One day, I saw a video talking about if women can be firefighters. To be honest, I had never thought about this topic before this video since I view firefighters as men’s job in my default mindset. Then, I started to think that the as long as the person can meet the requirements, for example, how fast they can run to the fire scene while carrying the firehose, the person’s gender/legal sex doesn’t actually really matter to me. 

Does one’s gender really that matter? To some level, yes! However, I also find It beneficial to view things without “pre-set” gender stereotypes and certain gender expectations. I am trying to “de-gendering” my mindset.

If people encounter a bad driver, many people assume that it must be a female driver. But is the reality really like this? At the end of the day, what we dislike is the drivers who actually have poor driving skills and have nothing to do with a specific gender. People with poor driving skills can be either male or female. 

Now, we can do a little “math” here.

Some people’s assumption:

Step 1: women=physically weaker=weak in everything

Step 2: bad driver=weak driving skill=weak=women

There is a mistake in step 1. Women may be born with less muscle strength than men on average (not necessarily), but it is not true that physical strength equals to capability in other things that literally do not involve physical strength.

Maybe, sometimes… we can pay less attention or just say goodbye to gender Stereotypes?