Weasel language
Hi Internet,
If you dog pile someone from a socially accepted unassailable position of strength you are not a hero. Particularly if you engage in dissent shaming and complain about people being mindless. Then go on to imply that this person is engaging in behaviour, or in this case thinking, that contributes to a pretty damn serious issues like ( Read more... )
I don't care if it's not so bad being a white male. The pursuit of happiness is not measured by a frequency distribution graph. If you think this is a sane point to put forward, you need to have a good long hard think about what you're actually saying.
This is what happens when you take a good idea (women and men should be treated equal) too far. This is when you get to the idea that some sick people put forward: That all men are rapists. Men are responsible for all the evil in this world.
This kind of magical thinking seeps into regular, sane and logical feminist thought. It's like Bin Laden and Islam. You're American, I'm sure the idea has been put to you by suspicious sources. This is the kind of thinking that James hates. Believe me, he goes on and on about people who think possessing a Y chromosone is a disease that needs to be cured. It raises the mans hackles. Drives me nuts. I think how he goes after the issue constantly is stupid.
I think about sexism the way I think about global warming. It's not good, let's do something about it. No matter what your opinions are about it improving the situation is good for everyone.
It's okay if you resent the idea I put forward, because it was meant to be uncomfortable. Part of this was making about confronting people about their behavior by saying to them that unwittingly their behavior today may be recognized as destructive in the future.
It's not as if the people from 1950 sat their and rubbed their hands together while they created a system of patriarchy. It just kinda happened. But seeing women as non persons was the socially accepted unassailable position of its day. Feminism was an unpopular position until it became the norm. Not being a jerk to people who share James opinion is how we prevent ourselves from being as unwittingly destructive as those who came before.
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I do not mean to disdain your perspective, your person, or your right to your opinion. On a purely personal level I feel that you are telling me these things as if you are my guru or a preacher, and I resent it because I feel you - Cemil - are talking down to me - Tom. I do not find it friendly or amusing.
I will give an example from your remark for the sake of absolute clarity of what I am referring to.
It's okay if you resent the idea I put forward, because it was meant to be uncomfortable. Part of this was making about confronting people about their behavior by saying to them that unwittingly their behavior today may be recognized as destructive in the future.
I will grant that you have both every right to your perspective, and I will even grant that it is certainly quite likely that in fifty years there will be as much confusion over our backward foolishness as there is now, over attitudes of the past.
That said, I find this extremely condescending and I do not feel that you have some inborn right to issue me a life lesson out of nowhere. I am uncomfortable when people come to me explicitly to ask for advice; with you, I seem to be getting a ton of it. You infer things that I have neither said nor alluded to, such as somehow reading in that I am claiming you were not bullied when you were younger when I have expressed that I am very sensitive to calling other people bullies due to my own perspectives.
You say I am your friend and you want to have a drink with me; I would wonder, if this is how you address your friends, how you must speak to your enemies. If you would like to issue people moral lessons I would encourage you to cultivate better methods of approach. Whatever lesson you are attempting to impart to me is clearly transmitting poorly.
Thank you for your time.
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