> > Did it the other day and got chewed out by the jerk I held the door for. . . something along the lines of me being a male chauvenist pig who doesn't think women are strong enough to open doors for themselves.
>
> The correct response would have been: "I don't think all women are too weak...just you."

I'd just give her an incredulous look and walk off.

By the way - a good first step if we want to dig out of this mire of political corectness would be to reclaim all of the terms used to mean "misogynist" that don't - words like "chauvanist." "Chauvanism" is the belief that whatever one's country does is the best way. "Misogynism" is a belief that males are superior to females, or a hatred of females.

While were on the topic, here's what gets my goat (and, no, Iss, I'm not going to say "goat thieves" :-}): people who speak of misogynism as a bad thing and feminism as a good thing practically in the same breath. Our campus newspaper carried an open letter from one of the professors last year that did that. One cannot, by definition, be "good" and the other "bad;" they're either both good or both bad, since they're the same bloody thing!

Tolerance is what's important; we have to tolerate both those who are different from us (which, I suppose, was the entire point of political correctness to begin with) and the words used by other people. Getting angry because someone calls you "black" instead of "African-American" (or "person of colour," or whatever the expression-of-the-week is right now) makes no more sense that getting angry because someone *is* black. But, most importantly, we must tolerate those who do not tolerate us. If they do something to hurt us, then there are recourses (legal, that is), but if someone just plain doesn't like us, then, well, he has the right not to.

Dar "Can't we all just get along?" ien