It's been an awkward week for MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. After somehow getting her hands on part of Donald Trump's 2005 tax releases, she was lampooned for her inability to get to the point. (And what a lame point it turned out to be.) Then, this happened, according to PJ Media:

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) accidentally mistook Rachel Maddow for a man and called her "sir." She responded, ""I answer to both..." It's pretty easy to make the mistake, as Rachel Maddow seems very gender fluid.

Well, certainly, Maddow handled that mistake as graciously as one could on live television. I'm sure Congressman Pascrell just made a simple, understandable mistake. No harm, no foul. In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time. In the movie Masterminds, the FBI agent played by Leslie Jones is described as looking “like a man” and called "sir." This was played for laughs in the admittedly hilarious movie. However, when Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted that Jones resembled a man, he was kicked off social media. Breitbart reports:

In July, Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter after writing a negative review of Ghostbusters and joking later in a tweet that Jones looks like a “dude.” After Twitter kicked Milo off their platform, establishment news outlets claimed that his joke was “inciting harassment” of Jones.

Obviously, no one involved in the production of Masterminds — neither director Jared Hess, screenwriters Chris Bowman, Emily Spivey and Hubbel Palmer or any of the film’s cast and crew — will face similar consequences or be smeared as a harasser of women.

I guess the litmus test is your political ideology. If you're a Democrat like Congressman Pascrell or a liberal like (presumably) the makers of Masterminds, you're just fine to say whatever you like. If you're not, watch out.