Sexism

Today, I watched a video from a very talented female guitar player on youtube. I was genuinely impressed by how well she understood her instrument. After an enjoyable 4 minutes of good guitar playing, I scrolled down to look at the comments.

Woops.

I'm sure you can guess what was there. The war of the sexes had begun and it didn't look like it was stopping any time soon. Males belittling females, females belittling males, and even some females belittling females. It was somewhat of a case study in that regard.

Anyway, this got me thinking about some things. When you think of sexism, what do you think? If you're like most of America, you probably think of men oppressing women. Don't worry, I do too. Is that all there is to it? Obviously not. We all know that women can be just as sexist. In a way, America is in a sort of sexist backlash at the moment, where men are starting to get more weight put on them. Don't believe me? Go watch TV for about an hour. Done? Ok, tell me how many commercials you saw that had a dumb husband, a boneheaded jock, or some such nonsense.

This is mostly an aside though. What I really started wondering was a bit different. Is it possible to be so careful about being sexist, that you are in fact being sexist? Let me explain by going back to the guitar girl. She has gotten millions upon millions of views on her videos, thousands of fans, has played with a number of very famous artist, and got a record deal. Is she good? Heck yes, but she is one among thousands of other young guitarists, some I wound consider much better. Maybe she just got very lucky, or maybe she had some incredible connections, but I just have this nagging feeling like it may have something to do with gender. Am I being sexist by worrying about it? Some would say so, but I don't personally think I am. She's very good, and I think she deserves the recognition. I just hope she's getting it for her skill, not her sex.

~I need some sort of outro.