One of the things that is most infuriating about liberalism is the way it has reordered basic human interactions to the point that ordinary behavior becomes a point of stupid controversy. The latest iteration of this comes from Australia, where Chris Gayle (who is apparently a famous cricket player) got fined $10,000 for asking a woman out. Here is video of the completely harmless incident in question:

Now listen, obviously Chris Gayle is not very smooth. What he did here is kind of dumb and oafish, which is why, in the final analysis, he got shot down. In a sane world, being shot down by an attractive woman on live television would be punishment enough for asking a woman out in a completely harmless and non-aggressive way at the wrong place and wrong time.

Instead, the basic social interaction of a guy asking a girl out, and getting rejected, becomes an incident of international import, judging by the fact that CNN has covered the story at least twice today. It is taken as automatic that what happened here is “sexism.”

Maybe I need to crawl back into whatever neanderthal cave I emerged from this morning but I don’t think that a guy asking a girl out in person is sexist. I don’t think that the fact that Chris Gayle wanted to have dinner with this reporter doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect her professionally. I know for a lot of guys, the fact that a woman is a successful professional is a reason to want to go out with her. And as for the time and place, maybe this was the only chance Chris Gayle had to ask her out, and he’d been admiring her from afar without ever getting a shot before; who knows.

I’m sure that the reporter in question didn’t want to be asked out on air (or at all) by Chris Gayle but accepting that you’re going to get asked out by some number of people you don’t want to date is kind of the price of participating in the human race, which has been evolutionarily programmed (like all other organic species) to propagate itself through courtship and/or selection rituals of some sort.

In most parts of the world we have decided that men clubbing women over the head and dragging them by their hair back to a cave for procreation is an undesirable courtship practice and so we’ve settled on the next best thing, which is for men to politely ask women out on dates and accept “no” for an answer when it is given, which is exactly what Chris Gayle did. The fact that he lacked the skill and charm to make this endearing and funny as opposed to awkward and painful does not make him a sexist and does not justify fining the man for asking out a girl.

Apparently this is the new world we live in, though – now, not only will asking a girl out carry the possibility of rejection, but also the possibility of a hefty fine as well.

I can think of no way that this might backfire for the future survival of our species at all.

UPDATE: Apparently, Gayle is not Australian, he is West Indian, and was being interviewed by an Australian journalist for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. I don’t watch cricket and had never heard of the guy before today. Just wanted to correct the factual record on his national origin, in case that matters to anyone.