many years ago, i watched the national geographic society's geography bee on pbs hosted by the jeopardy host alex trebeck. after a few rounds, a very disturbing pattern began to emerge - his "chatting" with the participants took two totally different tones with the boys and the girls. comments such as "this is an easy one" were more than not directed to the boys while things like "this happened way before your time" were told to the girls. IMMEDIATELY you could see the shadow of self-doubt begin to cloud the girls' faces. some to them stammered, some of them paused before answering and many times, they froze - i could see how just a few words, a phrase, made this already nervous girls LOSE IT; their confidence literally slipping away before my very eyes. i wanted to scream! and if they did give a wrong answer, he would say 'tsk tsk' and shake his head.
it illustrated two major points - the POWER of words and the SEXISM that is still very rampant in our society. i hope that my daughter never lets that happen to her and i hope my son never demeans his female peers that way. i guess only time will tell if any of my 'positive' preaching got through their thick skulls LOL
"what i've learned?" - well alex you need to learn NOT to discriminate against females.......
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