Wednesday 24 October 2012

IS IT ME.....?

On the way home the other day, I was listening to a Radio 4 programme. It was very interesting about a lady who has started a website called Everyday Sexism to catalogue sexist incidents. Good idea, I thought, and when I got back, I checked it out - http://www.everydaysexism.com/ Now, wouldn't sexism be defined as discrimination on the grounds of gender? And if so, isn't this site, with its wording thus :
"The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don't even feel able to protest. Say as much or as little as you like, use your real name or a pseudonym - it's up to you. By sharing your story you're showing the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss"

Isn't that actually sexist? Or am I just being blinded by my own sexism? Troubling.
A similar thing happened a couple of years ago when I and a few friends did a charity cycling gig in France. There were a couple of hundred participants, all in teams of four. At the end of the three day event, there was a prize giving. As an unexpected extra, not arranged by the organisers, but impromptu, one of the teams, a team of four women with the team name REAR VIEW presented a special prize for the shapeliest male arse, clad in cycling shorts during the event. Much general hilarity. But I was furious, and went over to their team leader and said "hang on a minute, what you've just done is terribly sexist. Just imagine if we'd had a team called EYES FRONT and we'd given out a prize for the best pair of tits in a cycling vest. You'd have been outraged." Now. amazingly to me, this led to a "scene" as the ladies didn't really take my comments to heart, accusing me of having "no sense of humour". So if, each time we passed each other on the road I'd called out "great arse, luv..." I guess said ladies would have roared and wobbled with the hilarity of it. Troubling.
My mate Bobski and I are busy exchanging scurillous Jimmy Savile jokes in the light of the current scandal surrounding him. I'm no Jimmy Savile fan. In fact, the reverse. It has been so ever since a mate of mine was laid up in Leeds General Infirmary, back in 1980. I went to visit him, and it so happened that Jimmy Savile was on duty as a hospital porter that day, to wide acclaim from most of the patients. "Good ol' Jimmy" they cried out, and similar. Now Jimmy had actually recruited some help in his portering activities on this particular day, in the form of his fellow all in wrestler, Big Daddy. Jimmy opened the door to the side ward which housed my friend, lying in traction, and Big Daddy stepped in, draped in a Union Jack. He raised his arms to take our applause. My friend lifted himself as far as traction allowed, and said emphatically, "fuck off, twat." Big Daddy looked a tad crestfallen at this unexpected response, turned, and wafted off, a very large parcel, wrapped in Union flag, down the hospital corridor.
As I say, I'm no fan. But I'm completely puzzled at the idea that there should be a police investigation into his alleged kiddy fiddling. Vile though this may have been, there can be no prospect of prosecuting him, so isn't a police investigation simply a monumental waste of public money? I understand that BBC, Dept of Health etc might want their investigations, and indeed need them both to "learn lessons" and to defend themselves against the possible claims bonanza which might result from all of the hoo haa. But again, has commonsense been lost in the case of the police?
Or, again, is it me? Have I, as I get older, simply been left behind in a time warp where commonsense once was, but its now moved on to a more advanced, complex, subtle, sustainable version of itself which I've failed to comprehend? You may think I'm being rhetorical. I'm not. I genuinely do wonder, and I genuinely do turn that wondering into an introspective enquiry when I seem so often to butt up against these things. It is, as I said, troubling

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