h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why do people who go to the vending machine always take 5 minutes deciding what they want and then get what they always get, feeding in 35 1 pence coins.

I get there, know what I want, put in 10p, 20p and 5p and it's all over in seconds.

On the same lines, and I'm not being sexist, how come a woman will not begin looking for her purse in her bag until the assistant has told her the amount? this is invariably a 5 minute task and holds up everyone behind. It's not as though it's a total surprise that she is going to have to hand over cash is it?

If you had said 'some woman' you would not be being sexist,merely observing a true fact; but by saying 'a woman' it implies all women, which is sexist and untrue.

Maybe it's just the experiences that I have, but it seems to be most women! A friend of mine is the worst offender that I have ever known. She will hand over the goods in a store, see something else she likes near by, wander off and leave the poor shop assistant waiting for her to return to pay. Of course she then has to mooch about for her purse. It's so embarassing.

In one of my many disguises I sometimes sell cushions at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre,London and I deal with a very large number of people each time, around 300-450 each time and I would say the not having your money out applies to about 5% of all customers, of which 4% are women, so obviously you are making sweeping generalisations about half of the population based on your experience of one - this is sexist. Also illogical which gives lie to another sexist myth....It is true that I do find it incredible that when you have queued up to buy an item, for at least a couple of minutes, whose price is clearly visible that some people do not have their purse out at least.

Oh, come on Androyd. There are many things that are said in jest re the sexes. i am always told by my female friends, and often hear female stand-up comics comment on the fact that men always leave the toilet seat up and the lid off the toothpaste. i don't take offence at that even though it is a sweeping generalisation. i have known my current girlfriend for 10 months and have only ever left the seat up twice in that time!!

I am dismayed at the way that this country is going down the totally PC path. Common sense should prevail but it doesn't. Only last week a job center in the west midlands banned a company from having an advert that sought a "hard working and enthusiastic individual". The job center said that it discriminated against disabled people. What, are they implying that disabled people are not hard working and enthusiastic? They are the ones that are discriminating.

On last nights evening news I saw an article about Stockport college. They have banned their students and staff from using 50 words. One of them is history because it is apparently sexist. They can't use the word crazy because it is offensive to people with mental problems. I am sorry but I feel that people are too sensitive for their own good these days. It really is a ridiculous situation.

Last week a female police officer (you can't call them WPC's these days as it's offensive, even thought that is what they are) was awarded £1,000,000 in compensation for sexist remarks that were made to her. Victims of crime get bugger all. If you loose a limb as a result of a crime you get £50,000. Hurt feelings are worth more than a limb?

I'm not having a go at you androyd, but this topic of political correctness really does get my back up. I am not a person that goes around insulting people. I understand that it does not matter what your intentions are, it is how they are perceived that matters. In my original post I made that comment that I wasn't being sexist because I thought that some people would perceive it to be so. I thought the guide was supposed to be a humorous place, where you could post your thoughts.

And on that old chestnut of women drivers. I know that there are at least two bad women drivers out there because I taught them to drive

Well you see I actually work with issues of equality on a day to day basis - when this all first started it was called 'Equal Opportunities' and was all about trying to treat everyone equally, thinking about use of language and sweeping generalisations. Now after a few years of equal opportunity awareness growing, stories first started appearing in the media about how in the US these issues were being taken to ridiculous extremes and before you knew it everyone was talking about 'political correctness' as if it had been an english idea and was used to roll back some of the gains made previously. Equal opportunities was never supposed to be about 'banning' certain words - I have heard of some places banning the use of the terms white coffee and black coffee on the grounds that it is rascist!! Similarly to ban the word 'hardworking' is equally stupid and only serves to put the cause of equal opportunities , that is equality of opportunity for all people, into disrepute. From the outset there have been people who have sought to ridicule the whole process by deliberately misunderstanding what is meant.
Anyone who starts by saying: I don't mean to be sexist but...or I don't mean to be whatever but, actually mean the complete opposite. Now justifying your actions by saying well women accuse men of stuff in general terms is like saying two wrongs make a right.
Women are actually just a likely to use prejuducial language as men, if anything in recent years more so, since a lot of men have been forced to think about their attitudes whereas women haven't. Are you one of those seeking to bring equality of opportunity into disrepute or do you think that everyone should get an equal chance in life? There is still a massive differential between women's and men's pay despite years of equal pay legislation. And by the way, H2G2 is meant to be informative, humourous but not offensive. I like to think I have a good sense of humour - read some of my other forum posts - but I don't find overtly sexist comments funny just sad. For the record I am a man who works in a predominantly and traditionally female job area and I have suffered more than a little from women making sexist comments about men. How you phrase comments does matter - does your girlfriend mind about your comments about her on a public forum? Have you actually asked or are you making an assumption? I do genuinely want to know. I hate political correctness but not equal opportunities, how about yourself?

Words can be interpreted in many ways, and I always find electronic communication to be more dangerous than the spoken word. I am not seeking to bring equality of opportunity into disrepute and I do not believe that two wrongs make a right.

I am not a very wordy person. I am hopeless at conveying my thoughts and ideas. Since the age of 10 I have been a very technical person. I had my first computer 17 years ago, played with Lego, Meccano, Chemistry sets and electronics kits. I was always experimenting. The art of writing and conversation passed me by. You said in one sentence what I tried to say by saying that women also make comments about men in general. "Women are actually just as likely to use prejudicial language as men" would have been more appropriate, but as I said, I am hopeless at putting across my thoughts.

I honestly didn't intend for my original posting, or any of my subsequent comments to be offensive or sexist. I actually believe that it's not the words that you use, but the context in which you use them, and the way that you say them. If we had met in a supermarket queue, and I had turned and made the comment about women never having their purses ready, then I would hope that from the way I said it you would realise that it was an off the cuff remark, and was not intended as a sexist comment. The mistake I made was to publish to a flat medium, with no intonation.

I have no prejudice what-so-ever towards anyone for any reason. I was the victim of bullying at school because my mother was not married, I wore glasses, I was short, I had a facial twitch, I was cerebral and not sporty. I had an appalling time. But I believe that I have become a better person for those experiences. I don't think of people in terms of sex, race, nationality, sexuality or religion. We are all human beings.

I do believe in equal opportunities. I have never understood the pay differential between men and women, or why jobs tend(ed) to be gender based. I work in IT, and although there are some women programmers out there, it is a predominantly male domain. There is absolutely no reason for it to be that way. At least in IT there is equality in pay. I can only think that it's because of the gender roles that we are imposed on us as children.

I don't know what your childhood experiences were, but when I was young girls were expected to play with dolls and wendy houses and have an interest in horses. They all wanted to be nurses when they grew up. Boys had action men, built tree houses, played football and had lego, meccano and chemistry sets and wanted to be a spaceman, train driver or fireman. Any girl that broke the norm was labelled a tomboy and a boy would be ridiculed by his peers, and elders if he took an interest in the traditional girl hobbies.

From my own observations I think that these stereotypical gender roles are gradually being eroded. Many of my childhood friends now have children and I see very little evidence of gender alignment. Modern toys are gender neutral, for example Playstations, PC's, Pokemon et al and I think that within a couple of more generations sexism will be (hopefully) a concept from the past.

I don't work with issues of equality, but I think that the problem that those who do face is that the older generations are more reluctant to change their ideas and opinions. It is the same with racism. Again, this is a generalisation but it is based on my experience, but I find that people of my mum's generation (she is 59) tend to be racist (my mum isn't). People of my generation (27) don't tend to be, or is that just because me and my peer group have a public school background and I don't experience it?

Because of the mobility that we have experienced over the past few decades, with relatively cheap air and sea travel, our society is now multicultural. The younger generations have grown up with neighbours from different cultures and nationalities. This is the norm for them and they are less likely to be bigoted.

I think that some of the equality policies that I hear about are actually bring equal opportunity into disrepute. Why do the police and military have to have targets on achieving recruitment from ethnic minorities. Isn't this discrimination against the ethnic majorities? Surely a person should be recruited on the merits of their ability? What if a candidate isn't up to the job but is recruited because the Chief Constable would otherwise be slated for not achieving the targets set?

I am glad to see that you hate political correctness too. I know that none of my female friends feel oppressed by the use of masculine gendered words, such as manhole, chairman, gingerbread man or history, but I also know that my female friends are probably not representative of all females. It's the same with race. Do black people really get offended by the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep? And I am sorry, but a coffee that is the colour black, is a black coffee. I think that a lot of political correctness is actually counter productive.

I don't know what your job is, and why you work with equality issues on a daily basis, but I would imagine that you have a difficult time trying to change the thinking of the older generations. I hope that you don't think that I am being ageist, but people are very reluctant to change. As I said above, I think that the younger generations are being raised to be more understanding towards equality and other peoples feelings and within a few more generations maybe people will treat each other equally.

It's refreshing to have a sensible conversation with someone on the Internet and I would be interested to hear more about what you do and your experiences. I hope that I haven't made myself appear to be more bigoted than you may already think I am. As I said at the start, I may have been careless with my words, and this text is open to your interpretation and may not be what I intended. I look forward to reading your reply tomorrow.

Nice reply- but you never expected this when you joined h2g2 .
I am a nursery teacher working with 3-4 year old children. I am the only man out of a staff of nine inthe unit and one of only 8 men in a staff of 40+. When I trained there were 47 women and me on the Early Years Course. There were 9 men out of 150 in the whole year group.
THats when you know you're in a minority. Less than 5% of all nursery teachers are male. I love the job, but frequently come across female prejudicial statements. The way I first came to terms with sexist language was to say to myself, if someone said that about me would I like it? I often say to women just think about that in reverse and they realise quite how biased they are. Of course there is the arguement that says that because women have historically lacked power they are just giving it back but I say again that two wrongs don't make a right. SOme women don't want equality, they actually want women to take over the dominant role from men and that isn't equality either. Phew !! Heavy stuff but important its late - can we continue tomorrow when I'll have more time?

I have a two friends who have just completed their teacher training courses. One of them is male and will be starting in a primary school in Wolverhampton in September, and the other hasn't found a place yet but fingers crossed she will soon.

So you are in the ideal position to make a difference. You have said that you encounter equality issues on a daily basis. Is that amongst staff or the children?

Both amongst staff and pupils. It's important to encourage young children to try out ideas which they otherwise might not try. What I find scary is that by 3 many children are very clear about what is a 'girl' thing and a 'boy' thing. We always have to consider EO when looking at all aspects of our practice, are children using all areas equally or are girls or boys dominating. Sometimes it's about allowing quieter characters, be they boys or girls to get a fair go at certain things such as trike riding or on the computers. There are obviously some innate differences between the sexes something that's become clearer as I've got older (and spent more time in predominantly female environments as well as seeing two children of my own grow up)but EO is only about equality of access.
You made a point earlier about 'quotas' in the police force resulting in unsuitable candidates entering. If you have a basically white rascist police force as we do in this country how are you to change this. It's hard enough to get potential recruits to come forward but if the desire on the part of senior officers isn't there either, then it's not going to change and hasn't over the last twenty years or so.
I don't believe that's because there aren't suitable candidates from the ethnic minorities. I mean it's not exactly brain-surgery is it?
The only way is to force senior officers to fill quotas which at least is likely to ensure suitable candidates do get appointed, let's face it judging by the amount of court cases against the police which are successful it would seem that a fair number of unsuitable white ones get in currently. Most black people I've talked to about this would say that in an area where black people are under-represented all they would want is that where there are two equal candidates then give consideration to the ethnic makeup of the workforce to ensure it reflects the community it serves. That is the way to make all people feel included. If you look back in history I believe that our country has a proud and ancient tradition of assimilating other peoples form the Romans, Angles, Saxons etc to the Normans. The funny thing is that white rascists draw an arbitrary line in history at the Norman conquest and conveniently ignore what happened before that and say - this is what english means. Well I firmly believe that no rascist argument stands up to logical examination anyway which is probably why I'm not a Nazi.