Kelly's World | No respect for women

I hear all the time that men don't respect women anymore. Quite frankly that's true. The level of respect that was once common, for example holding doors and pulling out chairs, seems to have died down significantly over the years. To be fair I think some women see those gestures as unnecessary and worse, even sexist. "I can open the door just fine" I can imagine some of these 'modern' women say.

A more erudite individual could give you a column with more concrete data (if you can actually tabulate stuff like that). I'll just give you my own observations. The truth is I'm not surprised some men don't respect women, because women don't respect women either. You ever hear how women describe each other, especially when they're at parties or other get-togethers? It ain't pretty.

It's bad enough when men talk about women in derogatory terms (let's face it the male of the species can be pigs). But trust me, women can do much worse. The average man will see a woman at a party and think she looks 'nice'. However by the time some of the other women are done describing the fashionista, you start wondering if the men were looking at the same person. Recently had some interesting examples of women (in my view) dissing their gender.

One day I was in Burger King and two men were at the cashier. For the record I've never been a fan of two people regardless of gender doing the ordering. But that's another matter. Anyway Heckle and Jeckle were taking a bit of a while to make a simple order, prompting a few people to start grumbling. The most telling comment for me was when one person said "stand up deh like two woman." This statement was from, yes you guessed it, a woman.

So in other words, this woman is saying that her own gender and being indecisive are correlated. That bothered me. Another time I was driving with a lady friend who was at the wheel. She's not the most confident driver so she took her time to come out of an intersection. Another vehicle came out practically beside her and that driver, a woman, said (very angrily) "me know say a one woman a drive." So in other words, if you see overly cautious driving (which apparently is a bad thing), it has to be a woman.

Both incidents told me that some women associate members of their own gender with what are considered negative things. Surely that can't be healthy. Ever hear women talking about how a man 'chat nuff like woman'. Again, why the negative connotation? Women love to say 'man a style dem'. For me, when women say these things about members of their own gender, that's even worse 'styling'.

Now I'm not letting the men off the hook. Truth is men need to do better as, let's face it, that's part of the job description. But maybe if we do better, the offending women might follow suit. You never know.

- Link me at daviot.kelly@gleanerjm.com