Something Else That Irritates Me, I mean. Though in this case I'd probably put it a little bit stronger than that:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/12/AR2005101202104.html
And just to show this shit happens everywhere:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1500735,00.html
You know, thankful as I am that I no longer have to write a philosophy essay once a week, sometimes I still think that if I'd gone on to take an M.Phil I would have done it on 'The Epistemology of Sexism' (or something like that). In the Criminal Justice System, or the National Health Service, or another institution, it seems that, if a man says something it's believed, and respected. If a woman says it, it comes with a shadow of untruth attached to it, purely by virtue of the speaker's gender.
I know this isn't a new idea (I think we all know what happens to the rape victim in court). But, philosophically, its an interesting question. Why do we know (or believe, but I think 'know' is the more useful term), what one person tell us to be true (about something we cannot be sure of ourselves - such as the state of that person's marriage, or more prosaically, when we ask someone for directions), and yet we do not know what another equally (un)qualified person tells us. Sometimes, we have good reasons for this discrimination - if the person is drunk, or from out of town (in the 'directions' example), or suffering from dementia. But what about if our reasons rest on the fact they they are female? Or black? How do we know what we know if our justifications rest on this?
I wrote that very fast, without thinking about it, because of a violent reaction to the Washington Post story. Would you call that 'blog-vomit'?
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