Episode 14 - She Power Post-Mortem
With some obvious exceptions, we generally like to think the best of our friends and family. We love them, and we like to believe that people we love are as good a people as we are. So it's always a little jarring when we discover that the people we love - or at least surround ourselves with - feel, believe, or even act upon things we consider to be bad.
Telling people I was reading the power-reversal thought experiment that is The Power was an upsetting reminder of these facts. It called to mind the ideas put forth in The Righteous Mind: that we experience a gut feeling to information received and then rationalize afterwards why that feeling was good or proper. It also calls to mind a Lois Duncan book read in my youth: Daughters of Eve. If memory serves me correctly, it's about a school girl's club where they are brought to realize that so many of the men in their lives are pretty shitty. And while that book had plenty to say about feminism and misogyny, potentially because I'm a boy who thinks himself "good," one of the things that stuck out at me was one of the male characters in the novel saying that he was "trying." I can't remember the exact words of the novel I read probably 15 years ago, but his appeal was that he was an old school guy that was trying to wrap his head around women's liberation - and that really struck a nerve with me.
I can't honestly say that this is when my feminist awakening began, although if you were to write the story of my life, you could certainly include that bit as some decent foreshadowing. Unfortunately, I went through a mostly inward phase where I believed some pretty shitty things about women. But feeling that I was "good" and these things I felt and thought were "bad," it was exceedingly difficult for me to express them very often if at all, and many of my friends (probably 80% of them female) may be somewhat shocked to learn that I was a closet misogynist for probably a good three or four years of my life in undergrad and grad school. I'm glad that I wasn't the type to plaster these things to Facebook or other social media, as I don't have to face the shittier ideologies of my younger self in any real way except for occasions such as these: where I'm confessing on my own terms that I was kinduva shitbag.
What ended my little phase was some good ol' fashioned introspection. I think one of the phrases I said to myself once was "I can't believe women are EXACTLY as shallow as men!" Wait, what? Seriously. I don't know if I ever said the words aloud, but I definitely thought them. And then I had the most horrifying realization a young misogynist can have: women are... PEOPLE! Why was I so pissed off that women weren't these angelic superior beings that would love me no matter how fat or ugly I was like TV had told me they were? It's amazing how a guy with so many girl-friends could resent women so much, all the while oblivious to his own starkly obvious hypocrisy. I think many men go through this phase. The lucky ones, like me, will keep it all in their head until it passes, and nobody will ever have to know what a shit-heel they were until they decide to publicly announce it on the internet several years after the fact to make a point. Others, as we all know, don't come out of it. They continue to hate and resent women. Maybe they have a moment of introspection like I had, and what they find is not hypocrisy, but rationalization. In order to keep themselves in the "good" category, they put women in the "bad" category so that they don't have to challenge themselves with the notion that they have not been the righteous person they thought they were. And so, convinced that they are and have always been righteous, it becomes easier to say that women and the society that allows them to become increasingly more human independently of men are evil. Voila: my speculation on the birth of Red Pill misogyny.
But I don't want to waste too many words on them. I believe that few men fall into either the feminist or misogynist camps; they fall in the "I'm trying" camp. These men are the majority of your husbands, fathers, brothers, sons. The extent of their trying varies greatly, but I do believe (perhaps naively), that we have reached a point in our society where we can generally accept that women are human beings, and as those antiquated notions of femininity and it's place in the world slowly trudge out the door of existence, what's left behind is more and more men "trying." I know that upon reading those words, many feminists may feel tempted to take up Yoda's call: "Do or do not. There is no try." I would counter this with Aaliyah: "If at first you don't succeed, pick yourself up and try again." The men in my life who made their silly semi-sexist remarks about the feminist book I was reading are trying. They're married, and I know them to be incredibly supportive of their wives' pursuits, they have female bosses, supervisors, and coworkers they esteem (and others they don't for reasons not related to their chromosomal configuration), and frequently use outdated sexual stereotypes for "ironic" jokes and quips. What I'm saying is, their parts are mixed. I myself make the odd ironic "misogynistic" joke now and then - only ever in the company of those who know my views lest my intent be misinterpreted. But I make them fewer and fewer each year. I too am still trying.
Human nature is such that we judge the majority of things that are different to mean that one must be better than another. I prefer Pepsi, but occasionally I want a Coke because they taste different and I like them both differently. This may be the most inflammatory statement I make on a post about feminism to some people. It is for that reason that I believe equality of the sexes much like among races, ethnicities, nationalities, colors, and all things that divide bears with us an asymptotic relationship: ever approaching zero, but never equaling zero. One could be forgiven for seeing this as a grim, defeatist prognosis. But it is my opinion that this relationship with equality is ever-improving. No matter how much we think we've made it, it can always get better. There is always another challenge to overcome, another mountain to climb, another dragon to slay. Progress drives humanity. It is the pursuit of goals that keeps a great many of us alive and persuades us to leave the comfort of our beds in the morning. Although I'm no social scientist, I can imagine this being true on a macro level as well. Our institutions, as incredibly flawed as they may be, continue driving towards their own goals: saving the environment, improving healthcare, increasing profits, ending war, starting wars, creating jobs, etc.
It is my belief that the pursuit of equality will be one of the main factors driving society forward for the foreseeable future. We have made incredible strides in spite of frequent, and these days it seems more aggressive opposition. There will always be those who wish a return to the “values” of yesteryear, but as I am increasingly fond of saying: society advances one funeral at a time. Their numbers dwindle, and the number of those trying continue to swell. One day, we may not even have to try at all.
Respectfully and with Love,
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