Reply #27: The strong, intelligent, feminist women I know... [View All]

[FlyingTiger]

...who give the same criticisms of Hillary that are routinely decried as sexist on this site apparently need a pamphlet or something. Someone should inform them that logic and reason don't have a place in their thought process; if someone, somewhere is offended by what they believe is sexism, then, by golly, it is.

I actually do believe that I have a bit of decision-making power in this whole process, because I have a knack for the logical side of life, and sexism has its roots in a very basic logical premise - that an action is rooted in prejudice against a particular gender. If I can actually find evidence to support that premise, then, yes, it's sexist. If I see other reasons that that particular action, reasons that are completely unrelated to gender, then I don't make the ASSUMPTION that it actually is sexist. Obviously, I can't make choices for anyone else, but your sentence applies just as much to yourself as it does to me - just because someone is offended, doesn't actually mean sexism just happened.

The racism analogy is actually quite appropriate, because, as I hope you can acknowledge, the cry of "Racism!" erupts more often than it actually occurs. It's not about deciding what's "offensive" - every person has his/her own emotional reaction to everything they see and hear, and no one can decide for them what they will be offended by. It's about deciding what is actually affected by prejudice against a certain race.

As for the "there's no other explanation" line - it's not that people have posted those exact words. I doubt anyone here is that dumb. It's that people are sick of those who see some sort of judgment made about Hillary and loudly declare, "Look! It's SEXISM!" even though there are other explanations for what happened.

And, just for the record, the whole point of the "crying wolf" story is that it actually WAS the boy's fault that everyone became numb to his cries. It's a parable. There's not really anything to argue about it.