There are a lot of men, especially of my generation and
younger, who see women as something they are entitled to. It's really funny, because this attitude is becoming too common. There are men who have this attitude toward women, and they do it with a straight face. If a woman decides
that she doesn't want his advances, suggesting thereby that she wants to make
her own choices, he becomes obsessive and, with the blessing of early 2010s pop
culture, he becomes more aggressive.
How dare
she deny him his suddenly urgent need to have a wife and make a family? How
dare he have to find someone else, do some work, sort through the endless
milling faces of society as a whole to find someone who actually enjoys his
company and is happy and comfortable with the idea of becoming part of a family.
The best part is that this is how we've been taught to be as men. We've been
simultaneously taught that women are independent creatures when it comes to
dressing and feeding themselves, but that they're also not quite human compared
to us. They can make their own choices so long as they don't go against our
choices.
It's sad when I really think about it. I am almost directly
impacted by this attitude, and I see it every day. The majority of my friends
are women, and I get to watch this happen from both sides. For whatever reason,
women are also taught to be more forgiving and tactful than men, and society
tells them to accept advances or be known as a bitch. It always hurts to see
your friends in pain, and trust me, having someone insist that you have no right to reject them, it's painful.
This whole blog is essentially the hypothetical story of someone
with straight and male privileges (which are real only to those outside of such
a privilege, apparently. That's another, more hateful blog directed at
straight, white, heterosexual men, and it will occur at some point) who treats
dating as acquiring property rather than getting to know someone. I cannot see
that being a happy life situation, and it's usually not. Unfortunately, men are
taught to acquire and women are taught not to argue, even if those men are silly, talentless, worthless, undesirable, smelly bitches.
I have to say that in my experience, this attitude also
extends into homosexual situations, but it meets an equal and opposite reaction.
It usually goes one of two ways: either the two are mutually obsessed for about
a week, then they hate each other; or one is not interested, and the other
becomes more and more obsessed, and he starts to actually harass the other guy.
I've been there. I've been on both sides of it, I'm embarrassed to admit. It's
a sense of entitlement, and when it comes up against opposition from an equal
sense of entitlement (that men have this singular ability to make their own
dating choices, reinforced by society), it becomes a new creature. It becomes
silly, unattractive, and almost cartoonish. Men are taught, ironically, to
resist any attempts to control them.
I'm going to go back to privilege for a minute, talking
about it not existing to those within it. This is something that I've seen
discussed online in many, many places, and some of the discussions are
informative. Others are screaming matches between straight, white, heterosexual
men and the rest of the world. The thing about existing within male privilege
or white privilege or straight privilege is that you're born into it. Most
privileges start out as birth rights. It's all you know. It's not privilege to
you, it's just the way it is. Everyone screaming at you about privilege are
telling you that you're being an asshole on purpose just by living the way
you've always lived.
But that's the thing, isn't it? Those of us who haven't
grown up in that world get to look at it from the outside. It's a glass wall.
We can see through it, but it's not our world. We see it as a box. Those on the
inside can't see the box. They think the whole world is made of the same
material that they live in, because the box moves with them. It goes where they
go, and it's just large enough to fit around them without including anyone
else. This is why privilege as defined by those outside of it does not exist to
those inside it. That's why those inside it insist so hard that they have no
such privilege. They can't see it. There's almost no use trying to point it
out. Some of us who exist within certain privileges but not within others are
able to see and recognize the ones we live outside of and therefore realize
that there must be others.
Perhaps this blog has turned preachy. I suppose I might feel
bad if I weren't so absolutely fed up with watching the way people behave
toward one another. I guess I feel some burning need to sort things out for
everyone, because the people doing it right now turn into illogical, screaming
walruses when confronted with a solid argument from either side. Allow me
intervene.
I don't know what I am as far as activism goes. I'm
certainly not someone who goes to conventions or participates in many discussions.
The word feminist has come up a few times, and I like that word a lot. I don't
know the true definition of it, so I might do some research just to make sure.
I do actively believe that we all need to stop living in the world we inhabit now.
I really started to cringe when the "cool story, babe, now make me a sandwich" internet meme started, followed quickly by many more
almost-not-joking memes suggesting that women shut the hell up. In the last
five years alone, I've watched the attitude of men toward women swing from
annoyed to violent to entitled. It's almost as though women
are viewed as a necessary inconvenience if one wants to have a family and pass
on his DNA. That's another thing I hear more than I can stomach as a reason for
chasing after a woman: "I want to have kids" or "I want a
family" or "I want to pass on my genes " In gaming terms, women
are an achievement to unlock. This attitude sometimes comes up with gay men,
too. Occasionally, a gay man goes on this rampage to find a fag hag who will
let him impregnate her so he can have a family. In my opinion, this is the most
disturbing thing I've ever witnessed.
How ridiculous is it that we have all forgotten that the
purpose of love and relationships is not to command and conquer Risk-style, but
to get to know someone for who they are, find a friend you can live with and
not kill, find someone who can stand to be in a car with you long enough for a
trip to the Rocky Mountains and so on. People are not prizes to be won. People
are not entitlements. People are not awarded to other people like participation
trophies. That's the worst part. My generation is the worst generation in
regards to this attitude because we're all used to getting awards and ribbons
just for participation. Men of my generation think that merely showing up
having showered and slapped deodorant on ought to be good enough. Talent is not necessary, nor is a compelling worldview or anything resembling a personality for that matter. They also don't
consider what might happen if roles were reversed, because my generation also
lacks the ability to step outside of their own experience. We see the rest of
existence as the background of our selfies, nothing more interesting or alive
than that. We lack the ability to recognize good leadership, and it
relates directly to the last item, so that the people we choose to represent us
have no debating skills. They scream, yell, punch and claw their way into
power, and that's just how they treat debates. Discussions about abortion,
feminism, gay rights or marriage equality are conducted like WWE matches.
It's unfortunate the state we find ourselves in. We're
really lost, folks. The word "privilege" has almost been hijacked in
a sense, because it's become a dirty word, and rightfully so in the way it's
used. The actual definition of "privilege" fits the
meaning we've given it recently. It's something that's a benefit of being a
part of society not subject to certain rules and hardships applied to others.
That's very close to the dictionary definition. The main difference is that
this particular privilege seems unrevokable unless it is done willingly, and if
the offending party doesn't recognize the privilege, there's nothing to revoke.
You have to know you have something for it to be taken away sometimes. Isn't
that sick? And you can't make someone aware that they have privilege by screaming into their face that they most certainly do or opening the argument with bullshit tiny examples like the position of someone's hands in that one movie no one but you watched. Start with big, obvious things so you don't seem like a reactionary asshole right away and discredit yourself. Trust me. You'll get fewer eye rolls if you start with the big stuff. I'd give you examples of the big stuff, but I'd like to think that Tumblr hasn't turned us all into microcomplaining social justice zombies incapable of remembering that at one time, people had problems beyond the first world PC outrage nonsense we busy ourselves with now.
This is where I get all preachy again, because people who
don't know the privileges they exist within are the ones who say things like
"shemale" and "talk a little more urban" and "you talk
too white" and "how do you know you're gay if you've never done it
with a man/woman?" and "there are plenty of women in power. Look at
Oprah." People who say things like this make me want to punch them in face
until they're dead. Seriously. I want to throw them off a cliff, run them over
with a car, toss them into the East River and watch them sink. I dislike
racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. It makes me physically ill, no
matter how jokingly it's said. We ought to be a society of adults, not a society
of entitled little white boys.
Yes, I said it. And if you think otherwise, that's fine. I'm
not saying I'm right and you're wrong. I'm not necessarily subject to the black-and-white
view of the world we as millennials exist within. I'm saying that if you do and
say the things I've talked about, you're probably one of the little white boys I mentioned.
You're an infant Godzilla, and the world is your sandbox. When the sandbox
rebels, you wipe it clean. Am I right?
Privilege: that's how it's done. That's how you define it.
That's how you address it. You have to explain what it is at the most basic
level. Assume the person you're addressing has no idea what it is. Don't get
into a screaming match because you think they're just being an ass and
pretending they don't know your pain. It's likely that they actually don't know. Tell them, because you can
scream at a brick wall all day every day until your throat bleeds, and the
brick wall is not going to change. However, painting the wall will at least
change it in some superficial way. It's a start. Go from there.
We are adults, even we millennials, and we need to conduct
ourselves in a way that conveys this. We need to say to one another: I get that you don't get it, and here are some big obvious examples of why you need to change how you think.
Don't scream at one another. Don't live inside a box where everything is PC and friendly so that going outside requires sunglasses and ointment. Don't let Tumblr shape how you argue, because some of the material is good and some of it is just too aggressive for how tiny the examples are. If you scream and yell, expect to be more of a spectacle than a catalyst, because no one learns anything from being yelled at, regardless of what you think you learned growing up. If you want to remake the world into a kinder place, make sure you aren't identifying as a hostile takeover. No one walks willingly into a dictatorship anymore. That shit's ugly.
