The off-side rule

I recently had a rather public run-in with an old school friend. She had posted a photograph on Facebook of a mother and child behaving in a way that most of us would find socially inappropriate. But the exchange of comments on the photograph offended me far more than the subject matter of the photograph. The implication was that, as members of a different racial group, these people were in fact, subhuman, which explained the behaviour. I guess I realised that some people still held onto those archaic, offensive and unfounded views, but I was surprised to find them among relatively intelligent people. People I thought I knew. And stated publicly, to boot.

I expressed my objection. My son asked me why I didn't just leave it and 'walk away', but what you tolerate, you endorse, I reckon. I have since walked away, but I simply had to make an opposing view heard first. I thought I was being the voice of something closer to reason, but I was advised by the old school friend that I was making a fool of myself, and indeed, much mockery of me ensued, including invitations to try to live with people who behaved in this way.

Then we find ourselves dealing with outdated sexist remarks about female officials in sporting contests. The online discussions abound, ranging from shoulder shrugging, to outspoken objection from women to 'how can you judge an offside from the kitchen' (I kid you not).

The original comments were actually rather laughable in the light of the fact that the English women's football team enjoys far greater success than their male counterparts. The women's rugby and cricket teams have also shown themselves to be forces to be reckoned with.

When I posted a link on my Facebook page to the newspaper article linked to above, one Facebook friend mentioned his own objection to a current advertisement from Boots. The ad shows two women with streaming colds meeting in the street. They update each other on their incredibly hectic schedules and then one explains that she's just had to pop out and get some medicine for her husband who is in bed with a cold, poor thing. They part company on this note. Back to their superwoman routines. It seems this advert may have gone one step too far for male viewers, and I can't say I blame them.

The campaign started a few years back with the theme tune 'Here Come the Girls' and it took a humorous look at the different approaches of the two genders to things like the office 'secret Santa' and Christmas party. Now that it has spread into life in general, and the men aren't being painted in a very flattering light. I guess Boots has identified that their customer demographic is overwhelmingly female and has decided to play to that.

This is what has been called 'reverse discrimination' (which is in itself a discriminatory term, in my view). And it helps nobody's cause. Having been subjected to discrimination for so very long, one would hope that people would not subject others to treatment they found unpleasant. But it seems we have a long way to go before we acquire the sort of grace shown by Nelson Mandela on his release from prison and his appointment as President.

I guess we're still off-side. We still have a lot to learn.

Caster Semenya: my 2p worth

In the furore following the news that Caster Semenya possesses the external genitalia of a woman but internal testes instead of a uterus or ovaries, I would just like to make my views known. Whether or not they make any difference remains to be seen. But one of the points of social media is that they serve as an aggregation of many views. Mine are as valid as anyone else's.

The South African government is making protests about the whole incident being both racist and sexist. This is a view supported by many South Africans in the various discussion forums on this topic.

I do not see this issue as being racist. Track events at international level are currently dominated by black people (I am told that this can be attributed to a genetic predisposition towards heightened fast twitch something or other). Semenya has not been singled out because of her race. The woman who came second is also black. She is also African. It is true, she is from a different African country (Kenya), but I don't think that would make a difference to anyone who was being racist about this. So if Semenya is stripped of her title, it will not further anyone's racist cause.

With regard to the sexism aspect...

If we want to play the sexist card, then we need to decide where the line is going to be drawn and that takes us into very grey territory. Is it sexist to say that men can't run in women's races? If so, then there needs to be just one 800m race in which men and women compete against each other. That day may come, but for now, there would be no women in that event. If then, we agree that it is right ot separate the two, we need to have a definition of what constitutes each gender. A line needs to be drawn somewhere. I think many people have been taken by surprise to learn that gender is far more of a continuum than they had previously imagined.

It is tragic for Semenya and any others like her that a quirk of nature puts them outside of the definition of woman (if indeed it does - this still has to be decided). As far as I know, no-one is vilifying the poor girl, or accusing her of any wrongdoing.

Let us look for a moment at a parallel situation: in the paralympics, athletes compete based on the extent of their (dis)ability. So an athlete who is missing just one foot would not be allowed to compete on level terms against an athlete who is missing both legs. Through no fault of his own, the former has attributes that provide an unfair advantage over the latter.

I am deeply sorry for Semenya. I think she has conducted herself with dignity throughout what must have been an embarrassing ordeal. To learn about this anomaly in the full glare of the world's press must be harrowing indeed. Not only that, but she now probably faces a future in which there is no event in which she can compete in the sport she loves. She is too much of a woman to be able to achieve anything remarkable against men, but she is too much of a man to be allowed to run against women.

And there's nothing she can do about it. If that doesn't tug at your heart strings, I don't know what would.

Women in charge? Consider all options!

Euan Semple shared a link via Twitter to this post by Leon Benjamin this morning, which cites (but does not link to) material by Paul Harris and opines that the world should be compelled to put women in charge because we are apparently

more honest, more loyal, more caring, more thoughtful, more trustworthy, and much less dangerous

He goes on to point out how, if women had been running the show, there would have been

no Hitler. There is no Mussolini. There is no Napoleon. There is no Hirohito. There is no Attila. There is no Genghis Khan. There is no Inquisition. There are no Crusades. There is no Robert Mugabe. There is no Ariel Sharon. There is no Stalin. There is no George Bush; Wouldn't that be a safer and happier world?

Well, this is all well and good, but, if we're going to consider the extremes of one gender, we must weigh them up against the extremes of the other. Not every women is a warm motherly, altruistic, nurturing type. Of course, there are not a great many examples of women in positions of extreme power, so this is tricky. However, there is Jezebel. And would you really want to be governed by Imelda Marcos? Let's remember that Margaret Thatcher was behind a time of great unhappiness among blue-collar workers in the UK and is unlikely to have won personality of the month award in the Falklands. Let's consider names like Catherine the (ahem) Great, Bloody Mary and the less-than-merciful Isabella of Spain.

Have a look at this (admittedly hatemongering) site, which mentions these and a few others I hadn't heard of.

In case it seems as if I'm arguing against the case for women in positions of power, I am not. However, I am arguing against the current fashion for a blanket male=bad/old fashioned/outdated; female= good/wise/the way to go.

All humans are flawed, and neither gender has the march over the other. People should be elected to positions of power on their merit, not their gender.

Oh, and one last point to consider in the light of this quote in Benjamin's post:

I am proposing a political movement whose sole purpose is to convince all the nations of the world to change their laws so that only women can hold political office.

Sarah Palin.

I rest my case.

It's just hair!

As so often in the past, today's Calvin and Hobbes cartoon sits well with me.

My younger son has HAIR. A lot of it. It hangs way past his shoulders in a glorious cascade that he keeps scrupulously clean and conditioned. People have given up trying, now, but they used to ask us ceaselessly "When are going to make that child get his hair cut?"

One day, as yet another person asked me this question, I snapped.

"It's hair, okay? It's just hair. It's not pornography. It's not drugs. It's not vandalism. It's not theft. It's not violence. It's hair. And it's his hair."

Do we sometimes look over the faces of our learners and decide how they're going to be, based on their physical appearance or the clothes they choose to wear? How is that different from racism, sexism or any other of those isms we're trying to rise above?