to object to the t-shirt worn by shop assistant today...

[margoandjerry]

In the dry cleaners this morning. Perfectly pleasant young man serving - he was polite and everything. His t-shirt said "Doggy style. The bitches love me". Why is this ok? It isn't ok. I'm pissed off.

MARP would, of course, be spelled out in full.....

bobbledunk, It is the OPs business If she is a paying customer and he is employed to treat customers with respect. Its innapropriate

It's the OP's business if she is a human being who cares even remotely about how paople treat each other!

Sorry I've not been back since. I'm very excited to have inspired such a lengthy discussion on MN. My threads often die a death

But I do find this line of argument rubbish: "yabu to have nothing better to do with your time than be offended by someone's t shirt" for the following reasons:

1. I haven't exactly devoted my life to this issue. I posted on a message board. I spent longer on the one hit wonders thread but didn't get flamed for wasting my life on such a trivial issue. It is a place for discussion surely.
2. I do think public disrespect for women should be tackled. I do actually think that issue is worth ten minutes of anyone's time.
3. I'm also no fan of the casual sexualisation of society. That explicit references to sexual positions should be a normal and acceptable choice of decoration for your t-shirt to wear to work I think is sad and contributes to some of the problems we have in society. Again, I think it's something that merits discussion. Happy to have a discussion on that with anyone who doesn't think I should just get a life because it's just such a pathetically trivial subject
4. As someone very reasonably said, multiple times, we would probably all spend the time objecting to an equally racist t shirt. I think it's important to object to sexism too .

Anyway, my extremely busy and full life which I spend tackling sexism, racism, discussing Syria and poverty absolutely equally means I haven't had time before now to come back and read the responses. I have to go back in the week to pick up stuff but if the nice man (who I don't think is the owner) is in there, I might say something.

The additional wrinkle in this story is that the dry cleaners is in a predominantly muslim area - I imagine most of the staff are muslim and 90% of the customers are Arabs. All their signs are in English and Arabic. They have a sideline as a sort of travel agents, running trips to Mecca. So it's doubly odd.

I do wonder if there is an age divide on this thread. At the risk of doing the "I'm old enough to be your mother thing", I've noticed that the people objecting are posters I recognise as being of a certain age. That's not to say that one generation has a point that is more valid than another, but maybe the connotations of the word "bitch" are different for younger people. Maybe they have taken ownership of the word and are using it in a more positive sense, in the same way tha black people can use n....... between themselves without causing offence in a way that I, as a white woman, couldn't.

Those straws are far too teeny to hold anything up I'm afraid, mardy!

I have a 16 year old. "Bitch" means exactly the same to her as it did and does to me ( I just asked her).

2nd thread I've read suspecting journalist of whip up thread
so what
it's public forum,visible posts, no one compels anyone to post
there is a peculiar mn conspiracy theory of Ooer journalist!that pops up frequently. not sure why some of you are so bothered or willing to j 'accuse

Not bothered. Just a bit pissed off that someone would start a thread solely for that purpose when this is supposed tonbe q forum where realy people tqlk to each other about real issues.There are special areas on here for journalists.

I'm confused. Who might be a journalist? I'm definitely not one but I don't think anyone meant me.

it's a mn preoccupation,oh journalist
given posts are visible,reproducible and can be posted to fb and twitter a journalist is only one of potential many who can forward story on to others. and given mn posters discuss newspapers and Telly, and daily mail is linked numerous times a day...well can't see the issue

media requests is the formal research stuff or looking for participants and something substantive,not a cut n paste quote

I'm sorry- I might have been a bit hasty. I was cross about an article in today's Observer that exactly mirrored along recent thread. And the are several threads today about this type of normalised sexist/sexual language.

Sorry- pressed post too soon. And there are some posters on this thread who seem too stupid to be real, and and others that are so very stereotyped that I had a suspicion the thread might be a manufactured one. I didn't notice that you were a regular poster, OP. I'm sorry. And also sorry that the stupid and the stereotypes must be genuine too!

oh no don't worry. I've appreciated your posts on this, actually. I was really surprised at the first few posts being so blase about this. I work in financial services but I would love to be a journalist just to have a mouthpiece for things like this.

OK, changes in use of the word bitch aside, I still wonder there is a bit of an age gap on this thread.

But isn't that doubly depressing? That young women think this sort of thing is OK when the previous generation fought so hard to make people aware?

OK, changes in use of the word bitch aside, I still wonder there is a bit of an age gap on this thread.

I think there is a "sweat the small stuff" gap, dunno if it's age related.

I wonder if it's experience based, if I think of stuff i've had to deal with in life I just can't get all frothy about trivia like this.

god youre overstating it
an ideological war,yes
real bloodshed no
and I'm pretty nonplussed on the tshirt as I said says more about him.and no i dont feel compromised or put in my place in the least

Oh, Ffs. Nobody's getting "frothy". Nobody's saying this is the same as a "real war"

What we are saying is that this is an example of how there is a low level disparagement of women throughout society, and to find it acceptable is saying you don't mind. It's not life or death. It's not drought or famine. But it does say something about the society our daughters (and our sons) are growing up in. And we should be making that society better for them, not worse. And I, for one, don't wqnt my daughter to grow up in a society where it's ok to characterise women as "bitches". Or my son to grow up thinking that it's OK for him to use word and concepts like thqt, becaue if these ideqs aren't challenged then he'll think they ar acceptable. And if you do think it's OK, then, frankly I think you are short sighted and wrong.

right,you've got a soup of generalizations and indignation going on there
what I'm prepared to accept as face to face interaction,or the language I find acceptable is markedly different from some duffus in a bad taste tshirt. and nor is it indicative of a slackness o ideology it just means I'm not bothered nor do I fell put upon by what this chap wore

Typos apart , seeker sums up the issues brilliantly in her last post.

your subjective opinion maybe it's wrong to be nonplussed
but by no measure are you necessarily correct in that assertion,and I don't feel you represent me nor can you speak for me so assuredly

I come back to the question I asked earlier but nobody will answer. Is there anything that it is not acceptable to wear on a T shirt?

Sorry about the typos- it is impossible to type fast and accurately on an iPad!

But scottishmummy, in your last post, you've said that you don't find this language acceptable, but because it's on a T shirt belonging to some loser, rather than in articulated conversation, it's OK then?