Another (Not So) Radical Idea

When I graduated from college twenty years ago, I wrote a senior thesis. I was in the Women's Studies program and even though we could take a senior seminar to complete our degree, I volunteered to write a thesis because I wanted to challenge myself. The subject of my paper was "Why We Need to Include Men in the Feminist Movement." At the time, it was a radical idea and not one that was well received by my peers. I was, in fact, ridiculed by my professor in my thesis workshop. I didn't report that incident because I knew it was an unpopular idea and I knew I would take crap for it. But I also fervently believed that it was ludicrous for 50% of the population to get together to talk about their rights without including the other 50% in the discussion. In the minds of those who were threatened by my idea, including men would be "asking for their permission" or "allowing them to dominate the conversation," and both of those fears are completely justified.

But what I was suggesting was that we take care not to pit ourselves against men, that we don't stereotype them the same way we have been, that we don't assume all men are sexist. I knew, from my personal life, that they are not. I knew that there was a lot of support out there from men, men who wished their lives could be different as well. Post-college, I noticed a trend. Nearly all of my intimate relationships were with men who had been accused of being gay at some point in their lives; because they cared about their appearance, decorated their apartments, liked to cook, made friends with women, hugged in public, or just liked to talk about something other than sports, beer or women. There was never a question of whether they actually were homosexual. They were not. Never had been, never would be.

The fact was that because they didn't fit into the stereotype of what society expects men to be -- and in my mind they are far more desirable than the stereotype -- they must be gay. There must be something wrong with them. It's not normal for a man to be like that. So it made perfect sense to me that men and women should work together to denounce these stereotypes, to be ourselves (whoever we are) and to stand up against treating people one way or another based on their bodies. It's no different than treating people based on what language they speak, what country they're from, what color their skin is or what kind of car they drive. People are people and we're all different. But we're all people. We should all have the same rights and no person should have rights over another person.

Emma Watson, an elegant, intelligent, talented young woman, has been tasked by the United Nations to tackle this issue and she has come up with the same idea I had twenty years ago: To include men in the feminist movement. I could look at this as if we haven't come very far but I don't. At the time, my statement was made to one classroom and a single faculty member at one University in one state in the United States. Now, the statement is being made to the United Nations and the entire world. I hope people hear the message and respond. Enough is enough!

I'm a Feminist Too

I just discovered Laci Green. The Internet is so vast. We see things flying around on Facebook and have this illusion that we're "seeing what's going on" in the world. The fact that we have shared online experiences tricks us into thinking that we've experienced everything that's going on when in fact, we're just partying in the same room while a whole world is outside. It's both the benefit and the detriment of social media. While we can more easily share ideas and rally behind a single action, we can also more easily ignore and miss other ideas and fail to put our attention where it might be more useful.

So back to Laci Green. She is doing what I would be doing if the technology existed when I was her age. It's the reason I started this little blog. I started my senior thesis in college, twenty years ago (!), with the same sentence that she starts this video with. In essence, my name is and I'm a feminist. Because it was then and still is a "dirty" word. I'm sickened by the comments that people have made on the YouTube page. Hateful, violent things presented as some kind of logical argument by people who probably consider themselves to be normal and nice. People who use those mouths and hands to love people and do jobs and drive cars. But in the privacy of their home, they virulently defend a social system that oppresses men and women and is the main cause of social inequality.

All of the the ills of the world -- war, slavery, poverty among them -- are the result of these dichotomies that force men to fight instead of talk and women to fuck instead of lead. Excuse my language but clearly the world is not right and I'm glad that Laci Green has the guts to say it. As many times as it needs to get said!