Thursday, May 19, 2011

Men and women should listen to each other a little more

There are two sets of messages being sent in the media which are being ignored.

1) What you wear might put you at risk of provoking an unwanted response. ( Canadian policeman to female students ).

2) Rape is very serious and you're not to judge the impact of such crimes. ( Any female leader writer in today's papers responding to Ken Clarke's comments on R5 yesterday- eg whoever did thought for the day on #R4Today ).

What do these two points have in common ? Each sex is trying to pass on a message to the other that is being roundly ignored, wilfully so in at least one of the cases.

We know that the human imperative to reproduce creates very strong urges, emotions and occupies a large amount of peoples thoughts. Any failure of higher level control ( ie civilised behaviour ) can have very unpleasant results.

Really we should listen to each other and hear what is being said instead of deliberately taking offence and seeing something as an opportunity to advance our agendas.

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