Why To Be A Feminist Aka Taking Points Off One Ideas For Being Female

After learning that many people see writing, speech or ideas as less valuable or interesting if they come from a woman and not a man; and after realizing that I am biased in that way myself; I have been trying to catch myself doing this. While watching the excellent documentary The Art of the Steal, I realized that I was giving many of the men extra points just for being male; whereas I was discounting what a particular female judge was saying, because she was female with a southern-type high voice. When I thought about it, I realized that I thought what this woman was making among the most valuable contributions to the debate that any interviewee had made. I saw that if she were male, I would be thinking, "Now this person, this one is really smart and knows what he is talking about." All in all, I see that when evaluating what someone is saying, I subconsciously tend to give people extra points for being male (or Ivy-educated or white) and I tend to take off points for being female. The next step was realizing that people inevitably do this to me. Hell, even I do this to me (take off points for being female).This discounting of women is not some theoretical issue. It affects me. And that makes me mad. I might have less opportunity to be a "thinker," less ability to affect the world, less success spreading my ideas, simply because people don't expect a woman to The older I get, the more I become aware of sexism. I used to not know it existed; then I thought it was over and had been conquered; but now I am starting to see that sexism has and likely will continue to affect my life in a very deep way (and this motivates me to fight it, and to fight to have a good life and to do what I aim to do despite sexism--a la David Brooks' chip-on-the-shoulder school of success). How can I "skirt" sexism (pun intended!) ?-Sometimes imagining I'm a man (for purposes of status and importance of my ideas) is a start. (I notice that if I imagine I'm a man, I suddenly feel less depressed and more powerful. When people talk about being socialized into gender roles, we don't just learn the rules for our own gender. We learn some of the rules of other genders too. So I think many of us could 'act' the part of other genders in our heads. I wonder what men feel like when they imagine being female. I bet it's similar to how I feel if I imagine being a minority.)-Ezine articles gave me the idea of writing with a pen name. I might try it out. I want to try being male on facebook for a week or two, just to see if I take my ideas more seriously or to see how other people respond (and if they notice a difference in how they think of me). -Can you all who read this regularly try out the thought experiment of imagining that I'm actually a man and not a woman? Does that change how you think of my writing or what I am doing with this blog? Please don't jump to the pre-ordained conclusion "It doesn't change anything; I am not sexist" without at least trying the thought experiment.- - -