Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Sexism--I'm Treading Carefully

So, I don't know if I'm breaking copyright laws or not by posting this on my blog. I hope not. It's credited. Anyway, when I read it, I laughed, and it really rang true to me. Now, before I get started, can I just make a blanket statement that I love women, and if I say anything stupid about women, please don't hate me. Thank you. However, I'm going to be treading carefully, because I don't want my throat slit.

Anyway, allow me to point out that I am aware of the very unjust treatment (to put it lightly) that women have endured all throughout history. I am, after all a history major of sorts, and it seems that in every class it follows this pattern: "This is the history, okay, now this is what it did to blacks, this is what it did to Indians, and this is what it did to women." I am aware that women have never been treated equally in the past, and that they are still, in many cases today, not treated fairly. However, I submit that people have become to hypersensitive to this, and that men are bearing the brunt of it, more specifically good-natured men who enjoy hanging around with women and who are actually quite kind to women, and who sometimes don't put tons of thought into every word they say, and end up saying something that could, if you are hyper-sensitive, be taken as a sexist comment. Then, said man ends up being verbally attacked as a sexist pig, and said woman never wants to talk to him again. Granted, that's probably close to being the worst-case scenario, but things similar to this, in varying degrees of severity, happen frequently to me, especially when I crack some of my favorite sexist jokes. I really don't see the problem behind this, especially when, by the definition of a feminist (one who believes in women's rights, and doesn't necessarily burn their bra) I am a feminist. I just think that those jokes are funny sometimes. Seriously. I mean, why wouldn't they give Helen Keller a drivers license? Because she was a woman! That's just hilarious.

At any rate, I may not have proved my commitment to women's equal rights here in this blog post, that wasn't my intent. My intent, if truth be told, was to think of something somewhat clever, and in that, I'm not sure I have succeeded. However, if you women who worry about my chauvinist tendencies wish to post inflammatory comments, go right ahead. Last time I blogged about something that I thought wasn't a big deal but was possibly controversial, I got reamed. So, go right ahead. Cliff out.

1 comment: