Quote:Whenever a situation like this pops up, I think about the South Park episode that focused on "Ginger Kids". In that episode, Cartman gives a speech about how Ginger Kids are evil, how they have no soul, and are basically devilspawn. Kyle gets ticked off at it and decides to debunk the foolishness designed as hate-speech that was Cartman's speech. 

 

He does his research, prepares a speech and presents his argument based on facts and scientific data. When he's done, the teacher replies with "Thank you Kyle. It was kind of dry and science-y for my tastes but I guess it'll do." Essentially, the teacher didn't want to deal with having to think about the facts regarding a situation but was annoyed that he would have to put forth effort instead of someone just telling him how to feel.

 

Now, this was a tv show and meant to be taken lightly but it's something that happens more and more and more. People aren't willing to look at facts and give true introspection into some really horrible behavior. Sexism happens, I see it every day and I'm certain a lot of other people do as well. As does racism, ageism, and a bunch of other things but we're just used to "that's how things are" instead of "I need to help change things to how they should be."

 

I'm not certain what my point in all this was, but it's kind of crappy that the folks who want to "go back to the way things were" when they were pretty horrible for a lot of people are the ones who get the traction in all of this. 

Deacon - I'm picking up what you're putting down and I like the outside the box analogy.

 

Saying it's 'only a shirt' or the 'women need to change how they're dressing' to make the changes happen is akin to the "she deserved it because she was flirty".... I'll leave that alone because we're delving into a much broader subject than a sexist shirt. And lets not kid ourselves, it was a low key sexist shirt even if it was 'just a shirt'. 

 

JJ - you can't create a topic and then think it ridiculous that not everyone agrees with your take. I may have seen this story and not taken the time to create a topic on it, but you did. The fact of the matter is, as seemingly harmless as the childs shirt appears, it doesn't dismiss the fact that there are people up in arms because it's just another example of feeding into the issues we STILL face. Racism exists, sexism exists, age-ism, as Deacon pointed out, DOES exist. No matter how unimportant you feel this particular example may be, these discriminatory issues exist and to deny any of it is to be wantonly ignorant. 

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