Scottish Men on Pedestrian Crossing Signals?

The members of the Scottish community are surely pleased they are recognised on pedestrian crossings in Melbourne. As they cross the street they can look back at the hardships they had to endure with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Not only have they been recognised but they were recognised at a time when, it seems, everyone is searching for recognition. To get such a display in such loud swathes of people, with little noise of their own is truly impressive. The aboriginal community is still searching for compensation for having their land invaded, the feminists because women still don’t have equal rights to men.

Hang on. Did I just… Oh damn. Turns out the pedestrian signal is actually a woman, or at least it’s meant to be a woman. That was a honest mistake. An easy mistake to make too, given I don’t believe anyone should be stereotyped with a particular code of dress. In fact, I didn’t even think the original pedestrian crossing signal stood out as male. After all, you can’t ask it, right? Did anyone bother to ask the signal what it identifies as? Probably not. How dare they.

It’s a wee bit absurd don’t you think. In fact the whole “social justice” thing is getting a bit absurd. I am not here to bash it though. The issues they address are serious issues (most of the time). Women’s rights do need addressing, as does proper acknowledgement and compensation for those whose land was stolen. However, sometimes the approach to these issues goes so far it stretches up its own ass and can no longer see reality.

A large part of this buffoonery is hypocrisy the obvious hypocrisy. Making a “female” crossing in a dress, yet telling people that a woman shouldn’t be identified by the fact they wear a dress is just stupid. What is more stupid though is the fact that no one actually cares about what gender the pedestrian crossing is.

“Well obviously you care, you twat. You’re writing a whole post about it!” Oh crap. You got me. However, I do care. Just not about the pedestrian crossings. At least not that specifically. Like I said before, I’m not here to bash social justice. Actually, I lied. I am here to bash social justice. Not because the people who partake are bad people or because the issues they fight for are illegitimate, but because their methods of change are often unnecessary and misguided.

My proposal is to have justice. We don’t need “social justice” if we have justice. Why do we need to have woman pedestrian crossing lights? a) Who cares? b) Is this really a step forward? Or a step back? The focus should be on the actual issue, achieving equal rights. Achieving equal pay for a women and having the same chance of landing a job as a male of equal merit. Somewhere on the vastness of the internet I read a well summed up comment on this topic, and I paraphrase:

“Justice is putting in a ramp for disabled access; social justice is removing the stairs because the disabled might be offended.”

Perhaps the name “social justice” will carry on, that’s fine. Just as long as it doesn’t continue to carry the meaning it does now i.e. attempt at justice that entirely misses the point most of the time for reasons no one can fathom. This of course also includes groups who identify under the umbrella of “social justice” how the dictionary defines it: “Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.” This is basically just a more focussed definition of justice, that’s great. It’s what it should be about.

To summarise:

I do care. I care about improvement as a society. I believe the current attempts at “social justice” (with quotes) are pathetic and wasteful. It would be more useful to focus on actual progress rather than the KPI of how many pedestrian signals reflect our progress.