One Step Forward, and 2.0 Back?

Ah the debate. To comment on or not to comment on the flame war between Mike Arrington and Shelly Powers. Quick background: I was reading Mathew Ingram's post in which he disagree's with Lane Hartwell's decision to take down the popular "Here comes the bubble video". First glance I notice a guy named Mike (I swear I didn't notice it was *that* Mike until he made the I'll do whatever the f*ck I like comment to Mathew) who out of no where made a comment about a woman named Shelly.

"Mathew is right, you are wrong. But since Lane is a woman, it really doesn't matter what she did as far as you are concerned. She's a woman, so she's right."

The comment seemed totally out of context for me, and I went wtf? I even wrote (again not noticing it was *that* Mike) wha' up with that? Turns out, Mike has a personal beef with Shelly and believes that Shelly has a personal beef with him. Glad we could all get invited to that particularly family dinner. So Mike then asks if people think he's sexist bc of this video and then by this morning closes the comments on his post. In a round about way, thought I'd answer the question given now that I have what I think is full context that this has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with a personal squabble.

My now 12 year old daughter has lived in a small Greek village with her Dad for the past two years. One of the biggest transitions that Cee had to make was realizing that women/girls were not considered equal by everyone. I still remember her calling me one day so angry - I'm like, calm down what's wrong?

"Mommy. They don't let girls play soccer here. It's just not done."

And I was like, well, change the rules.

"Uch. You don't understand. That's just not done here."

What was I to say? I reminded her if she wants the world to change, she has to change it. We talked about a great book that everyone should get their kids called the TheNobel Book Of Answers...I babbled on a while, and well, she wasn't convinced and we changed the subject.

About 7 months later in the Spring, not even a year later, Cee had managed to not only get herself on the soccer team, but in fact, every single female in her class. When I asked her how she did it this is what she said:

"Oh well it was easy. I realized that asking them was the problem. If you ask them, they say no. So I just stopped asking and started playing."

(and FYI, the boys still to this day are annoyed that she is "changing the way the girls in the village are thinking").

Ok, now to the question of sexism on Arrington's particular comment...

And I think for today, I'm going have to default to what I think my daughter would say. If I presented the scenario to her (remember she's 12)

- that two people were having an argument. One thought one thing. The other person thought another. Then the boy person, said to the girl person,

"You only agree with that other person because she's a girl and your a girl too"

Do I think she would think it's sexist (after I explained what it was of course)? Probably not, but I bet you $100 bucks she'd say

"Well that's just dumb."

I think it's pretty dumb too.

And now back to our regular scheduled blogging....

oh and ps. if anyone cares about the copyrite issue Mathew still thinks Lane's wrong found here