Y'know those old rellies you have that're always saying racist, sexist, and homophobic shit? I don't mean the ones that are right out there — the "shoot the poofters" crowd; I'm talking about the ones who probably had radically lefty views fifty years ago, but the world has shifted underneath them, and now those views are somewhere else on the map entirely.
Well, I feel like I can sense the world shifting underneath me.
Apparently there's a movement amongst some young folks to get rid of the concept of the gender binary. I'm guessing it's a movement that's been around for ages, but from what I've heard over the last year or so, it's starting to pick up steam. I'm hearing that in parts of Scandinavia now, it's common for protesters to take down or cover up signs indicating male/female toilets and change-rooms. In Sweden, there's apparently some debate about publications replacing han(masculine) & hon(feminine) with the "artificial" word hen(which most older Swedes think sounds dumb). I hear that on the West coast of USA, there's a push for unis to drop gendered pronouns like he/she/him/her/his/hers in favour of xe/xem/xyr.
And you know what? I think they've got a point.
Telling women to use this room and men to use that room is a form of sexist segregation. It's not really that different from telling blacks to go here and whites to go there. It also makes things difficult for anyone who doesn't fit neatly into such a rigid paradigm, ie: intersex, trans-gender, & gender-fluid people. And in that light, it seems to me that the simplest and most sensible course of action would be to scrap the whole idea of separation and just make everything unisex right?
… riiiight …
See, here's the thing … it doesn't matter how much I rationalise it in my head, I can't seem to change the way I FEEL about this. I like having segregated toilets; I don't want to get changed with the blokes; and just like those cantankerous old Swedes, I think xe, xem, & xyr sound kind of dumb. What's more, I have serious doubts about whether these feelings are ever likely to change. Which brings me to the uncomfortable conclusion that I am, and may forever be …
IN FAVOUR OF SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION.
My apologies to the younger generation and whomever else this negatively affects. I don't know what else I can say.
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...and I don't want to be peeing in a stall next to a man taking a big ol' man dump either.
So yeah, if that makes me sexist, then I AM.
I suppose it's something you'd get used to eventually, but in the meantime, I imagine it'd make things horribly uncomfortable.
In any event Suze, how's things with you?
Not bad. Still need a new job (still need a new direction).
Investment property auctions this weekend (wish me luck!). We want out - turns out we're not emotionally suited to being landlords, and would like to put our money to something else.
Have been sick and had to take three days off work which has resulted in the ignition of my protestant work ethic/guilt gland. Hubby's comment was "wow your mum really did a number on you didn't she?" and I know he's right - I should not feel guilty for calling in sick (when I clearly was, and still am) but I did ruin someone else's weekend because of it, and I feel bad for that.
Had a wonderful holiday in Vanuatu. I should blog about that. Yeah.
Good luck on the job & the auction front. I don't blame you for getting out of the landlord game. I've known people who have had their investment properties all but demolished by shitty tenants. Even good tenants seem to be a constant niggle.
Best wishes on the health front too. Also, I don't know what your work environment is like, but if you normally have face-to-face contact with your colleagues, you should feel satisfied that you didn't go in and infect them with whatever you've got (assuming it's something infectious). Hopefully that should help to ease your guilty conscience.
How did Vanuatu look? Aren't they still rebuilding after a giant fucking storm tore the place apart?
Men's toilets smell bad. I don't want any part of that
I'm actually somewhat glad I'm not alone on this one Squib.
I need to come back and read this properly and comment. And I shall a bit later.
Vanuatu was mostly okay. Espirito Santo Island was unaffected, and green and stunning. Efate was half washed away on the eastern side (seriously, we drove around the island one day - it's a small island - and there were spots where the road was just gone and had not been repaired because the people that built it in the first place were the Americans and currently all the aid money that's coming in is being used to rebuild people's homes and feed them as all the fruit trees they usually depend on were blown over. The trees are starting to produce leaves again, but it'll be a couple of years before it's lush and green as it was last time we visited. The traditional thatching they would normally use for their homes also has to grow back before they can put roofs back on, though they prefer corrugated iron for the purpose, that costs a lot of money and they just need to repair their shelters. Luckily it does not get cold there, by our standards, so there's that at least. We did not travel to the south and Tanna Island, which apparently was the worst affected. I'm sure it's pretty bad there. There were a couple of villages we drove through on Efate where I said to hubby that I just wanted to throw money out the window at them because it looked like they could really use it. It's been 26 years since there was a cyclone there, and I hope it's just as long before there's another.
Poor buggers; sounds as bad as what I'd heard, although it's good to hear that some places were relatively unaffected. It's easy to talk about how long this'll take to regrow or that'll take to rebuild, but in the meantime people still have to eat and work and live, kids still have to learn and grow up. Yeah, I hope it's a long long time before they cop anything else like that again.
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