gender – More Zonkyness

Sexist Jokes

Mar 202010

There are five men and a single woman all dangling from a rope, waiting for someone to rescue them. Unfortunately the rope starts to fray and they all decide that someone has to sacrifice themselves to save the others. After some time discussing who should sacrifice themselves, the woman says that as women are used to sacrificing themselves and that men are the better sex, she will sacrifice herself. The men all applaud her, and an hour later the woman is rescued.

Mildly humorous ?

Now try it the other way around :-

There are five women and a single man all dangling from a rope, waiting for someone to rescue them. Unfortunately the rope starts to fray and they all decide that someone has to sacrifice themselves to save the others. After some time discussing who should sacrifice themselves, the man says that as men are used to sacrificing themselves and that women are the better sex, he will sacrifice herself. The women all applaud her, and an hour later the man is rescued.

Still funny ?

It sometimes seems that it is far more acceptable for men to be portrayed as stupid in jokes than women. Is this fair ? If it is wrong to portray women as stupid in jokes, it is wrong to portray men as stupid too; similarly if it is funny to read about stupid men, then it is funny to read about stupid women.

Lessons On Domestic Abuse

General No Responses »

Nov 262009

It seems that the government is planning on teaching children from the age of 5, that domestic abuse is wrong. And about time too! There is an absolutely horrific level of domestic abuse in the UK, which may or may not be better than elsewhere, but that is not what this is about.

Some parents are complaining that it is their job to teach their children about such things. Well obviously not all parents are doing their job properly, or the figures for domestic abuse would be far better! So this is a good initiative, or is it ?

Apparently the lessons are to emphasise that boys are to treat girls with respect and that girls are to expect respect. The reason for this sexism ? Because the overwhelming number of victims of domestic abuse are women. Well that is certainly true; the BBC article claims that in 2008/9 there were 293,000 incidents of domestic violence reported in England and Wales with 77% being against women. That leaves 23% being against men giving a total of 68,000 incidents.

Let us change the sex of those 68,000 victims of domestic violence to women. Would 68,000 female victims of domestic violence justify these lessons ? I would say so, so surely the lessons should also teach that abusing men is also wrong?

Another thing about those statistics is that it is known that domestic abuse is subject to a huge level of under reporting. With that in mind, and bearing in mind that women have been encouraged to report domestic abuse, it is perfectly possible that the statistics given above are inaccurate not just in the size of the problem, but in the ratio of victims – it may well be that men are as likely to be victims of domestic abuse as women! Perhaps you do not agree, but we simply do not know.

If we teach children the lessons exactly as expressed, children will learn a second lesson from them – that whilst girls should have respect, boys do not need be given respect. It is a short distance from that to accepting domestic abuse against men.

Domestic abuse against anyone is unacceptable.

Toilet Seats: Up or Down ?

Humour No Responses »

Sep 042009

Just for the record, I leave toilet seats in the position I found them in after I’ve used them and this is intended to be humorous.

One of the most common complaints women have about men is that we leave the toilet seats up which when you think about it is more than a little ridiculous. After all it takes perhaps 5 seconds to put the seat down, which is hardly enough work to complain about is it ?

The funny thing is when men gather in secretive enclaves to complain about women (which we have to do to avoid being accused of sexism), nobody ever complains about women leaving the toilet seat down. Why is that ? After all, men are hardly any less ridiculous than women are, and putting the toilet seat up is just as much work as putting it down.

I guess this is one of life’s great unanswerable questions.

Of course if you were to do an efficiency study of how much work in a mixed household results from moving the toilet seat, you will probably find that less work results from leaving the seat up than leaving it down. Of course then all the work will be done by women, which may be why they complain about the seat being left up.