Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Blur "This is a Low" ::
Careful, folks, I've got an opinion and I'm not afraid to voice it! That's right stand back, this thing's about to go off...!
I was, um, watching America's Got Talent the other day (okay, yes, I know, I know. Have your giggle and let's move on shall we?) and one of the judges on this talent show, namely one Sharon Osbourne, said something to one of the contestants which stood out in my mind. The situation was this: an attractive young man came out dressed in a black leather outfit, with his hair coiffed just so, and he performed an Elvis impersonation. His singing and dancing was actually pretty decent and he definitely had the "Young Elvis" attitude going for him. When it came time for the judge's comments on the performance, Sharon asked him how old he was. He was twenty three. She said something like: "I know I've said this before, but I've got shoes older than you.... but I'd like to try you on!" and she then proceeded to oggle him relentlessly as the girls in the audience squealed with delight at this hot young man in leather pants.
My thoughts after this however were: What if, what if, it had been an attractive woman in leather pants and David Hasselhoff, one of the other judges, had said that same thing to her? You can bet your boots the NBC network would get nasty letters about Hasselhoff being a pig and feminists the world over would light up the blogosphere.
I have said it before and I'll say it again, I cannot abide by double standards. Why is it okay for girls to announce publicly that a man is hot and declare all of the nasty things they want to do to him sexually, but if a man does this to a woman it is unacceptable? Why are men who go to strip clubs frowned upon as pigs but women who go watch men get naked and dance are liberated and unafraid to express their sexuality? Why is it that men who want to have "men only" smoking or rifle clubs get women picketing them claiming exclusionary bylaws but women can start ladies only gyms? How come one way is okay but not the other? I guess what is good for the goose is NOT good for the gander.
The attitude in today's society is that treating a woman as a sexual object is deplorable, disgusting behaviour. Not that I am disagreeing with this view, I am merely attempting to point out the hypocrisy of women who out of one side of her mouth make this statement while out the other side are shoving dollar bills into a male stripper's underwear (thusly treating him like a sexual object). Men oggling women = bad; women oggling men = okay?
Lots of people call this "reverse sexism" but I disagree with that term. It is just sexism, plain and simple. So I cannot understand how women treating men in a sexist manner is an okay thing to do. Here I was under the impression that sexism was something we needed to eliminate and not redirect.
And yes, I do think today's society takes a great many issues too seriously and that everyone needs to lighten up in general. So I don't think that no one should say sexist remarks ever because sometimes it is all in fun or jest and everyone can laugh and have a good time about it. All I'm getting at really is the hypocrisy of those women out there who can't handle men behaving badly but are all too eager to behave a little badly themselves. So I want to be clear that I am NOT condemning Sharon Osbourne for her sexist remarks toward the attractive young Elvis, I was merely using it as a "what if?" example. If the ladies can agree with Sharon's remarks to a man, they should not get up in arms when and if one of the male judges says something similar to an attractive woman performer. That's what I'm really saying. If she is allowed to say it, then he should be allowed to say it. Equality and not hypocrisy.
William the Bloody (wants a truly level playing field)
