A remarkably versatile word this has become, 'racism'. It seems to apply to gender, to sexual orientation, sometimes even to unexpected things like taste in music...

What happened in the world the last 2-3 years? It feels like someone took a shovel, dug up some old corpses from the graveyard of political culture and set them loose on the world again. Suddenly...

...people who call themselves 'feminist' start calling for what can only be described as a war between the sexes, given that they spout the opinion that males - preferably heterosexual, middle-aged 'white' males - are the cause of anything bad in the world. They obviously did not listen to Joe Jackson when, in 'Real Men', he sang 'and if there is war between the sexes then there will be no people left'.

...people who call themselves 'anti-racist' are trying to pull just about any public debate in a racial direction by claiming that it is all caused by the colour of the skin of whomever they're focusing on. Again, if that skin colour happens to be 'white' the person generally did something heinously wrong, while the same deed performed by someone who saw a bit more sun is either 'understandable' or 'justified' or 'caused by society being mean to (person)'...

...people who call themselves something between 'male' and 'female' start claiming that gender is nothing but a social construct and that there are really more than 50 'genders' and with that is it 'racist' to call someone 'he' or 'she' as it could be that person does not consider him/herself as either of those...

Meanwhile the real world is still full of REAL racism - just go and visit any middle-eastern country while being 'black' and you'll soon find out. For some reason the 'anti-racists' don't want to touch this subject, and other who do are quickly labelled 'racist' by them.

Meanwhile the real world is still full of REAL gender discrimination - just go and visit most middle-eastern countries (amongst others) while being female and you'll soon find out. The 'feminists' don't seem to want to speak up about this, instead they label those who do as, you guessed it, 'racist'.

Meanwhile the real world is still full of REAL discrimination against those with non-mainline sexual orientations. Again, just go to one of those middle-eastern countries I mentioned while being openly homosexual and you'll soon find out. For some reason the 'gender-denialists' are quiet about this, instead labelling those who do speak up as, again, 'racist'....

Meanwhile the position of women in the 'western' world is generally on a level with that of men, give or take a few cases of institutional gender preference. This does not mean that all professions have a 50/50 share of both (yes, both, male and female... not 'all 50') genders, eg. where I live (Sweden) nearly all veterinarians are women, nearly all lumberjacks are men, women are under-represented in IT but overrepresented in social functions, etc. Is this bad? Not necessarily, it depends on WHY there is a discrepancy. Is it because men are not allowed in veterinary college? Are women not allowed near computers? Of course not, this seems to be a case of personal choice. Are women incapable of handling chainsaws? No, they are not, but they are generally less strong than men and they don't feel at home in a group of men who talk about their favourite subjects of hunting, fishing and riding snow scooters (to take an example from our local - Swedish - culture). Does that mean those lumberjacks need to go to some re-education camp to learn to talk about more gender-neutral subjects? Of course not. Should women go to re-education camps to learn to talk about hunting, fishing and snow-scooter riding? No! Should there be male quota for vet schools to combat their under-representation in this field? No, if men want to become vets they can go to vet school. Something seems to keep them from doing that, maybe the fact that the field is female-dominated?

Fortunately there is no war between the sexes and men and women still get together to create more men and women. They create 'white' ones, brown ones, 'black' ones, 'yellow' ones, 'red' ones, etc. New humans who come to this world without prejudice about the colour of their skin, and - if they are lucky enough to live in one of those western countries which are largely free of REAL racism - should be able to live their lives to the fullest - unless the 'feminists', 'anti-racists', 'gender-denialists' (for lack of a better word) and other similarly befuddled people are successful in derailing the progress of the last few hundred years and throw us back into struggle and strife.

It is almost as if all these 'isms' (feminism, anti-racism, etc) are worried of becoming irrelevant due to the progress made on these fronts in the 'west' and started looking around for new 'causes'...