I'm not one to turn a blind eye as a rule. I'm not one to shove my opinions down the throats of others either. I try to strike a balance as a rule, each to their own, everyone's entitled to their opinion and all that jazz.

If I see a crime committed, I call the police. If I see someone who I think is in need of help, I stop and try to help. I've lost count of the amount of drunk girls I've walked home/escorted to registered taxis/rescued from creepy men by pretending to be their friend. I once half carried a man about 2 miles to his friends after noticing him stumbling every which way in a rough area of town. He barely knew his name, didn't know where he was and could barely articulate that he'd taken a cocktail of drugs and was very lost. He managed to tell me the name of his friends,  I called them on his phone, found out where they were and taking at least half his body weight I managed to get him to his friends unscathed. I've intervened more than once when I've seen someone get beat up, andd I've taken a few hits of my own as a result.

But when you see people saying things that you understand to be wrong, the line becomes blurry. A friend of mine pointed out earlier that she thinks eating animals is a heinous crime, but she is still friends with me because I'm entitled to my opinion. She believes this applies to any and all opinions, including the example I'm presenting below.

I'm afraid I'm not able to be so liberal myself. Now if someone posts an opinion I disagree with on the wonderful world that is Facebook, I generally keep my mouth shut. If it bothers me a lot, I tend to unfriend that person and leave it at that. This is becoming more difficult however as time goes on.

I do some photography in my spare time. I'm becoming quite in demand these days, which is lovely! The one downside is my Facebook space. I once reserved this for only those I knew well and liked, a rarity in itself in the age of Facebook. I found quite quickly that models I've worked with will generally add me as a friend. To avoid offense, I accept and just hide them from my news feed if I find them annoying. Building bridges is important in this industry.

Today, I have burned bridges.

There's a male model who I've worked with. He added me when we worked together, and we had agreed to do another shoot. 

Straight off the bat I realised that his posts were not to my taste. He listens to a lot of underground white rap and it started with a lot of songs being posted with selected lyrics from the song being posted alongside them. Lots of references to 'bitches' and 'faggots'. This offended me, but I listen to a lot of Eminem, so I thought it would be hypocritical for me to be overly bothered by this, though I don't admittedly post his nastier lyrics on a public forum and personally avoid his songs which reference violence towards women anyway.

Then I notice that he uses the words 'bitch' and 'bitches' to refer to women in general. I'm getting more bothered,  but is this enough for me to stop working with him? Not quite yet. It doesn't seem to be directed towards any one person and he's always extremely respectful when speaking to me and dealing with his female friends (that I can see anyway). At this point I'm thinking he's just ignorant, which is bad, but not a crime.

As time has gone on though, I'm becoming more and more uncertain. Is it ok for me to turn a blind eye to this? There's nothing I can do about it of course, but by agreeing to work with him again, am I not condoning his opinions?

Today he crossed a line for me. His post this morning, and I quote: "Woke up this morning with the urge to punch sluts in the throat." One of his friends liked this post, and he then added to it in the comments feed: "Slut bashing it is then bro!"

Cavalier attitudes like his contribute to the acceptance of violence towards women. It normalises it, makes it something to laugh off and joke about. It's not. It ruins lives, millions of lives, every single day.  

I don't know if this man makes a habit of hitting women. I don't know if he even believes any of the bile he posts, or if he just thinks in his ignorant pea brain that it looks cool. But I don't want to be associated with it. I don't want to vicariously support these statements by working with him. I can't stop him saying these things, nor do I have the right to try. But I don't want any involvement with and I certainly don't want to condone it, even if it by proxy. I don't want to turn a blind eye anymore.