One example of gender microaggression that I have encountered was at an automobile service shop. My car was acting up and began shaking a lot. I knew that I needed more transmission fluid. I called the service shop and told them that I did not have enough transmission fluid in my car and needed to make an appointment and the man on the phone stated "you need transmission fluid, are you sure? Are you sure you need more, why don't you bring it in so the mechanic can look at it." I took my car into the shop and the mechanic drove it around for a few minutes and came back to tell me I needed more transmission fluid.
The mechanic thought because I was a woman that I did not know what type of service that I needed on my car to fix the shaking. I believe that a lot of automobile shops stereotype woman to not knowing anything about cars. My brother made sure when I was growing up to teach me a few things!
Learning about microaggression this week made me more observant about conversations around me. Listening to conversations made me realize that we sometimes stereotype people without even knowing it. I caught myself this week saying something that would have stereotyped someone but I stopped in mid sentence because I knew I would have offended them. The motto "think before you speak" really comes into play this week after learning about microaggression.
