Spot the offence! November 16th

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@Poppylicious this is for you – I’m going to start a game. This was sparked by the discussion about disciplinary action against a teacher who apparently accidentally referred to a trans-gender boy as a girl. Presumably if said teacher had accidentally referred to a boy born as a boy, as a girl, that would have been unremarkable because it often happens. So here’s what to do – report how many things you have seen or heard or experienced today that could be regarded as offensive to some group(s) of people. Then we can all get offended about it and complain on Facebook or Twitter or go to the press. I’ll start off with a couple of examples from my daily life. Yesterday while listening to BBC Radio 1, one of the presenters was talking about musician Rita Ora wearing a fork, (if that sounds bizarre you can see her here along with her 12 other outfits that she wore at an awards ceremony) which he explained as ‘You know, a garden fork like your Dad might use’. How dare he assume that only Dads do the garden! What about mothers? What about childless people? What about children? That is blatantly offensive and definitely comes under the banner of #everydaysexism And today, we have had a new wood-burning stove fitted. As well as the instructions, it came with a single leather gauntlet to use when adding logs to the hot fire – but it was a right-handed glove! What an unfounded assumption – that all stove-owners are right-handed! How dare they – blatant discrimination against those who are naturally different in being left-handed! And what about ambidextrous people – they might want the choice of which hand to use so they would need two gloves! And what about anyone with no hands? Or who has lost their right hand due to accident or illness? How offensive to supply a glove to a handless person, that’s like poking fun at their situation! Let’s all complain! I think we should do one of these every day and see what we can all find to get offended about. If anyone is on Facebook or Twitter maybe you can get the message out there so we can all be offended en masse. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2017.