by MessengerOfDreams » September 6th, 2015, 5:48 pm
Let me talk a bit metric ♥♥♥♥ about sexism as your resident twospirit freakazoid.
Sexism is pictured as, let's say, a game of pinata. The target is there, the person who has the bat will never be the pinata, and they'll get the ♥♥♥♥ kicked out of them until over generations the pinata becomes receptive to reality, takes the bat, and starts beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of the human. That's what makes the MRA types scared of feminism because we've convinced ourselves to ignore the pinata or fear the pinata just wants to beat us up.
Sexism is not that easy. It is not a clear-cut case of one side bad one side good. It's true that the cis male controls most of society, even if change is creeping up. It's been men who have been empowered to make the rules, build the societies, and in general take charge, and do all the insidious little things that blossom into widespread sexism. It's just a simple mechanism of power. People want power, people value power, people will take power where they can. But ultimately although the river flows our ♥♥♥♥ from the male side to the female (and, yes, that's how it is, and if you're a cis male you're not scum and you should only be personally ashamed if you're actively sexist or in denial) people determine "reverse sexism" to be the receptors to throw it back at you.
It is not.
The cycle is a mobius strip. An infinite loop. And even if most of the ♥♥♥♥ society spews hits women, some slip through the cracks in very insidious ways, rides the Mario Circuit from MK8, and hits us in the ♥♥♥ when we least expect it. What I'm trying to say is, we recycle our own ♥♥♥♥.
I'm in the process of experiencing this. My dad is a wonderful human being. His antiquated views are at a surprising minimum for someone who's been alive since the sixties. But he was raised by a man who had rigid gender roles set in place, and by the way was an absolute megalomaniac sociopath. Men were tough, showed no weakness or emotion, held the power even when they couldn't bear it, and controlled everything. Because of this, my grandfather committed some pretty atrocious acts, including not allowing my father to acknowledge he was mentally unwell- like me, he is bipolar. A combination of an age where mental health was a new issue and a father who refused to let his son be weak repressed him. And for awhile, as a grown man, those weaknesses showed. He struggled openly with his bipolar disorder, only hitting a steady stride of wellness over the last seven to eight years. My own treatment would follow a couple of years after, when my father finally acknowledged that only so much of the "be a man" schtick his father taught him was usable in society.
Why was this the case?
Well, because men are supposed to have power. Women are emotionally weak, women's roles are set for them. Housekeeper, immediate parent, the looks-focused, the self-modifying, the subservient. Not all relationships need or really should have power structures, but as unfair as it was to make the woman subservient, the misconceptions of her ability to handle strength meant the men would carry more than they can bear. This is of course the fault of the (yes I'm using this word, it is not as bad as you think it is) patriarchy. That seems like an exaggerated word of evil like the big bad corporations like Monsanto or EvilCorp, but a patriarchy is by definition a house led by the male paternal figure. Some families function this way. Even the most feminist, self-aware woman on the planet should and can have the desire to be the stay at mother June Cleaver role if that's what they want. However, if we have a desire for an equal society, we cannot have a patriarchy, or a matriarchy, or any system where we are on a sliding scale of power.
This is a long way of saying that the roles of men in society are constructed by this patriarchy, the same one that interpreted or created the concepts of religion, depending on your belief, that often started governments like the ones we know today. And because of how we strip the power from women, it puts that extra burden on men. The one I'm experiencing being born male is the fluctuating gender whose final destination I am not sure is yet in sight. I want to be feminine. I want to wear skirts and have long hair and be a f.ierce g.oddess. Hell, if I want I'll be a goddamn drag queen whose entire inspiration is Stevie Nicks. This is a train of thought that even two decades ago, just when I was born, was a novelty. Therefore, my father, in all his talks to me about what it takes to be a man, even when his experiences made him ever the wiser, fell on flat ears until I came out, and my father had someone in his life who did not- could not- conform to gender standards. ♥♥♥♥ this is long. Let me say again, my father has been great about it. Not perfect, sometimes ignorant, never malicious, and I treasure that. But like him, I am having to learn that the roles I have set for myself are not the roles I have to take.
So after some pretentious me-centric rambling, I'm getting to the point.
Domestic violence is a gender issue that hurts everyone. Because of the drilled-in power structure, we already see women as inferior and automatically weaker than men. True, generally their body structures are different, that's biology. But that puts the idea in our head that men, the ones with power, are the physically abusive ones. Flip the genders, and there are two reasons caused by sexism that this is dismissed or mocked. One, men are powerful, they can't be toppled by the inferior women. Inversely, the weak woman cannot beat the strong man up, that's impossible. This is caused by patriarchal thinking, and it hurts everyone, and that's the thing that most people who argue against the idea of patriarchal sexism don't get. Name a form of "reverse sexism" and I can probably trace it to the steady flow of ♥♥♥♥ that's on the loop-de-loop right back to our asses. The still-growing intelligent human being is learning to treat each other equally, and that is a hard process, but the key is to realize the flow of ♥♥♥♥ is circular, not a food fight.
Could the patriarchy enable men with a disrespect of women drilled in by millenia to empower them to be violent or controlling? Sure. I think it leans male--->female because of these societal flaws. But domestic abuse is possible, and can be executed, by anyone. And it's not just rape or violent fights. It is social manipulation. It is fear. It is messing with one's mind. It can literally turn a person into a shell of themselves, to the point where they have no way out of the situation or they simply are made to believe the situation they are living in is okay. My father was in his thirties before he cut ties with his abusive, sociopathic father, and to protect his life and his family he gave up the dream he spent his life aspiring for- a permanent, solid home, which we still do not have. But to this day my father inspires me to break the chain, the mobius ♥♥♥♥, no matter the cost.
Abuse is not easy to get out of, and it is insanely more intricate than the idea of he-man punching poor woman will ever seem. But it is a gendered issue. It builds in the worst way of gender roles and sexism cemented by millenia, and again, it HURTS EVERYONE because of that gender situation.
My Most Recent Works: show Updated Works! Some of my past best and current stuff: show
