What Is the Biggest Form of Sexism You've Encountered?

When I was working at a home builder's office and I told a man we couldn't do any warranty on structural stuff outside -- because chances were homeowners made the damage themselves -- and the man on the phone said "Can you get a man who knows what their talking about?"

...like what the fuck?

Not sure if this is quite sexist, but it surely was something of the sorts. I took a senior (swimming) squad on Thursday. 20 students, the two eldest boys were quite rude and back-chatty, and I'm the only teacher / authority figure on pool deck.
One: one of the said boys was standing on pool deck not ready in cap / goggles / bathers and at the start time I asked him if he was swimming. He said "oh [normal teacher] isn't here yet, [my boss] is probably calling him right now, don't worry he'll be here soon". Upon saying that I was taking the class, not his normal teacher as he was away, he seemed pretty amazed and then was five minutes late after getting changed.
Two: We have a swimming clock, which continually spins and has two hands at a 180° angle. We were doing a set which relied on the lane leaders to read the clock and be able to send themselves at the right times (3 x 50m on 1 minute, then 3x 50m on 55 seconds, etc.). Upon asking the boys if they knew how to work the clock (as in read it and such), one jumped out and said "oh it just spins you don't turn it on or anything. It just works like that".

I could not be more astonished. I mean, I've been a teacher for nearly 4 years, I was a state level swimmer and I'm in training to complete my bronze licence of coaching. I'm by no means unqualified, and to boot I trained where I work 3 times a week for 6 - 7 years.

Got quite a peach on the phone the other day. Guy hadn't paid his phone bill in 4 months and business rules dictate we've got to cut the phone lines off at that stage and demand full payment of the overdue balance before we can do anything else. I apologise to him and tell him this to be met by sexist comment #1:

"Aw come on sweetheart, just because you're on your period doesn't mean you've got to be a bitch to everybody you talk to"

1. I wasn't on my period.
2. The guy hadn't paid his bill. Nothing to do with me bleeding out of my vagina.

I advise him that we don't tolerate language on the phone and reiterate the rules again. He gets quite irate and comes out with sexist comment #2:

"Look, I don't know who broke up with you to make you such a cold-hearted cow but I want to speak to a man who knows what he's doing instead of a silly little girl who probably cries at romantic movies."

1. I don't watch romantic movies.
2. I'm probably more likely to know what I'm doing than most of the guys in my team. I've been there longer than them all put together.

He eventually hung up on me after calling me a slew of nasty names and made quite a few more period comments. Absolutely not a commonplace thing at my work (most folk are actually fairly nice when they have to phone a collections team) and it completely took me back.

Luckily I work with a bunch of really decent guys and were all pretty angry, but it's still horrible to have to sit there. We're not even allowed to hang up -- only if the customer's swearing / shouting and we can't get anywhere with them.

It came from my own brother, which was quite annoying.

We were visiting our cousin and had lunch at her place. She was very heavily pregnant so my mom asked us to help her clean up. So I helped by carrying all the dirty dishes to the sink and I told my brother to wash the dishes since I already cleared up the table. And he said:

"I think you should be the one doing the dishes. You're more 'qualified'."

Like what was that even suppose to mean?! So I retorted back by saying:

"Why? Because I'm a woman and my place is in the kitchen is it?" And I was about to go on a rant about such close-minded way of thinking when my dad stepped in and said:

"Those are just dirty dishes. Someone just go and wash them."

But didn't he understand? It's not just about the dirty dishes. It's about how we're expected to do certain things just because of what we have between our legs.

My boyfriend's grandma, she's so stuck in her ways. I loathed living in their house she would always insinuate that I'm a bad girlfriend because I don't wait on my boyfriend hand and foot, do all the cleaning, and still try to raise a newborn mostly by myself because my bf worked all the time. so that's basically why men ended up leaving the girl -_- first of fucking all you can do every damn thing for someone and it still wouldn't make them stay.

I was raised to be more than just a housewife and I felt so belittled and depressed living there. My boyfriend doesn't expect me to do everything so that's not the issue but I honestly never hated anyone in this world more than her, I'm grateful everyday we got a place of our own and I don't have to be there anymore.

My father-in-law wholeheartedly believes women are all nagging, emotional, cruel whores only out for money who'll let the men do all the work then profit from it, an opinion he's more than happy to espouse in front of me and at me. It genuinely makes me feel worthless sometimes - you hear that you're an idiot enough times you'll start to believe it.

OK, I have 2 instances I can think of off the bat so here goes...

the bigger more overarching instance of sexism I saw was in my workplace--my first job ever, actually. I was 16 working at a local hardware store. They forced me to be on register duty even though I was perfectly capable of working the floor, simply because "the girls were the cashiers, and the guys were the sales associates". Okay, cool, except I would rather be an associate because it pays more, while at the time the cashiers literally made federal minimum wage, no more. I worked there 2 years and never got a damn raise even though my work was as good as the guys'. I digress. It gets more heinous because APPARENTLY a guy who worked at this store long ago once stole from the register, and ever since, guys weren't really allowed on registers, which is totally stupid for a number of reasons. I don't know, my boss was very....traditional, I suppose you could say. Very set in his ways that girls did one thing, guys another, no exceptions. The same man, incidentally, who got mad at me for saying "Happy Holidays" to people instead of "Merry Christmas"... I was so happy on the day that I quit, no 2-week notice ;)

Second thing that has always irked me is how people assume if you're a girl or woman, you automatically want marriage and kids. Now that I'm older, this is something I definitely want in the future, but that's not the case for everyone. I think specifically about my neighbors, who are actually very nice people, but one of the first things they said to me upon moving in next door was "omg you can babysit!" and I was like....um, no. Thanks for assuming when I don't even want my own children yet, let alone the responsibility of watching someone else's. I was told I was overreacting for getting annoyed by that because "they pay so well!" but that doesn't really matter to me. My boyfriend (same age as me, and even gets along with kids better than me) was right next to me and the neighbor literally addressed me specifically and not him, almost as if because I'm a girl, I MUST be the one who will be a caretaker. I know it's petty but to this day I give them the cold shoulder because I don't want them assuming a thing about me when they don't know me at all. I'm only gonna say this once: F*ck. Them. Kids.

Anyone else deal with comments and assumptions like that from older people specifically, assuming that a girl or woman will take on the "traditional" mom role? It aggravates me that even in 2019, a lot of people still see women as incubators only (don't get me going on the United States abortion laws right now!).

I can only imagine how it would feel for, say, someone who doesn't want kids or can't have them. It's not that deep, but at the same time, it does carry implications that are still inherently sexist even if it's not a conscious thing for most of us.

At my earlier job, a male co worker who had joined after me got a promotion even though i was doing half of the copy editing stuff he was asked to do.

The biggest form of sexism I have received is when I was in a chemist, waiting on my prescription. There was a woman with a baby in her pram and I was playing with the baby, just saying hello, making silly faces etc. An older woman sat next to me and was saying, 'oh, children are so precious' etc. She then asked me if I had children and I replied with, no, I don't.

She continued to tell me that from what she seen that I would make a great mother and that I should cherish my children when the time comes for me to have them. I then gently explained to the woman that I didn't plan on having kids. "I'm not the motherly type when it comes to my own, I don't want kids. I just don't feel the need or want to have kids."

This didn't sit well with her. She then began to tell me, "it's a woman's duty to have children," and "you'll regret having no kids. What about when you're older?" and I simply explained that when I'm older, I won't need kids, I'll have my own company and possible friends. She just kept explaining to me that I, a young woman, need to have kids. I apparently by default, because I'm a woman, my only existence and purpose is to have children. I'm sorry, but no. Shut that noise off.

However, I'm not the only one facing this. My boyfriend has also experienced sexism because he is a man. His job coach has gave him less opportunities compared to a woman, tried to sanction him and basically treated him less than a human being simply because he's a man. His own mother is trying to push the agenda of having children onto him because 'he's a man, he needs to reproduce.' It's disgusting.

Sexism is rife in both genders and it just makes me want to scream.

I work for a car breakdown company and I don't usually hear many sexist comments which is nice and surprising (most folks are just thankful I'm getting a recovery truck sent out for them tbh ) but I had an absolute... not nice person the other day telling me I knew nothing about cars because I was a woman so how could I know anything about cars, and how dare I tell them that we can't fix a blown head gasket by the roadside because he knows better than me and knows it's fixable by the roadside.

I mean, not even the most experienced mechanic in our phone fix team (all men, by the way) would say we'd roadside a head gasket considering most head gasket replacements involve a full engine stripdown that 90% of mechanics WON'T do roadside so it's going to be recovered regardless of who you speak to but hey, it's all because I'm a woman.