The Covert and Overt Sexism of a Small Town

When I was a child, I was surrounded by strong, feminine influences. My mother immediately comes to mind — a college professor with a Ph.D. in psychology, making as much and sometimes more than my father. Outside my immediate family I had my maternal aunts, with their big personalities and varied jobs, and family friends that worked at the same university as my parents. I was surrounded by intelligent, independent women who encouraged me to develop those traits in myself, and for many years, I thought it a sort of utopia. Then society intruded.


The first time I was told to, “be quiet and let the men talk” I stood silently, in complete shock. I was maybe six or seven, and my dad was talking to a group of friends he played poker with every couple of weeks. I had wanted to ask him a question, but was immediately shot down by one of his buddies because I had the “audacity” to interrupt their important conversation about winning poker hands. My father stopped his friend’s tirade to answer my query, but I was left with a distinct feeling of inadequacy. When I told my mother later that day she was furious, and spent the next several years snubbing that particular man at every turn. This was the first time I had ever been told that I was worth less than a man.

As I entered the school system, incidents of sexism became more frequent, and more vicious. Because I had been raised in a household where intellect was valued I thought that the rest of my classmates would feel the same way. Needless to say, that went rather poorly. I was immediately branded a teacher’s pet, but after a couple of years I noticed that some teachers dismissed my ideas and work. A couple more years and I noticed a pattern — this dismissal wasn’t based on my actual work, it was based on my sex. Similar papers from male classmates got slightly higher grades, and papers of mine that were objectively better in spelling or grammar got the same grades. I was less likely to be called on than my male peers, and when I did get to answer, I was less likely to be praised. It was subtle, but insidious.

I should enter a disclaimer here — this was not all of my teachers, at most it was 20%. But that 20% wore me down and almost destroyed my joy for learning.

Middle school coincided with a sudden increase in sexism from my classmates. In seventh grade a male classmate sent his girlfriend over to tell me to — and this is a direct quote — “close your legs because he can smell your whore vagina from across the room.” My response, naturally, was to spread my legs wider and flick him off under the table, but that doesn’t change the fact that a thirteen-year-old boy had such hatred for me that he called me a whore. In eighth grade a peer groped me, and then got angry when I kicked him into a wall. And under all of this was hundreds of smaller snubs, insults, and threats meant to reinforce the message that I was not valued because of my gender.


After high school, I moved to New York to attend Adelphi University. Moving from a small college town, I expected the amount of sexism I faced to increase exponentially.

Instead, the opposite happened. Incidents of sexism decreased to almost none. There were still some issues, but nowhere near what I had faced in my hometown.

This really shocked me. I had braced for an onslaught of hatred, and instead I received the acceptance I had wanted for years. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a hell of a lot better, and that didn’t make sense to me. I had been raised in a pretty liberal and progressive town, despite it’s location in Southwestern Virginia. My hometown has also been recognized as one of the best places in the States to raise a family. So how could I be exposed to more sexism and misogyny there than in a large metropolitan area?

To be honest, I still don’t know the answer. Maybe its the smaller population size, or maybe this is the dark side of a small town, or it could be a totally different reason. All I know is what I’ve seen — and what I’ve seen is not acceptable.

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