Speaking as a woman who is most decidely not in a good mood this morning (and in the hopes of forestalling some wisenheimer potentially adding fuel to the fire, this is not the kind which is gender-related) -- I have a bit of a bone to pick with this thread and some of the responses therein. One of my uncles, who's an ex-fighter pilot, persists in sending me jokes which criticize and disparage women. I recently confronted him and informed him that even though I know he isn't deliberately trying to insult me -- I'm just one name on his e-mailing list, after all -- it's sometimes hard for me not to feel offended by his humor. I am, after all, a woman -- being related to him doesn't change this so by belittling women as a group, he's indirectly belittling me. When I said this, he indicated that some of this humor is in response to male-bashing jokes...but I've never sent him anything like that, because it's just as bad. Admittedly, his sense of humor is somewhat par for the course among ex-fighter jocks -- but the fact remains that such jokes and comments don't exactly encourage the sexes to respect one another, and can be hurtful. Despite the fact that he knows these jokes offend me, he continues to send them. This has started me wondering whether my feelings matter to him at all, or if in fact he might not at some level feel hostility towards me. I'm a believer in the notion that humor is sometimes a mask for hostility -- a guerilla weapon for someone who doesn't feel able to acknowledge their hostility directly ina frontal attack (and to my way of thinking, "I was only joking" has to be one of the worst excuses for cruelty that I've ever heard). I'm sometimes tempted to turn the tables on him and fight fire with fire -- but knowing him as I do, I have every reason to believe that he'd only rip my head off and jump down my throat (to some extent, he'd have a point). For that matter, how would people have responded to me if I had started a similar thread about men? I can imagine at least one person would've whacked me with the ever-handy LART -- and frankly, I would have deserved it.

I won't pretend that women are easy to understand -- we're not. Hell, I can't say that I even understand myself although Diety knows it hasn't been for lack of trying! If I can't understand myself, what chance do you think you have?!? Certainly, men are a complete and utter mystery to me as well...but at least at this point in my life, I don't intepret that to mean that the fault must lie with them. It seems to me that at the bottom of a lot of man-bashing/woman-bashing humor lies a lot of resentment and pain -- maybe if people spent more time confronting and dealing with that honestly, we'd end up spending less time trying to understand one another and more time respecting each other.

Just my two cents' worth, for what it's worth...I'll get down off the soapbox now.