Follow Up: Responding to Hanna's Post

What I found so striking about these two readings was how relevant they were to my life and how I didn't really realize it; I would been reading a particular passage and suddenly think how that passage describes my behavior or thought process exactly. When Rich was talking about the sciences being sexist, I suddenly remembered scientific readings I had to do that only used the word "man" to refer to humanity - when I read them, I noticed how the authors had chosen to use the word "man," but I had always dismissed it saying that it was just how they wrote back then. It never really hit me that these authors, whether intentionally or not, had cut out one half of the human population because they didn't think women were important enough to warrant using terms person, people, human, or humanity. Coincidentally (or maybe not), the article I have to read by Friday for my War and Violence in East Asia class begins "[t]his book is about violence. Not the deviant, frightening violence or the newspapers but those modes of inflicting harm or taking life which men accept, approve, and even prescribe ("Sanctioned Violence in Early China," Lewis 1)." I know for a fact that women warriors existed in early China - Mulan and Mu Guiying come to mind (http://www.stutzfamily.com/mrstutz/china/mulan.html   and   http://www.womenofchina.cn/Profiles/Women_in_History/12996.jsp). Did the author think they weren't important? Did he think the story of Mulan, which is well-known throughout the world, didn't even deserve inclusion? As a molecular biology major and Asian studies minor, I've come to see how sexism is still there in both my disciplines even though I was always told I could be anything I wanted if I worked hard enough and that women were breaking though in the sciences and I could too.