Years ago, I had travelled to California for a two-day meeting. When I got there, I realized I had forgotten a pen, so I borrowed one from the receptionist. There was nothing special about the pen. It was just one of those cheap, crappy pens that every office has.
That night, when I got back to my hotel room, I found my pen (it’s a really nice pen). Then, I realized that I had lost the pen I had borrowed from the receptionist. So, I grabbed an equally-crappy pen from the hotel room I was staying in and brought that with me the next day.
I apologized to the receptionist for losing her pen and offered to her the hotel pen as a replacement. I know she didn’t really care about the cheap, crappy pen she had loaned me. I was just being silly. I told her that I hoped I didn’t make her feel bad because I had lost her pen.
She looked at me and said, “I don’t give you the power to make me feel anything.”
Wow. What a powerful statement. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had that attitude? When I was growing up, it was just called “having thick skin”.
California Assembly members Evan Low and Cristina Garcia (both Democrats) have introduced a bill that would require certain retailers to have “gender neutral retail departments” and would force them to change the way the display items in their stores.
They can still have a “boys” department and a “girls” department, but they would also be required to have a department that is labeled neither “boys” or “girls” that contains all the same stuff that is already in the “boys” and/or “girls departments. This applies to toys, clothes and other children’s items. A penalty for non-compliance of up to $1,000 per day is being proposed.
The idea behind the bill is that apparently, a girl would be traumatized by shopping for an item in a “boys” department and vice versa. And, we should eliminate any type of situation where someone might feel bad.
I seem to be saying this more and more recently, but what a load of horse shit.
A kid isn’t concerned about shopping in any particular department. They’re concerned with being seen shopping in that department. It will take about half a second for a kid to realize that if they see another kid shopping in the “purple” department, that kid is different. It will also take the purple kid about half a second to realize that being in the “purple” department still flags him/her, just in a different way.
So, since the “purple” department isn’t going to solve anything, the next logical step in this Liberal silliness is to eliminate all “boys” and “girls” departments and have one huge department where everything is lumped together, and no one can find anything. While we’re at it, we may just as well eliminate “men’s” and “women’s” departments too.
And, we should probably force any online retailer to get rid of any possible way of filtering search results. I can see a future where, instead of searching for “men shirt long-sleeve blue”, I’m only allowed to search for “shirt” and then page through thousands of items that aren’t the least bit relevant.
When I was growing up, I had my feelings hurt lots of times. And I’m a better person because of those experiences. I learned not to let things bother me and how to “suck it up and deal with it”. Eventually, I learned not to sweat the small stuff and that nearly everything is small stuff.
Have we really reached a point where we’ve stopped teaching kids that they are the only person responsible for how they feel?
When you’re a parent, part of your job is to watch your kids struggle. Kids are supposed to fail, and kids are supposed to sometimes feel bad. It’s how they learn and it’s what builds emotional maturity. If you remove all obstacles from your kid’s path, then you end up with a kid who doesn’t have the tools to live as an adult.
This “gender neutral” silliness is a byproduct of kids raised to be part of the “I’m Offended” generation. Those kids are now grown up. They didn’t learn from their parents how to be responsible for their own feelings, they learned that everyone else is responsible for making them happy.
They never learned not to sweat the small stuff so they see everything as big stuff. And, because they don’t have the tools to suck it up and deal with it, the only solution they see is to pound people into submission with stupid-ass laws and “cancel” anyone who offends them.
Because, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
