There's a LOT of people (me included) who've posted comments about The Wife/Missus/Ball&Chain etc. on here.
Not so many who make racist 'jokes', or post homophobic comments.
Maybe it's time to look in the mirror.
It’s a funny thing banter.
To take it away from sex for a moment, most integrated school I taught at was in Oadby, large Asian population but not split down racial lines for friendship groups like many schools I taught at. Very well integrated, very happy, a real model school for a multicultural society.
Huge amounts of race based piss taking at their own and other races. But good natured.
I’ve taught at schools where there’s the African corridor and the Polish corridor and the English corridor, schools where kids played black vs white football games at break.
Nothing in the open, but lots of resentment and hostility under the surface.
I think a community at ease can do things that would be abhorrent in another community. It’s hard to explain and I think about it a lot, but it makes hard and fast rules very hard to define.
Like all measures it’s a proxy for the unmeasurable isn’t it? The language policing isn’t what matters, the underlying respect does, but that’s far harder to foster and almost impossible to measure tangibly so we focus on what we can measure and identify.
How do we get all men to see women as fully formed people? I don’t know the answer but I’m not sure it’s policing jokes about the person they often love the most. Equally there’s some really unsettling attitudes sometimes on display that are hard to separate.
Like all equality I suppose it’s a long hard road with lots of exposure and empathy along the way. Doesn’t help the here and now though and easy to say when you’re in the dominant class.
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