I hope my sudden shift from rarely blogging to superblogging doesn't burn anyone out. I just felt the desire a lot lately and it feels like the words just flow from my fingertips with minimal revision. As a quick aside before I even get started, I would love to be able to revise things after I've said them and heard them, but before anyone else has heard them, because sometimes it doesn't really sound insane until the words are perceived outside your brain. I don't know why that is, but it's true. Coming back to point, or coming to point for the first time. I have this person in my life that feels really judgemental. I guess I've known that she was since I first met her, but I decided that it bothered me more now that we aren't exactly friends anymore. The thing that bothers me is that feels really two-faced of me. Why was I perfectly willing to accept these inconsistencies in judgement before and not after? Probably because I'm human. I find humanity nearly as frustrating as I do fulfilling. In the words of the legendary Dread Pirate Roberts, "Life is pain...anyone who says any different is selling something." I find this in my life rather bothersome. Maybe not so much bothersome as troubling, because it's always after the fact that I dislike what happened, rather than during.
Anyway. I can't stand reverse discrimination, especially since I'm a white male. I have two examples of this, one of which relates to my previous paragraph. The first is black people holding on to the grudge of slavery and holding it against white people regardless of their personal actions/experience with the person in question. To be honest, this particular form of prejudice affects my life very little, because everyone I know that's black, or african american (which is a woefully inaccurate term)or whatever are some of the coolest people I've ever met.
The thing that I find far more prevalent and irritating is reverse discrimination via sexism. This is what links back to the first paragraph. The majority of the judgements this person has is against men. Don't get me wrong, as gender, we've perpetrated some of the most horrendous atrocities this world has ever seen. In general, we can be stupid, pig-headed, unnecessarily cruel, but those aren't universal characteristics for any classification or group. Finding something not offensive just because a woman says it instead of a man bothers me just as much as when the words of a black man are discounted, just because he's black. Grrrr!
Here's my problem with Gender Inequality (Yes I capitalized it because it's a bit of a hot issue, like White Supremecy) A great deal of women don't want to own up to gender accountability. Women were suppressed for hundreds, hell, thousands of years and they would like to pass off any responsibility in allowing themselves to be repressed and using that as an excuse to do the same back to men, despite the fact that a great deal has been changed isn't anywhere near as bad as these women deign to think. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that makes what men have done any less atrocious or awful, it just means that for hundreds, or thousands of years WOMEN DIDN'T DO MUCH IF ANYTHING ABOUT IT! That's all I'm really asking for an admission of.
A few years ago I read a story in the paper about how a 18 year old white kid was denied into a college of his choice, he got the usual denial letter, "Thank you for your application, we regret to inform you, blah blah blah." He then brought a lawsuit against the college, stating reverse discrimination. After proving that white males were the smallest minority in the college, at less than half of the next smallest minority, he won the lawsuit and the college was required to admit him. That man is my hero.
If there are people that find anything I said here to be offensive, please, feel free to comment, which will give me your email and I'd be happy to talk about it. I feel confident in my position about this idea. If in reading this you label me as a sexist bigot, that makes me sad for you because one of the things I value most about this life we are given is the opportunity to decide, to take information and change our opinion, or ways of living, and it would seem you've given that up.
Adieu and goodday.
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3 responses:
I don't perceive you as a sexist bigot... I simply offer a few thoughts for your consideration.
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that women didn't do much of anything to change their lot. Very often throughout history, feminists were branded as witches and burned at the stake, or marginalized, or silenced in other ways. The patriarchy of past generations maintained a complete stranglehold over women and other minorities, literally. Changes have been slow, painful, and quite deadly.
Even now, large portions of the earth's population live under fear of political recriminations for promoting sexual equality. Just consider the girls who burned to death in Saudi Arabia because the male fire fighters would not breach the socially mandated division of the sexes.
As a Native American male, I do NOT hold you personally responsible for past grievances against my race or against my grandmothers. You have been nothing but a kind and gracious friend to me.
Yes, reverse discrimination is wrong; I simply invite you to consider the white, heterosexual, male privilege you enjoy through no fault or merit of your own. You may find your compassion deepens with time.
Thank you,
I appreciate all this feedback. I didn't know I was asking for this feeback, and I'm very glad I got it. Thank you for the specification on the matriarchies of the past, so to speak, and everything else you brought up. Part of what I wrote was out of frustration which colored the words as I wrote them, I'm sure you noticed. You have also always been a kind and gracious friend to me. I've never occurred to me for a moment that you might be holding me personally responsible for any grievances done to Native Americans in the past. My favorite piece that I find most applicable is asking me to consider the white male privilege that I receive, through no fault or doing of my own.
I see where you're coming from on these points, definitely. Not everybody is racist, nor is everyone reverse racist; but from both ends of the spectrum, it needs to stop. Same with the sexism. Equality, with a nice balance, instead of constantly tipping the scales first one way, then the extreme other.
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