Just had a chat with my mother. I started out by asking her what she would do if she saw a woman beating up a man in a park. She was she would "probably" do something. Then, I asked her if she saw the reverse, a man beating up his girlfriend. She said she would "definitely do something then." I asked her what the difference was, and she went on for a bit about how a guy can better defend himself against a woman, and how they are built stronger, in general, than most women. This I can agree with. But I asked her, what if she saw a man beating up his girlfriend but somehow she knew that this woman was not in any actual danger of injury. She said she would still say something. She then conceded that whether the abused was a man or a woman, she should say something regardless of "how well they can defend themselves," or "how bad of an injury they might get."

I then told her about the policy of Virgin Airlines. She actually surprised me quite a bit by saying that she agreed with that policy, because more men commit sexual assault than women (which I denied, but she had a hard time believing me). "Ok," I said. "Le'ts assume for the purpose of this argument that more men commit sexual assault than women. Then shouldn't we do other things to insure peoples' safety?" I gave her a scenario that decades from now, science had gotten to the point of us being able to have bomb-proof sections of a bus, where a person sits in a little cubicle-type area where if they let off a bomb, everyone else on the bus will be fine. I asked her, if this science was possible, if it would be OK to tell all the Middle Eastern people that they had to sit in these sections of the bus, because, well, more Middle Easterners are bus bombers than white people other races. "Oh, but that's different!" she said. "Race and gender are completely different things, and that's not a fair analogy." We argued for a bit on whether this was a fair analogy, until she finally just said "it's different, ok?"

I then proceeded to tell her how sickened I was that half of the country was being discriminated against because we are males. I told her a few of the stories I have read on here, about men being profiled as sexual predators. I told her that I hated the fact that I was hesitant about taking my nieces out for a day of fun at that park because I might get the cops called on me. I told her how afraid I was for my friend from school, a guy, who wants to be an elementary school teacher, because the likelihood of him being discriminated against at some point during his career was so high. I told her how I hated that when men like playing with children, it's weird and creepy, but if women like kids then they're fine. I told her how I envied some of the places I've heard about, where guys can go around playing with kids in the neighborhood without people thinking he's up to no good. I told her how I was afraid of being pulled over by the cops when I'm a dad some day because I decided to take a walk with my kids. I finished by telling her that all these policies, they don't make the world a better place. I told her that they fuel the kind of irrational fear that plagues this country so heavily (U.S btw, I won't assume everyone here is American).

Finally, she saw that I was right.

EDIT: Accidentally a word, "white people" v.s "other races", and "how bad of an injury they might get."