2009/05/29

The solution to mysogany must include MEN.

I read a really interesting post while browsing for Joss Wheadon / Firefly stuff. The overlay post is about the girl who was stoned to death by her family for falling in love with a Suni. Joss posted a plea for action, and some of the following comments where made by women who obviously have issues (not that I blame them) with men. Then this guy came along:

http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271#176025
...the simple fact is, the issue of violence against women isn’t going to be settled unless male sexuality is respectfully included in the equation. Denigrating it out of hand, condemning it outright, using it as a tool of shame and disgrace, that isn’t going to work. I’ve read an awful lot from hurt women on this board, and my heart goes out to all of you. There is no doubt that you have to put up with a lot of crap, just for being women. And you don’t want to hear about the crap that men put up with, because in many cases you a) don’t think it’s valid, considering we’re the ones doing all of the oppressing and b) why should we complain because we’re at the top of the social and cultural heap. The fact that we have our own issues, values, concerns and desires is inconsequential to your equation,...
...
You’ll call me a misogynist (unfairly), a sexist (because you haven’t tried to listen), an apologist (because you think me and my life are indefensible) and worse. Go ahead. I’m used to it. I’ve been called all of those things since I was 7 years old, before I even knew what a penis was for. By the time I was 12, I knew for a fact that, despite my inability to have any kind of control over my own life, I was single-handedly responsible for all of the worlds ills from slavery to the Holocaust, and that I was incapable of doing anything else unless I was willing to surrender my testicles first – and even then, I still couldn’t ever really understand. By the time I was 18, being the “sensitive guy” I was told every woman wanted my entire life hadn’t panned out because despite the rhetoric, on a personal level those same “feminists” were passing up sensitive guys like spoiled meat in favor of the very macho idiots they claimed to despise.
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According to all the proper polls, I’m the guy with the most power in the world, no matter how personally ineffectual and inconsequential I feel. I safely own guns for a variety of reasons, I play violent video games upon occasion, I like pornography, and I love sex in all of its manifestations. Doubtlessly, by now you have written me off as an “oppressor” based on my vital statistics. My point: Any solution of violence against women is going to have to have the support of me and my white male suburban peers, however distasteful you find me and my lifestyle.
I'm not saying I agree with that, but he hits a few nerves, and the logic of his final point seems inescapable to me. Men, and I mean MEN, need to be included in the solution, or killed off entirly.



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