» Hate Crime
12 January 2005 - 12:34am
Hate Crime
By Matsu
"If you want equality, that means you hate me."
Why is the Women's Rights discussion framed this way sometimes? I think about other groups striving for equality where that argument is seldom, if ever, seriously framed in this way.
Why are we always on the verge of apologizing that we don't hate someone whenever we point out an inequity?
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Fragile male ego.
Do minority men worry about how their rights movement might upset "majority" (ruling class) men and they won't be [i]liked[/i] any more or asked out? Women's approach to rights is like dealing with a naughty little boy who is going to throw a tantrum if his bad behavior is point out.
This is all so bloody obvious - like the Emperor's New Clothes - yet all too often we are not speaking to this issue and take it for granted.
Is this the [i]biology[/i] that we are dealing with? I wonder.
...it's the "sensitive" way of saying you're being uppity.
Up.
Beyond one's station - on the bottom.
The Republicans use this one a lot these days, too. The last 5,000 years of the unnatural social order known as Patriarchy has focused on raising girls who defer to the will of men, and want to nurture, serve and otherwise placate their husbands, lovers, sons. We'd rather die than have our men think we don't love them. (In some places, we DO die if we don't love them. It's called an Honor killing, but I've always considered it more of a damned disgrace.)
So, when a woman begins to assert herself and ask for something outrageous, like, equal pay or an education, her MAN (Father, son, brother, Uncle, boss, etc.) knows that he'd better get her back in line and the easiest way to do that is to tell her he's feeling unloved. The creatures define being unloved as any state not akin to worship. A woman who is preoccupied with convincing a Y-chromosome that she really loves him, honest she does! soon forgets issues like fairness, safety, equality. She's a real woman who loves her man.
Oh, how I wish I were exaggerating. We will get nowhere if we worry about offending men. They offend us with impunity, with relish, with selfish disdain and an ingrained sense of divine entitlement. You have no idea how hard I'm biting my tongue, because even I feel compelled to state that I love men. And I do. It's Patriarchy that I hate.
IF a guy pulls this bullshit on you, tell him that you don't hate him, you hate Patriarchy and if he identifies with the Patriarchy then he's part of the problem and is helping to oppress you. Then stand back and brace yourself as you find out just how enlightened your 21st century man really is...not.
(You might want to make sure you are NOT within "swinging distance")
Morgaine-ism© #8
"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."
Good points, Morgaine - so now I rant.
On NPR "Science Friday" a couple years back, Janna Levin was interviewed about her book [url=http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7324.html]How the Universe Got its Spots.[/url] I point you to a sample chapter of her book.
Her book is part biography and part explanation of her scientific theories. She has a PhD from MIT and according to the book jacket she is an Advanced Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, England.
Her journal and her physics study are a rare juxtaposition of insights that baffled the males who, sometimes grudgingly admitted, her book was readable and worthwhile. Yet they seemed to be bewildered by how this woman thinks and feels and how female take in the scientific world, excel in it, and still remain women.
Is it so amazing? I am nowhere is this lady's league, but I sensed something when I read it - being bright and mathematical and with a man who she was practically "home schooling," as she laughingly called it - a musician who probably thought Planck was something that one found on a pirate ship. Yet they seemed for a time at least to be in love and he met her needs.
"Genna," from my other post, is not alone. "Genna" is not Janna - a coincidence of names, in this case. There are gifted women who seem to be outside the radar of many because they are not doing anything "important" insofar as women go.
Recently a woman PhD thundered at me and my interest in mathematics that "that's a man's field. No [i]woman[/i] has ever made any great contribution in mathematics."
Meekly I said that I felt mathematics to be more beautiful than poetry, more harmonious than music.
I listen to Levin's words from a couple paragraphs down in the first chapter.
Is home schooling the answer? Is settling for a boyfriend that does not have a clue about who you [u]really[/u] are? Is feminism that says we shouldn't feel bad and that articles about this oppress women?
I wonder.
That female PhD. was putting her own limitations on you. There are certain aspects of advanced math that may actually require a feminine brain to comprehend. Being the first to do it isn't a bad thing - it's inevitable that some woman will do it. It might just as well be you.
What Jenna says about rejection makes sense. It's very hard to be passionate about something that the people around you just don't "get", and it's worse if they are people who should. The need for acceptance is powerful in most people. When you are venturing into uncharted territory, it's vital to have someone show you the way back.
Is home schooling the answer? Maybe. I always found younger men more eager to listen and I was more tolerant of their shortcomings. It's a lot easier to overlook immaturity or other failings in a 25 year old than in a 40 year old.
As for settling for a boyfriend who doesn't have a clue about who you are - most women do. There are a lot of men who never have an actual conversation with the women in their lives. I'll never forget once when someone asked this guy why he was marrying a particular girl he said "one girl is just as good as another." The guy who had questioned him just nodded and let it go. Maybe that girl wasn't any deeper than he was, but I felt sorry for her. He had no interest in "who" she was, and he never will.
I see our culture producing some spectacular women, but I honestly don't see many spectacular men, and the few I do see who are accomplished or successful go for looks without brains.
Think about the men you know between 25 and 45. How many of them could you or have you had a meaningful conversation with?
Morgaine-ism© #8
"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."
"If you want equality, that means you hate me."
It's a backlash technique. I hear it all the time when I criticize the misogyny inherent in the men's and fathers' rights movement. I must hate men and fathers and not want "equality" between mothers and fathers because I am critical of a movement that deserves criticism. Once someone brings up the "you must hate fathers" meme, all valid discussion stops. It's a way of shutting up feminists, but it doesn't shut me up.