It Takes Your Coat and Pays the Check

So, unlike many of my peers, I am going to make my first post about a personal experience that I've had instead of linking to a video or article. Forgive me if it's a bit long.

I spent my Spring 2013 semester in Costa Rica. Our group was there for about four months and we lived with host families. I had three sisters (all younger than me by at least 5 years), a mother, and a father. There were many other family members that came in and out of the house including an aunt, a grandmother, and a few cousins. In my four months there I grew very close to my family, and I miss them very much. My father was a very kind man, though he spoke with such a thick accent it was often hard to talk to him. My sisters were all intelligent, friendly, and quirky. My mother never let me go hungry, always made sure I wore my sunscreen, and made sure that I was taken care of when I was sick.

Living in Costa Rica was a shock for many reasons, not least among them the lack of constant Wi-Fi and hot water. But what is most pertinent about my experience to this class is how I saw women being treated there.

Costa Rica, in case you were unaware, is led currently by a female president, Laura Chinchilla. She is not particularly popular, but she was elected by-and-large freely by the people. However, despite the fact that the entire country is led by a woman, it is still horrifically machista.

There were no sidewalks in the rural area in which I lived. When you needed to get to class, you walked on the street. I shared the street with cars, bikes, and semi-trucks. It seems like something out of a bad comic, but the semi-trucks were often equipped with horns that honked out like cat-calls. Countless times when I was walking to class, I would step off the road to allow a truck to pass only to be greeted with waggling eyebrows and a sharp whoo-whoo just like the wolf out of a Droopy cartoon. I was not wearing provocative clothing (not that doing so warrants such treatment); I was not smiling coyly at the driver; I was not moving my body lewdly.

This simple and perhaps innocuous behavior speaks volumes to the attitude towards women that the country holds. That merely by daring to appear outside of my house and by being a woman, I should be subject to such attention.

One morning at breakfast (a meal which my mother always cooked; my father never touched a pan or a dish) I sat down with my aunt and mother and we ended up talking about men and women. I believe I was writing a paper about feminist sentiments in the country and I wanted some interviews. By the end of the conversation, I was in tears. My aunt had told me about how her husband, who she married at age 15, was now in a relationship with someone else- a woman he brought to family functions. She told me how she had to beg him not to leave her, about how she was expected just to deal with his behavior. My mother told me that she was sure her husband was sleeping with or had slept with other women, how she didn't question it, how he was allowed to do so.

They told me that true love didn't exist.

I share this story because I think it is an important example of how face value can be deceiving. The country is headed by a woman, but woman are still second class citizens. I share it because I have taken my treatment here in the U.S. for granted, even though I still believe there is much more ground to travel. I share because misogyny is not a cartoon wolf ogling Jessica Rabbit- it is quiet, it loves its family, it believes in chivalry, it smiles politely at you while you talk. Misogyny is not always cartoonish (though it sure felt like it listening to that whistle echo in my ears), it takes your coat and insists on paying the dinner bill.

I share because I wonder how much worse it must be to live in countries where women still have no suffrage, no right to speak, barely a right to exist. I share because I refuse to brush it off as 'men being men', because I refuse to believe men to be such base creatures. I share because we cannot achieve the greatness I am sure we are capable of reaching if we continue to belittle people based on their gender, race, sexuality, or creed.

I share because discrimination holds us back and I will not abide it.