Let's rewind for a moment and consider how this thread started and how it could have gone in a parallel universe.
paddoboy decided to post what he considered a throwaway "joke" at the expense of women. In the context of a discussion about aliens, he said "Must be a female Alien...can't make up her bloody mind!", complete with an emoticon with a tongue sticking out.
Clearly, this is a sexist comment, as well as a big FU to women in general (tongue stick out emoticon).
I pointed out that this was sexist, and explained why.
In a hypothetical parallel universe, paddoboy might have taken this on board, agreed that it was a poor "joke" in bad taste and actually offensive to women. He might have said "I'll think twice before posting that kind of thing again." He might have said "I didn't mean to offend and I apologise to everybody who was offended by my sexist remark." It could have ended there.
Instead, paddoboy decided to double down, not only trying to defend the "joke" as a bit of harmless fun, but then to bring in a whole lot of
other sexist behaviours which he
also tried to defend as his customary "banter". And here we are 330 posts later, with paddoboy angry and upset, yet stubbornly unrepentent.
The only argument that paddoboy has put up as to why these kinds of "jokes" or his inappropriate behaviours towards customer service people should be acceptable is that these are commonly seen in the circles in which he likes to operate. Everybody else he knows acts like this, apparently, so it must be fine for him to act like this as well. Of course, that's probably a lie. Probably he knows lots of people who
don't act like he does, which ought to at least prompt the question as to why they don't.
This thread is not
really about paddoboy. He's just a typical example of a man who feels entitled to harass women. His habitual harassment could possibly be viewed as being towards the low end of the scale of these things. Maybe he didn't even realise it was a problem before. But now he knows.
The question any reader of this thread should ask is this:
Is it desirable to live in a society in which behaviours like paddoboy's are accepted as commonplace, and which are regarded as things that women just need to suck up because "that's how men are"?
Imagine that some super-being is going to roll some dice that will determine whether you become an old white man in paddoboy's world or a young woman who has a bar job and who is obliged to deal with the likes of paddoboy and his mates. You get to say what the rules of this world will be before you are put in it, but you can't affect who you will be in this world. Would you agree to the "rule" that casual sexism (e.g. sexist misogynistic jokes) and casual harassment (e.g. sleazy behaviour from male customers) will be the norm in this world you're about to step into, or would you rather have a world in which those things won't occur (or will be sanctioned)? If, along with paddoboy, you choose the world in which sexism is the norm, how do you think you'll go if the dice dictate that you're the woman in paddo's bar?
The thing to realise, now, is that in reality we're not stuck in paddoboy's world. We can change the rules of
our world, although we cannot change our own roles in the world. We can, as a society, decide that casual sexism is unacceptable. We can decide to sanction sexist men. Or we can decide that paddoboy's world is just fine and dandy and let the sexism continue to run rampant.
Which world do you want?
