Woman Coaching Boys V

[Scrapper1]

Originally Posted by rainmaker

There isn't CLEARLY no offense intended in Mark's joke. It's just not that clear, Scrappy. I know Mark pretty well, and I dont' feel the joke is clear at all. So how could it possibly be clear to Rita?

Even if the joke is unclear, the "offensive" part is non-existent. As I tried to point out above, if it's not a joke, it makes no sense at all. It's not insulting, derogatory or offensive or ANYTHING. If you don't think it's funny, then it's NOTHING -- and CLEARLY not offensive.

Rita was very blunt about her opinion, but I dont' think she's lumping all men together. She might very well have been surprised that it didn't offend me, too. COnsidering that I'm on this board every day and she had to know that I saw it. Maybe that surprise and accusation was against me too?

You are bending over backwards in order NOT to be offended by Rita's comment. Do you honestly believe, even for one second, that Rita's "you all" comment is directed at you? Really? She is saying that there are derogatory comments about women and the men can't even see them. We're just too emotionally blunted and conditioned not to value women to be able to discern good-natured and well-intentioned needling from the obvious misogyny contained in those posts.

You're working really hard at not being offended by Rita's comments. That's fine. Once again, my problem is not that she thinks we're too stupid to see the offensiveness of Mark's comments. My problem is the fact that she insults an entire gender while being offended at someone insulting an entire gender. There's a word for that, which I have very carefully avoided so that I don't inflame the thread even more.

[rainmaker]

BITS, I know that Mark is almost always off-the-wall. That's why I didn't respond to what he said, even though at first glance it bugged me. I figured that although it looked obnoxious, I might be wrong, and there was no point in fighting about it. Rita obviously doesn't know Mark as well as I do, and doesn't have the perspective I do. She couldn't read the "wheels within wheels" type humor any better than I could, but she doesn't know him well enough to give him the benefit of the doubt.

All that to say, yea, I do see how it could look sexist even though I'm not sure I understand what he was trying to say.

Yup there's a lot of sexism out in the world, but while the sexism on this board is quite a bit less, as a rule, it's not "minimal". I got tired of arguing about it a couple of years ago. It's like trying to teach a... nope, that's not a good way to say it. It's just pointless to argue, because the ones who already get it are the only ones who get it. Rita just isn't there yet.

And scrappy, yea, I do think she might have been aiming at me. Why would she say "you-all" if she didn't mean to include Karin and me? Rita's not thin-skinned as a rule, it doesn't appear to me, so I'm guessing she wouldn't have hesitated to offend all "men" if that's what she'd meant.

All that being said, I gotta admit, this isn't the turn I expected this thread to take. It started off so well!