First, thank you very much for responding. Also for being nice enough to suppose that I am your age (I wish!), I sound like your judgemental Ma, because I was born in 1941 so am probably more like your granny! LOL The era I was brought up in was way different to that of today.

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Of course this was your story and was totally about your personal experience, so really not for me to have snarked on. Sorry for being a miserable old bat.

I guess I am just really irritated with the current trend for some women to go off and engage in risky behaviour and then make acccusations which they are unable to prove. We have several recent blatent examples of this right here in Canada. One was a horrid man called Gomeshi, a TV personality who would tie up and beat his dates. The really stupid part was that having been abused once, several of them went back again and there were emails to prove it! A few of them tried to sue him but lack of probable conviction killed the case. That and he had a very astute lawyer.

It’s sad that we cannot trust more. I hate being suspicious and untrusting, but it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. Being brought up by paranoid parents may have helped to shape my world attitude and probably made me a lot more cynical than I should be

I agree that we should work towards a more gentle, kind and accepting world — but truly I do not think that this is going to come about in our lifetimes. Wishful that it could — but I can’t see it coming about.

Aside from the age old view in our own society that women should be treated differently — in a bad way, we have to understand that in some places women are absolutely deemed to be inferior and are treated like slaves.

People from different cultures to our own are floored by the “freedom” we have in our society. They have no clue how to respond to it because where they come from our behaviour is an open invitation to be abused. Actually, just by being women we are considered to be inferior and thus objects of abuse.

We should be able to dress as we like and go where we like without the fear of assault or verbal abuse. In some cultures how we currently dress and how we go about (clubs, pubs, dances, etc.) is regarded as loose. (I was enraged by some comments made by the German leader regarding women getting raped and attacked by a bunch of refugee males in Germany on New Years one year. She had the temerity to tell German women they should dress “more conservatively so as not to upset the newcomers” WHAT??????? Talk about victim blaming….

If we were merely dealing with the archaic customs in our own western culture, we might stand a chance of attaining the kind of freedoms of which you speak. We are however, also dealing with other cultures, and bringing about a change in how they view women is a monumental task which cannot be done quickly. As I said — the changes of which you speak are unlikely to occur in our lifetimes, or even in the lifetimes of our grandchildren.

All my life I have fought the notion that women cannot do certain jobs and are less than men. I do however believe that we are very different from men. Our way of handling things is very different. I will say that I have always detested having a woman boss. I found them abusive and horrible to work for. I try not to be that horrible boss. Most of the kids that come to work for me summers are somewhat Austistic, or suffer from Asbergers a bit, or are Manic Depressive like me. I try to remember how I disliked those previous bosses and try to act accordingly.

XXO