Everybody Hurts

I am a feminist. I will say that I am always sympathetic to the earnest Man trying to understand Woman. Women baffle me at times and I am one. To say that men suffer too or that a man is objectified as well misses the larger issue to me. Human life always encompasses suffering, and comparing our wounds, while a temporary salve, or more often a nettlesome reopening of pain, changes nothing. Neither does preaching to the choir. What feminism is about, for me, is a method of analyzing power, how people sort themselves out, who gets to do what and who gets to have what.

If you believe that men love their children as much as women do, then you are a feminist.

If you believe that women and men should choose when to have children and when not, then you are a feminist. (I believe men should have reliable birth control too)

If you believe a person should be judged on their merits, then you are a feminist.

If you believe in peace, then you are a feminist.

If you believe in work life balance, then you are a feminist.

Being a good feminist, like all the secular humanist disciplines requires a lot of reading. I know I can’t keep up, but if you want to know more here are some resources you may not have already heard of: bitch mag (I love this one), Spread is a mag for sex workers written from a feminist perspective (kinda seemed on topic), and my personal favorite Feminist Thinker Katha Pollitt.

I tend to think that most people have a lazy, self-serving and money seeking bias more then they want to “keep the woman down.” So many of these sexist ads are an attempt to tap into that “young male market” or simply to sell sex because that’s the easy thing to do. Many other are simple male fantasy like that goof with the big lens that Mogi posted. The only way a guy looking like that got a woman who looks like that on that back of his motorcycle is by paying five hundred bucks an hour. I guess he thinks he is getting what he paid for, but I scoff at him and so do many others.

Jean Kilbourn spoke very well on the subject of female passivity which I think is a bigger problem than fantasy sexy pictures in ads. And the Hip Hop video was hope inducing, I’m glad people are starting to address sexism and homophobia in that culture. I think some of this misogyny and harm in rap has to do with an attempt to divorce oneself from all responsibility except the rush of the moment and the stroking of number one. Kind of an inverse of earlier drug cultures. Plenty to analyze there.

The bottom line of all of this for me is that all of these things add up. Many small things added up to totalitarian governments and unfortunate war adventures throughout history. Iran before its revolution had a large progressive and cosmopolitan population. Progress for everyone requires that we become wiser, bigger hearted, and vigilant. I don’t think that there is a “really big conspiracy” but there are people who want to turn the clock back, they are organized, well funded and I oppose them. The debasement of women harms everyone and thwarts progressive change.