The problems we all face

Garina Mary

The problems we all face…

The problem of total ignorance and intolerance is really serious and huge in every country of the world. Not only we would like to talk about the most common kinds of discrimination that affect huge amount of people in our country, but also we want to encourage you to become more educated in questions of tolerance andin questions of respecting other peoples’ opinion.

The one kind, which has been here since the origin of the universe issexism. Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition of sexism:prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex. Sexism is almost a part of culture in many countries; woman must be feminine, fragile, always made up to catch male attention etc. Female features (as men think) are also censured. This is very serious problem because not only men discriminate and sexually objectify women but also women themselves think that this is the way they should live. Unfortunately, the majority of women are not aware of their rights and freedom and so patriarchy lives on.

Russia is infamously known for serious homophobic and transphobic actions and ultra-conservative laws against LGBTQ+ community.  A 2013 survey found that 74% of Russians said homosexuality should not be accepted by society (up from 60% in 2002), compared to 16% who said that homosexuality should be accepted by society. So LGBT people have a hard time here. People cannot even tell their friends and family about their sexuality or gender identity, marriage is not even considered. Comments of ultra-conservative people in social media scare with all their death claims, dismissal on the grounds of homosexuality is a common practice, hate crimes and school bullying. All of these consequences of homophobia would be definitely considered awful and unjust by any reasonable and decent person but why is it such a problem in Russia? Well it seems that people judge others for no good reason just because they are not ordinary. The point of tolerance is not to except other person’s opinion/sexuality/gender identity/appearance/abilities but to respect them

Appearance also is a subject of discrimination. Studies and research in this area clearly demonstrate a beauty bias in the workplace. Sociologists calculated that a good-looking man would earn, over his career, about $250,000 more than his less-attractive counterpart. It is not a secret that the first thing one notice when meeting someone is his outer appearance, but once one gets to know him it is his intelligence, personality etc.  In our country weight and height discrimination is quite common. Especially it affects people in the workspace and schools. Losing weight tops the list of resolutions people make each year, even asresearch consistently reveals that so-called ideal weights are not necessary for the healthy people. Any sign of difference in appearance of another person seems to kindle the people’s anger. If you agree to the fact that we are all different and beautiful, life will be so much easier.

Despite the fact that lots of people think that humanity left such ugly things as racism and xenophobia in the past, those two are still very serious problems of our society. Since the beginning of 2016, racist violence has killed 5 people and injured 66, while an additional three have received serious death threats. Racist attacks were recorded in 15 Russian regions. There is prohibitively huge amount of ultra-nationalist organizations in modern Russia, although our country is really nationally diverse. Hate crimes because of nationality or race are still very common and lots of Russians allow themselves to give really offensive names to national minorities representatives. It is the same thing as with every other kind of discrimination, people just should not assume that another person is lower by status or by his/her race. Everyone should be treated equally.

Our main goal was to acknowledge readers of different kinds of oppression and we want them to reconsider their values in other people. The more people aware of all of those problems, the more they will think about other peoples’ feelings. To start respecting and develop a trait such as tolerance in yourself is not the easiest thing in the whole world, but if you even try to, then world will be the best place for everybody.

https://employmentdiscrimination.foxrothschild.com/2014/03/articles/employee-hiring/lookism-and-beauty-bias-an-update/

https://republic.ru/fast/russia/khabarkovskiy-uchitel-lishilsya-raboty-iz-za-seksualnoy-orientatsii-986341.xhtml

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1308/13/ctw.01.html

http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-homosexuality/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-laine-talley/the-ugly-side-of-lookism_b_9042114.html

http://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/news-releases/2016/12/d35957/

Адрес публикации: https://www.prodlenka.org/metodicheskie-razrabotki/232741-the-problems-we-all-face