When life gives you lemons: What's The Best Way To Respond To A Sexist comment?

The other day I was talking to an acquaintance when he started to talk to me in a sexist manner insulting my feministic ways and saying a lot of ignorant biased things without any factual evidence to his remarks. I was torn as to what the best way to respond to him was because the more I tried to politely explain my views to him the more he closed himself in to his ways and the angrier I got. It was a never-ending cycle where he kept twisting my words to make himself right and make me seem like the ignorant hateful person he claimed I was being. At the end of our conversation, if you can call it that, I thought about a Mark Twain quote that says:
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." How right he was because that is exactly what my acquaintance and so many like him tend to do when talking about feminism, equality, and sexism. It can be incredibly difficult to find a proper way to respond to a sexist comment without lowering yourself down to level of the perpetrator and sounding just as rude and offensive as he/she is being. This is especially difficult when they are insulting and twisting around everything you stand for and care about. As difficult as it is there are ways to intelligently and politely shame and change the way people view something without closing them off to listening to what you have to say. Here are a couple of women who did just that without using actual insults and cussing to get their point across. Now, don't get me wrong I know that there are times when insults and cussing are the only way to get your point across and that no matter how polite and kind you are there are people who are never going to listen. But, nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to learn from intelligent women around the world and from different life-spans who fought for what they believed in all the while being peaceful and having never lost their cool. After all, some of the trolls out there only want to hit us where it hurts to see us lose our heads or to cause us to be at a loss of words. What's a better comeback than responding to them in the same cool and collected manner that they spoke yet demolish them with knowledge and our own experiences.

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Last week Russia sent a woman into space for the first time in 17 years as part of a U.S-Russian mission to the International Space Station. Being chosen as part of the crew for a space expedition is quite an accomplishment. It’s a job which asks for years of training, excellent skills and the trust and respect of your peers. One would imagine that the international press would have a hundred questions to ask Yelena Serova about her work. But at the pre-launch press conference, Serova was questioned about:

- her hair.

- her makeup.

- her daughter.