The latest craze in sexism that i love is how some, a definite minority, get absolutly pissed if i hold the door for her. Now, i grew up in the south for 16 years. If you don't hold the door for a lady, you're liable to get hurt. Now in California, what i've always taken as a nice gesture, is sometimes liable to get me hurt. Oh well.


re Segnbora-t, ah, well its more of a new thing to me, and since the world revoles around me, it is the latest craze. (j/k :) Yeah, i've seen/heard the arguements that were started in the 70's et al. I'm glad we see eye to eye on the whole door thing. Don't go out of your way to do it. Makes you (or your SO) look incredibly stupid :)
Eraser_, this is hardly the "latest craze" -- feminists who were around in the early 1970s have written that it was a big controversy then as to whether accepting the politeness implied that you were too weak to open doors for yourself or not. Me, I have no problem with anyone opening the door for me if they get there first, but I'll open it for them if I do. (I once had a boyfriend who would do all sort of running and dodging around me to get there first, which seemed like overkill.)

My rule is that it's sexism if you would treat all members of one sex a certain way, but never any of the other sex; it's politeness (or rudeness if it's a negative treatment) if you would treat people of all sexes that way; it's flirtation if you would only treat attractive/interesting members of the appropriate sex that way.

When Scott Adams put Tina the Tech Writer in his strip (Dilbert) many, many women wrote in complaining that she was a "negative female stereotype". So he added "Antina", a muscular female with "male" interests and personality.
People complained that he was making fun of lesbians.

In Seven Years of Highly Defective People, Adams points out that in one strip, nobody complained that Wally was acting like a stereotypical man.

Also, in the sunday strip where Wally stole Dilbert's lunch, and as punishment, Dilbert, anticipating the theft, had laced the lunch with female hormones turning Wally into a female. A lot of females wrote in complaining that he was implying that being female is a punishment.

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