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Sexism watch

A prison. Or possibly Barad-dûr.
I am highly averse to sexism in any form. I confess I tend to watch out particularly for sexism that influences men, a) because I am a man, and b) because there are far more people ready to highlight sexism aimed at women.

There is still work to be done in worming out existing sexist rules and regulations. But what I can't understand is why anyone would possibly introduce new sexist regulation.

It has just been announced that from November, male prisoners in England and Wales will be required to work harder for their privileges. What about female prisoners? Well, 'Officials are still working on possible changes to the privilege scheme for women prisoners.' I'm sorry, that's not good enough. What I find hard to believe is that the BBC doesn't comment on this, or that it can arise in the first place.

There is no excuse for any new policy being discriminatory. There should be no exceptions. As soon as anyone suggest a policy that specifies only one sex it should immediately be thrown out. Surely it wouldn't be hard to have this as a legislative protocol?

Of course there will be circumstances when something will have to be done to the rules applying to one sex to bring it into line with the other - that is desirable from the point of view of defeating sexism. But there is no way that something new and discriminatory should be allowed to go forward.

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