alternatively, gender bias - something I've always fought heavily against - was somehow in a completely different file in my brain.


THE CONNECTION

"I don't tell racist jokes anymore," my friend said to me on a walk a while back. "I mean, I used to, when it was the group of all of us, and we'd tell all kinds of jokes, teasing everyone - it wasn't just one race," and I can second him on this. It wasn't just white people, or just Native American people, or just Asians, or Middle Easterners, or Jews. "Then I noticed after a while," he continued, "that when I saw someone of a different 'race' I would think, 'It's a Native American person' or 'It's a black person' instead of 'It's a person'." He stopped walking and looked at me. "I didn't want to be that kind of person." I had a lot of respect for him for saying that, and it gave me a little more reassurance to know that I hadn't been the only one who'd noticed a problem with myself in that sense, as well as encouragement to change.

The same friend disappointed me with a different comment merely two days later. A lot of girls will tell you this is a common thing; half of my guy friends walk around wearing shirts with slogans such as this: "If you can read this: MAKE ME A SANDWICH," and the other half respond with overlooked "jokes" that should be considered appalling. "I don't understand your shirt. Men won't make you a sandwich, and women can't read.... HAHAHA JUST KIDDING!" was the retort from this friend of mine. If you spoke with the men I spend time with, you would learn like they did that I have very little tolerance for words like this. Unfortunately, I seem to be one of few. Their own girlfriends don't do much to speak up about feeling insulted or judged. Am I the only female who notices the connection between gender bias and racial bias?

Anti-racism is a good thing, and people of my generation have accepted it and are looking into making it better. That's great, especially since so many of us don't consider it such a big deal anymore - Affirmative Action is a big step forward, and we don't think twice about sharing a classroom with everyone. However, some of the same people who seem to think this way don't seem to see the importance of the progression of Equalism. By Equalism, I mean the movement toward a world in which men and women are treated equal and are given the same opportunities, the same wages, and the same respect.

The problem with our generation is that while they realize it's important not to be racist, sexism is still a large problem in our culture. Racism has received a lot of attention. As many people have pointed out, the advertising industry is attempting in part to combat racial prejudice with examples such as Washington Mutual Bank's commercial broadcasting free checking. Here, an African American customer service associate approaches the viewer with the promise of supposedly appealing offers. He then explains how this came to be by going through a hole in the floor to a large concrete room with a small square sectioned off by red rope, within which several old, white men in business suits stand around muttering, where he asks them a number of questions about waiving fees. They all respond of course with "No" and "Absolutely not!" The associate announces the "Bankers' Pen" statements are "conclusive proof" that doing the opposite of what they say is the right thing to do, then immediately calls into a walkie-talkie: "Bring down the champagne," and a champagne bottle with a hamster-feeding tube lowers to the bankers' level while the clamber to be in the center like hungry piglets. Like many other ads, the use of African American actors to portray a heroic main character was effective as promoting anti-racism. What also made an impact, though, was the representation of white members of upper class as money-obsessed, champagne-addicted and angry.

But racism is not the only cause of common prejudice, and advertising is has done nothing to help in the case of gender bias, considering what we have to see every day - on television, in magazines, on the internet, on our friends' t-shirts - people are even sporting their favorite big-name companies on their backpacks in small pins and drawn on logos. The messages brought forth by the people who want us to buy into their products and change our bodies are everywhere and I should think most would agree that a huge number of those ads are directed at women. We need to shave our legs, we need to have long, wavy hair, and we need to find our prince charming to be happy. Think about it - what does every "chick flick" have in common? We need to get back to skepticism and force the tabloids into more intense scrutiny of the commercialism in their pages.

This level of oppression on women has been discussed heavily, so much so that it's often avoided in the same classrooms I mentioned earlier because it would only be rehashing what's been said. But if we can question racism, classism and other biases, and the important aim is to fix them as soon as we possibly can, why are we not talking about the other problems women are having? Advertising is not the only issue we deal with on a daily basis, as I've noted. Shouldn't sexism be on the same schedule as racism? What makes it different? It's still attacking a group of people based upon physical appearance and structure. In my mind, that is not okay.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Up until that epic day in class, I'd considered myself higher than stereotypes. Maybe older people back at the start of our country had ideas of what to think about our neighbors of other color, religion, or dialect, but my generation had determined that they exceeded that. I noticed upon reflection that up until the week before my ninth birthday (when we moved into white bread, corporate middle class), that was true. Before I started preschool I didn't have much interaction with people outside my neighborhood and family.

Growing up in a mobile home park in a liberal city I saw everyone as people. Some were tanned, some were pale, others in between, and I considered it in reference to how much time they or their ancestors had spent in the sun, not due to what class or race they belonged. Mom brought me up a scientist - I was to question everything and assume there was a logical and physical explanation for them all. But I'm certainly not the first to say that bias and prejudice still exist.

The other influence I had at that time came from my observation of the television set. I began to understand and start learning things in the early nineties when rap was becoming popular and we were far enough into Affirmative Action that my children's shows involved an equal mixture of everyone. Barney and Miss Frizzle's classrooms included one of everybody; it was a Noah's Ark of racial justice. Other shows, however, still seemed intent on including only people of certain races. My own father would decide to watch only the predominantly "white" shows, claiming that the others were not exhibiting his culture and he "didn't get them". I obviously overlooked it then as just an offhand comment; he was just complaining because it "wasn't his kind of TV show". Later on I started to wonder about it. Why was it we always turned the set off or changed the channel when we noticed the start of the "other kind of sitcom" with the same premises, class, and relationships as the ones we watched? I decided to watch them. After pitting the character interactions, the slang, and the type of humor against one another, I came to the conclusion that aside from a few dichotomies in regards to pop-culture references, the only distinction between the two shows I had decided to examine was the color of their skin.

It might be troublesome, but it's happening still. I tried briefly to consider that maybe we could chalk it up to ignorance. Maybe he hadn't ever seen these shows before and assumed they would be something he didn't understand - which was still problematic. If my own family could feel this way because of ignorance, could there be a similar reason guys my age were so insensitive? Did they refuse to read "women's" magazines or watch romantic comedies because they were "for women"? This could be probable. What about ourselves? Women can choose to wear pants instead of dresses now. Many ride motorcycles or participate in sports - stereotypically "guy stuff". Why can't men be involved in the "different culture" of women?

It is true that there are a much higher number of stay at home dad's than there used to be, enough to counter the number of women going into the higher level work force, but anytime that happens someone will step up to call him "pussy-whipped" or make fun of his masculinity. What's wrong with choosing to spend time with their children, or to help cook and clean? My very straight and very male grandfather sews and embroiders, and my own father cooked more than my mom did while I was growing up. To choose not to have a "feminine side" based on personal experience and interest, I can understand and even respect. But to choose not to participate in certain activities simply because society labels it as though it might lower sperm count? Please - spare me.

Even if this were true, I detest the idea of using it as an excuse. Not knowing the other side, or not understanding the "other culture" is no justification for treating them with less respect, whether you're talking about race or gender, and it will only change when we stop tolerating the use of ignorance as validation for abuse.