Idealism

I have had a few conversations recently with a friend of mine. This friend is currently in the process of joining an organization. She really loves the work and she's very excited to become one of them. However, she has told me about some of the most open and astonishing displays of sexism I've ever heard of in this area coming from within the ranks of that organization. In order to protect her privacy, I have made some changes to the following narrative. This narrative represents mostly things that I wish I had said.

"The new pair of tits around the place"

"Out of all of the nicknames they've come up with for me, there is one that just pisses me off. This one guy was talking about me and he called me 'the new pair of tits around the place' and I was just... excuse me?"

Allow me to be clear. It's not that I have a problem with this because I'm a rather forward thinking chap who doesn't approve of such crude behavior or anything. I have a problem with this because it's wrong. Talking about women as if their boobs are the only things worth notice is wrong. If you ever wanted an idea of what feminists mean when they talk about men sexualizing women, this is a perfect example. This (if he can even be called that) man is saying that this woman is no more than her breasts. She exists to be enjoyed by the men. She has been, in a word, objectified. 

"There are two kinds of women around here."

My friend tells me that another woman already in this organization sat her down and had a talk with her. After warning her that the men would hit on her mercilessly and shower her with insults if she turned them down, this woman says that there are two kinds of women in this line of work. There are women who get the job done, and there are women who fuck all of the men. Women who do the job are worthy, while the other kind are whores and therefore wothless. Of course, the men aren't whores. The men can do the job and also try to get laid. In fact, they are expected to. This is what we feminists like to call a double standard.

"At least it's better than it used to be. Before, women weren't even allowed in the building."

At least it's better than it used to be. Before, women weren't even allowed to vote.

At least it's better than it used to be. Before, women weren't even allowed out of the kitchen.

At least it's better than it used to be. Before, women were considered property.

And people think #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend is funny.

"That's just the way it is. And it's not going to change"

Yes, that may be the way it is. But it doesn't always have to be this way. How do you think women achieved suffrage? It was not by saying things like, "that's just the way it is". These women faced opposition then too, and had less power to fight with. But if you have a problem with the way things are , then you must change it. We've made changes before, and how do you think that happened? We had to drag this society forward, kicking and screaming. There's always resistance, of course there is! If anything's unchanging, it's that. But I live my life with the belief that "that's the way it is" does not mean "that's the way it always will be".

Yes, I'm an idealist, if that means I want to make a difference.

Yes, I'm an idealist, if that means I know that I can make a difference.

Yes, I'm an idealist, if that means I'm willing to try.

Courage

I've been doing some thinking lately, and I've decided to fold two different trains of thought into one. This results in a blog post with twice the insight and half the writing!! Hooray!

In any case... courage. Recently, courage has taken on a new meaning for me. To me, courage is the willingness to be vulnerable. Instead of explaining myself right away, I'm going to make a confession.

I am uncomfortable with actively taking steps to threaten my masculinity. Such action can take many forms, and one of them is wearing nail polish. If you know me, you know that I've worn it before. In fact, I'm wearing it right now. One reason that I do it is to make a statement about gender roles. But a bigger reason is that it makes me uncomfortable to wear it everywhere. I mean, sure, I'm not the most masculine guy you can think of. But people notice bright nail polish. Being a privileged heterosexual man, I'm not used to walking around worrying how people see my sexuality/gender because of my appearance. And sure, nails seem awfully petty to make a fuss over, but you should try it and see how it goes.

I work with children during the summer, and one thing you can always trust children to do is be straightforward. Children say things that adults keep to themselves, or give weird looks for. And children ages 6-12 that attend the summer camp I work at have a lot to say on the subject. I cannot count the number of times my campers have called me a "girl", as if that were some kind of insult. One young boy asked me if he was supposed to go out with me. Even apart from that, I had my boss have a talk with me about allowing my girl campers to paint my boy campers' nails because my boss didn't want to anger any parents. After that, when I wear nail polish in public, I find myself constantly wondering what other people think about me. I expect strange looks and even comments. I've even tried to hide my fingers around strangers. Such are my efforts to combat my masculine ego that I don't want and supposedly have deconstructed. How did it make me feel? Vulnerable.

Back to courage. As I have discovered, even something as small as painting your nails and wearing it proudly takes courage. I'm doing it because I'm trying to free myself from participation in the exploitative and idiotic system of hegemonic masculinity. I'm doing it because it's hard. But I want to draw your attention to something.

There are people who do not have the choice that I have. Having cisgender privilege allows me to cast off my nail polish as I wish and instantly be free of those problems. Not everyone has that luxury. For example, take transgender people or people who are genderqueer. They have to put up with this bullshit all the time. They have no escape. I have the greatest respect for them, because it takes true courage to live your life in a society that reviles you. Of course, it's not like they make the decision to be courageous and combat prejudice. Whether they want to or not, they have to. So I don't want us privileged folks to start condescendingly congratulating people who are forced to live like this. Especially when we ourselves suffer from transphobia. I know I do. I have spewed disgustingly transphobic statements without even meaning to, even after I knew what transphobia was and hated it. I regret them to this day. Anyway.

My point with all of this is that it takes courage to stand out from the crowd. It takes courage to speak up and speak out. I say this because I am not the sort of person to make a stand against anything. I don't like conflict and I want everybody to be my friend. So I'll make a deal with you. I'll be more courageous in the future when advocating for social justice if you will. Because if we live in a world where some people are forced to be courageous or be crushed, we've got a serious problem. Us privileged folks need to show a little more courage.

Edited to fix language

Not filler, not filler, definitely not filler.

Here's an excellent description of some Hollywood Men Archetypes

Acceptance

I saw a staged reading of a play called The Knot this afternoon. It made me think, and I really liked that. The story revolved around two women and their lives in different time periods. It explored their sense of self, femininity, and relationships. It made me think about acceptance.

This inspired me to write a post about what acceptance means to me. Of course, as is often the case with this sort of thing, I have to start by mentioning a couple things that acceptance is NOT.

Acceptance is not legality.
More precisely, acceptance is about more than the law. For marginalized peoples, legality is really just a starting point. When we have arrived at the point where "the gays"/black people/women/whoever can vote/marry/live their lives in peace, we have only begun the struggle. Too many times I see privileged people (whites, men, heterosexuals, cisgendered people, I mean you) pat each other on the back and talk about how much better it is now that, for example, New York has legalized gay marriage. Yes, it's a good thing. But it's just the beginning. To take another example, my college recently (after we took over an administrative building for a few days) revamped its sexual violence policy. While this represents a victory, we've still got a long ways to go before we rid our campus of a rape culture. Do you think that Brown vs. Board of Education solved our problem with segregation in our education system? Do you think that when blacks and women earned the right to vote, we solved racism and sexism? If you think so, I suggest you take a long, hard look at the world we live in.

Acceptance is not tolerance.
This point is very important. Tolerance, while better than intolerance, is not enough. When you tolerate something, you don't like it. You don't tolerate your friends. You tolerate flies. You tolerate annoyances. Tolerance means you don't like something, but you allow it to continue. To put it in perspective, when it comes to marginalized groups, tolerance fucking sucks. "Congratulations, minority group! I tolerate you! I don't really like you or want to spend time around you, but I guess we can exist in the same society... Just stay away from my children." When we reach a point where everyone can be tolerated (which we haven't yet achieved) we'll have come a long way. But we won't be done. So please, don't act like tolerance is anywhere near enough.

Acceptance is about love.
When you accept someone, you appreciate them for who they are. To me, acceptance means that of COURSE gay people should be allowed to marry if they want to. So should trans men, trans women, genderqueer people, poor people, black people, multiracial people, disabled people, and polyamorous people. Acceptance means that you look at those who are different than you, and you love that they are different. You love diversity because it's a part of being human, and being identical is a fucking shitshow. As a people, we desperately need to understand this and stop wasting our time fighting with each other about this stuff. We need to accept diversity for the wonderful thing it is so that we can move on and grow as a people.

Fuck legalization, fuck tolerance, and fuck being the same. We are even better than all of that.

I promise you'll get another full-length post soon...

In the meantime, I suggest you read  everything on this website

Privilege Explained

If you ever ever ever ever ever EVER want a good explanation of privilege, here it is!

It's the best one I've ever seen.