It's Easy to Be Sleazy

My response to the comments from my last post;

Hitting someone is wrong. Whether male or female. If you are female, you shouldn't hit other females or males. If you are male, you shouldn't hit other males or females. This is what is commonly termed physical abuse.

Now, I've taken courses on these topics, and I could haul out my textbooks, essays and binders full of notes for you and give you statistics up the yin yang of why people hit other people, why people don't report it, who tends to get hit, and who tends to be the one doling out the abuse, but I'm uninterested in that topic today. So you can wait for a follow up to this later.

So to sum this up, hitting someone is wrong. Don't do it.

It's simple enough. Got it? Good. Moving on.

When I wrote my last blog post, I used a situation I witnessed as the beginning to my thoughts. In the situation, a female was hitting a man around the face, and the man was being keenly watched so as to avoid him hitting her back, even though she was landing some good punches in and he was hurt. It was the commonly held thought of the onlookers that even though he would be defending himself, if he raised a hand to even push her away, he would instantly be held responsible for the entire mess.

My friend commented while watching "He better not hit her."

I couldn't see anything from where I was, I don't know how the argument started, but I did know, that, according to how society thinks, if he hit her, even if she took out a knife and stabbed him, sympathy would be with her, not with him.

This is sexism.

A friend of mine is a loudly proclaimed feminist. I know some of you are thinking, "Oh, so she hates men?" Actually, HE is a pretty cool guy. He's down for equal rights, loves to shred the slopes, and has an interesting fascination with kilts, motorcycles, and Picaroons beer. (Okay, he's strange like me, we get along well, okay?)

I bring him up because he made a comment on a previous poll of mine about chivalry, and how it was sexist. I went, "No it's not, society's idea of what chivalry is, now THAT is sexist".

AND THEN A LIGHTBULB POPPED UP ABOVE MY HEAD AND I WENT "OH SHIT I AM SEXIST".

Not because I agreed with society's version of chivalry (see here for my full opinion) but because looking at that example caused me to re examine all those little, day to day things that we all do, and just accept as the norm.

So he's a good person to have around because he will constantly keep me on my toes and aware of sexism in today's society.

And where am I going with this? Well, I am trying to get across to you the reality of how easy it is to be sexist, racist, prejudiced.

Those jokes you're making? Re-evaluate them. If you thought you were saying them near someone who would get offended, would you think of them as a victim, or not? For example, those rape jokes? If you said them near a rape victim, but didn't know until after the fact, would you still think those jokes are okay?

If you're joking about how men/women don't put the toilet lid down/never shut up, congratulations, you're making a sexist joke. Is it still funny? Do *you* like people assuming sexist crap about your personality? Then why are you doing it to others?

Remember, people, it's easy to be lazy and not better yourself, or put other people down to make yourself feel better.

Mmkay, I'm getting tired and when I get tired I tend to ramble, so I'll leave it at this; "Don't ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself. If you want something to change, do something about it."

No, that's not a quote from somewhere in particular, that's just how I feel about life.