Going on about a year now I've gotten more and more exposure to Feminist idealism. At first a few mentions on Facebook, article links, overheard occasional discussions, but then gradually, as if someone was turning up the volume on a song they really wanted everyone to hear, I started to see it a lot. And if I'm honest, which is my whole intention here, I mostly ignored it. I told myself I didn't need to give it a thought. I was raised "right" and taught to respect women and be a gentlemen. Even more truthfully, I didn't start to question how I perceived Feminism until I found myself caught up in an argument on Facebook about Racism. Even now writing this I find myself saddened that my moral catalyst seems to be Facebook, but social media is a whole other monster I will maybe address later.
http://jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racism
This article, which was essentially about "modern" racism, over all makes a valid point, but something about it bothered me, that I didn't understand and instead of taking the time to figure out what exactly bothered me I made a fairly callous comment regarding the article to the effect of,"I'm tired of reading articles written by white people talking about what is racist." This led to a 300 or so comment debate/argument what have you with another gentleman where I was thrown about like a rag doll, but much like a Bukowski novel, even though I was the asshole, I just kept getting and taking another swing.
When this moment was finally over, it resonated with me more than I think anything had in quite some time. Usually, I can argue with the best of them. In fact, I only really lose when I'm wrong...when I'm wrong in my understanding. But losing the argument wasn't why it resonated so intensely with me for so long. For one I had offended a very sweet friend and also it wasn't about something inane or meaningless, this was about racism. Something I was pretty confident that I understood what it was and more importantly to me that I was not, in fact, a racist!
I couldn't sleep the first night, I talked about it a lot to my friends , and I kept running over the argument logic in my head and then would just argue back the counter points which I knew by heart. I was going in circles. My education was incomplete. So, I started to Google and then read. I started to see in my reading that a topic that often came up with Racism was Feminism, and in both I started to see key phrases and article references in many peoples writings. The first eureka for me was this article:
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/07/intentions-dont-really-matter/
This article is really great, but there was a link to a video that was what finally enabled me to make peace with myself.
http://youtu.be/b0Ti-gkJiXc
There was still one problem. Even with this new understanding something still wasn't sitting right with me. But I had to let sleeping dogs lay for a while, and I did, until today when I went on Facebook (cringe) and there was a post about a lady acquaintance of mine that had experienced what happened in this article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/13/smile_baby_the_words_no_woman_wants_to_hear/
My friend was at a gas station and she was told that she should smile, because it would make her look even prettier. It is a creepy thing to say, but this calls to action the What you did vs What you are scenario.
I completely understand the impact of doing this vs. the intent but that feeling came back, the same one with the Jezebel article on Hipster racism. I decided to Google hunt. I found something interesting. I hope you keep an open mind when reading it, please read the first couple of follow up comments as well.
http://www.pellebilling.com/2009/03/reverse-feminism/
Now, in no way what so ever do I feel that male gender roles/ stereotypes are adversely affecting men on any level even remotely close to how they affect women, but in articles like this one: https://medium.com/p/e9217439b8e6 , I think we are starting rhetoric that leads us to eventually simply commit the same mistakes but just to the opposite extreme. I'm not making light of rape by any means but this article while extremely powerful and I get the authors intent, the language just reverts to extreme generalizations in the end. Regardless of how passive aggressively ragingly angry the author clearly is, I hope you get my point.
And this (finally) is my point. My finger lands firmly on the lack of people maintaining a complete perspective. In most of these articles the author stops practicing the ILL Doctrine and instead eventually just jumps to blaming or shaming language and actions which do nothing to help change anything.
I've never been raped, I've never been discriminated against. I don't know what that feels like and honestly I hope I never do. I also hope that my actions never make anyone feel shitty. Now I can pretty much promise that I will fuck up that resolution one way or another eventually, but when I do, I hope that person maintains a little understanding, because I'm also certain they themselves are not perfect and probably have committed the same offense that I have at one point in time one way or another. I hope I am told what I did and how it hurt them and then given an opportunity to apologize and or make it right.
I sincerely hope I haven't bored the crap out of you and my next topic promises to be of a more lighthearted nature. Until then, I'm glad I could get this ironed out.
