Don't lighten up—accept
You're asking someone to learn to live with being bullied and to accept discrimination. And through this endorsement of their behaviour you contribute to the problem.
You are a horrible person.
You're asking someone to learn to live with being bullied and to accept discrimination. And through this endorsement of their behaviour you contribute to the problem.
You are a horrible person.
Also, I'm not accusing Katie of cowardice.
Were they? I'd bet that everything you've ever read or seen about slavery was produced by abolitionists and their intellectual descendants. Perhaps this might slightly color your views on the subject.
By the way, before you call me a horrible person again, please read carefully. Nothing in the above paragraph implies an endorsement of slavery.
If you'd like to direct me to where I can read a more balanced view of the history of slavery I would be pleased to read it.
The West Indies As They Are (1824) by Rev. Richard Bickell. It was written about slavery in Jamaica, where conditions were almost certainly worse than in the American South. http://books.google.com/books?id=Y4QZYM7MOUcC&printsec=t...
South-Side View of Slavery (1854) by Nehemiah Adams, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist. http://books.google.com/books?id=sCg7P2c3W5MC&printsec=t...
American Negro Slavery (1918) by Ulrich Phillips. http://books.google.com/books?id=7E1_n7O9KvIC&printsec=t...
The attitudes and actions of certain people made someone's job so bad that they quit the industry. I am appalled by that, and I strongly disagree that they should have just put up with it. I don't think her leaving the industry signals acceptance; merely that she's been bullied out of it. I think this essay (I also disagree that it's "whiny") may, in some small way, help other people become aware of sexist behaviour.