I don’t have the patience to introduce this photo. Fortunately, the publicity staff who were dumb enough to take and publish this photo were also foolish enough to immortalize the incident with video footage.
Enjoy.
Or … to summarize …
Given an hour and a bottle of scotch, it might be possible to get through half of the things that are idiotic about this idea. But I don’t have an hour, so here are just a few.
It trivializes the entire concept of gender equality, reducing it to cheap “sex appeal” symbolism in lieu of an actual exploration of a legitimate social issue.
It reinforces gender stereotypes.
It focuses on outward appearances rather than intrinsic values … basically bringing the definition of sexism to life.
Most of all, it dumbs down and makes a joke out of something important.
And it manages to do all of this by pulling hard-working people out of their jobs to waste hours of taxpayer-billed time as unwittingly gleeful participants in something that is, or should be, beneath them.
Rather than continue this screed solo, I’ll let you sample the Facebook comments, both in support and (mostly) opposed to this “event.”
Walking the dumbest mile has become an annual recurrence across the Air Force, which is clumsily, desperately trying to show how it loves and accepts women. The very fact that it has to make such an obvious effort is a revealing indictment in itself … a bit like Walter White making breakfast for his family to afford the guilt of serially lying to them.
Last year, I penned a short piece that included a poignant and masterful excerpt from Blake Hunt, recaptured here for your entertainment:
This is offensively dumb and I am offended thusly.
Nigh rendered dumb myself by this unimaginably dumb thing I have just seen, I nevertheless muster these words:
If you do this in uniform, I’m afraid you are quite dumb. If you participate in a culture that mistakes cheap “awareness” stunts for meaningful action with real results, I regret to inform you that you are a dumb person mindlessly chewing your dumb cud with the Herd of Dumb, and you are hereby awarded zero advocacy points. You too, military.
All you’ve done here is made my bunions bark and solved nothing. So you actually made everything worse.
Feminists, I am one of you. But such strange and silly bedfellows will not abide. It may surprise you that my empathy and understanding to an incalculably important cause far surpasses the superficiality of footwear. I do not care what’s on your feet. Even more I do not associate or attach credibility to the regressively stupid notion that your style choices may somehow contribute to your own plight.
I do not need to actually wear your shoes to understand. “Walk a mile in their shoes” is a figure of speech. There must have been an unfortunate misunderstanding about this one linguistic nuance. Hopefully this clarifies that.
If you had ever asked or expected me to participate in this clown parade, whilst I was in uniform, you would have been deeply disappointed in me.
And that’s ok, because I’m comfortable with not being dumb about things extremely important.
So let’s all agree to not be dumb anymore. Ok guys?
Lingering issues of gender integration in America’s Air Force represent ignorance. You can’t fight ignorance with stupidity. When you collide them together, the result is ignorant stupidity.
Please stop.
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