In my home-town the papers are filled with an account in which a (male) radio announcer called a fellow (female) journalist a number of names too rude to print here. The rude-mouthed man is now claiming retaliation, precedent and tit-for-tat as excuses for his behavior. Valid reasons. When you're 5. Maybe not even then. As a grown up, those reasons, plus sour-grapes, misunderstanding, lack of sleep, or any other idea you can dream up don't work.
In my pre-children days I worked in the Construction Industry. I was often, in fact almost always, the only woman on site. Over my years at work I've had dirt kicked at me, my foot spat on, a stapler thrown at my head, and my hand offered to shake ignored... amongst other things. I've been called many a name, not my own, and I've witnessed others being mistreated. In the early years I was uncertain what to do, intimated, shy, I often winced, wore it and walked on. Not now. No way.
I remember one instance where I was still relatively junior, and an 'important man' called the Interior Designer a variety of horrible things (because he had misread the drawings and assumed she had 'ripped him off' in some way). She started to cry. I watched this lady in her late-forties trying to take it on the chin, and it made me so angry that I had to step in. I took a moment to breathe deeply, then asked everyone else to leave the room. Above all else, I remember asking Mr Importance what he would do if his wife, sister or daughter (he had all of these) came home and said, "guess what a guy said to me today?" He turned red, purple, then white. He agreed to apologize personally to the lady he'd tormented, then leave the site, go away for a while, and come back another time with a public apology. He followed through. I'd like to say it made me feel better. It didn't. The things he said still ring in my ears today, years later, and I was only the witness of his "it's only words" attack.
This is off topic for this blog - I'm sorry - but it's also my little space to rant and rave, and I know that even 'big things' in news-land disappear without a trace within a matter of hours, or days, a week at most. So to the man on radio, the guys on construction sites, and everyone else; rude is never right. Never.