Hmm, I haven't actually written anything worth sharing in a while, so I suppose it's time I changed that. Allow me to prelude my thoughts on the issue;
I have always, so far back as I can remember, loathed the idea of feminism. It had a strong social connotation that I just didn't like. I hated the idea that women held the sexual power and that they complained about males hitting on them all the time. This piece I always just came back with "Well, I don't see why it isn't a compliment." I was slowly becoming part of the problem, just with this little attitude. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself a feminist but I do stand strongly for Humanism, and the idea that no human being, regardless of age, skin colour, religion or gender should feel oppressed or degraded based on such a quality. I thought that that was enough however, which it may have been had I not held my own ignorance. Yes, dear reader, I was an asshole, still am in all likelihood, but I'm accepting my ignorance, struggling to change my attitudes and you can take that for what you wish.
Another issue that always irked me, was how if I was exercising a little of the extra-emotional tendencies with which we stereotype and characterize as feminine, I was always told, by women no less, to just man up.
Back up! In an age where women were fighting to remove the stigma surrounding the notions about there being a greater and lesser gender, in the age where we were striving to make women earn the same as men on average, in the age where girls were fighting a legal battle to join the boy scouts, it was still okay to tell a male to "man up," because he was being extra emotional?! That is an injustice, and I feel it still is.
Fast forward through my petty outbursts and tirades about femi-nazis and man-haters blah blah raging arrogant a-hole blah. A few weeks ago, Emma Watson set the stage for what I consider to be quite the revolutionary idea in her speech to the UN. I will attach the link to the video at the end. She pointed out the major differences, but then she addressed how men are perceived. I have witnessed friends of mine on Facebook denounce this as catering to men, making them the focus and petting the pitbull, but I find that to be a childish critique. Especially since, perhaps an oversimplification but one I make nonetheless, is that it is like bringing a new baby into a formerly single-child home, where the older child is old enough to know life as an only child. Allow me to explain this analogy;
When you have all the attention, all the focus, you tend to not need to learn how to share. You can dominate those around you and throw tantrums and still be the beloved monster at large. But when suddenly, you have to learn to share and empathy, extremely foreign concepts in spite of their necessity, your natural reactance towards the change goes through the roof. You hate it. You hate your sibling. You hate your parents, those telling you that you need to learn to change. But if you're the parent, it's different. You see what used to be a fairly well behaved child act out, get upset and throw tantrums because they don't understand why they aren't so special. They can't. They never had to. BUT, if you can make that child integral to their own learning, involve them in bringing up the new baby, employ their skills in getting things, let them nurture when reasonable, help them grow WITH their new foe for your attention, you bring a natural change that is warranted and almost unnoticed. You're helping someone grow in a positive light.
This analogy may, as I stated, be oversimplifying, but if you guarantee that men will be helping bring change for the better for all genders on the spectrum, keep there from being an overreaction on their side, a tantrum if you will, you can make them want to change, want to learn to be better. It's not catching bees with honey, it's bringing about a better world for those of all genders,
As promised, here's the video
