A couple of weeks ago I happened upon a discussion in a libertarian group where I have gotten to know and like quite a few of the people. One man was asserting that women should not be allowed to vote. I sometimes read these types of discussions to get an idea of people’s perspectives. There were quite a few interesting replies, some interesting because they were thoughtful, others interesting because of the assumptions and/or biases.

I don’t usually comment when it seems the original post is more about trying to get a rise out of people. Plus, if he already had such a low opinion of women, why waste my time. However this time I tried to be funny and quipped, “I’d offer my opinion, but I don’t think you’re interested. ”  I got a couple laughs from others, but the original poster took exception to that comment and basically challenged me to convince him that he is wrong.

Honestly, I had a hard time getting inspired to write about it because I am pretty convinced that he just wants to argue and humiliate. He has since called all women hedonistic. When he tagged me in another post and I answered that I wasn’t sensitive about an assumption he made, he made comments that were obviously taunting. It is quite possible to recognize taunting for what it is without being emotionally manipulated by it. I simply did not return to the thread as I saw no point. Still, a couple of other people indicated interest in what I might have to say, so for them and for the sake of answering this in general, I write.

And just in case someone misunderstands some of my comparisons, my husband and I have had a good working relationship for nearly 36 years. We decided at the beginning of our marriage to not use humor as an excuse for saying mean or belittling things about each other. When we laugh, we laugh together. When we have misunderstandings, we treat each other like adults.

The man who stated women should not be allowed to vote openly claims he is sexist, but still libertarian. To give him the benefit of the doubt, his overall intent might be to highlight that men and women are very different. The trouble is that adding -ist to anything is not going to be understood as simply recognizing differences. Instead, it very strongly indicates that the person who is a (fill-in-the-blank)-ist considers another group of people as inferior to the point of not being equally human. Or at least not adult.

There is no doubt that men and women are biologically different. Biologically, there are only two distinct human sexes, apart from rare genetic malformations which show no evidence of furthering the human race. The foundational biological differences limit men in some ways and women in other ways. For instance, men cannot bear children and women have breast tissue where some days it would be handy to have a few more pectoral muscles!

There are other generalizations that are commonly accepted, such a