thoughts and a question

[gulenay_barb]

We went to the big IMAX theater at Bridgeport last night to see Watchmen. I think it may take a while to digest. The movie was less about the special effects than I thought is was going to be. Very Very dark, with some not very pleasant truths about human nature and a great deal of symbolism incorporated in the story line. Which is I suppose a

Comments

[aelfgyfu]

A seriously complicated issue. Here is how I look at it; everyone is different from everyone else. Even breaking things down into gender is oversimplifying. Age, fitness, size, gender, health, etc are all factors is who someone is and how they can handle situations.

As part of our social code we expect a certain amount of fairness - we break most sports up into genders and weight classes for example, in modern life, because we don't trust individuals to self-regulate fairness. In the SCA we do more self-checking on fairness (gaging of blows, not grappling, etc).

When it comes down to life and death situations, however, niceties usually go out the window. The social rules that we have created are overcome by individual needs and "civilized" behavior begins to break down. In those situations you can't expect people to enforce what we consider to be social norms and it is only sensible to be able to take care of ones self. In the case of people who are smaller, weaker, etc, this can mean learning other skills to take the place of brute strength. These can be social skills so you can keep yourself out of bad situations, or other sills like developing dexterity and accuracy with other weapons that even the field. There is always going to be someone better, more powerful, etc, and you can't always expect them to be reasonable individuals, even if it is what society expects. You can expect protection, but you should also take some personal responsibility for your safety since you cant expect people or society to be looking out for you all the time.

[gulenay_barb]

Thanks for putting it that way. It's a nie balance of what we should have the right to expect as participants in a civilization and what we should be accountable for ourselves. thanks for putting your thoughts out here.