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Do women know when they're being sexist?

When I was first married and returned to work, over lunch a female colleague asked me why I wasn't wearing my wedding ring.

"You make your wife wear one. Why shouldn't you? What makes men think that can do these things?"

Even though newly married, I knew enough to wait until the diatribe stopped. Eventually, it did and was punctuated by the demand, "Well?"

"My wife doesn't like wedding rings for men. She didn't give me one."

In the delightful silence, I asked, "Who's being sexist now?"

I was reminded of this while watching an episode of "The Catch" - a series that should be much better than it is.

An Interpol agent asks the heroine (so memorable I've forgotten both the name of the character and the actress), "Are you okay?"

To which the less than grateful reply was, "Would you ask me that if I were a man?"

The guy looks sheepish, and the camera cuts away.

This flaccid pseudo-feminist sort of dialogue needs stamping on. Hard. It does the cause for alleged equality no good. Women deserve better, and this sort of drip drip feed into the male psyche needs to be done with much more intelligence.

When are we going to see a serious response to such questions? He should have responded, without apology, "Well, you're not a man, and if you were, you wouldn't be acting the way you are."

Only when the narrative improves will serious discourse become possible. Until then, it's simple metoo-ism.

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