#SWEEPING REACTION TO THE REACTIONARY STATEMNT

[fidelishaereticus]

some thoughts on sexism and how we talk about it. (this got kinda long, sorry, i tried not to post it)

Can we kill this debate that’s like “Women are Good and Pure and Never Hurt Each Other and All Men are Abusive Monsters” versus “Men are All Good, All Soft Soft Beautiful Boys Incapable of Harm, Sexism Must Be A Conspiracy of Cartographers (read: If Women Are Still Oppressed It’s Their Own Dam Fault)” ? 

can we kill it? canwecanwe pleeeease??

because both extremes are just so obviously wrong and yet i see people going out of their way to die on these hills every day. people taking any benign post that’s like “ugh i hate having to experience sexism as a woman, really throws off my groove” and interpreting it as An Attack on All Men. Or, on the other end, people ASSUMING that a person (or character) is gonna be a gross sexist abuser just because they’re a man. 

So on the one hand, we’ve got the Reactionary Gender Defense Squad for Men being all outraged at the slightest suggestion that the sexism in our society is the responsibility of any men ever (like “hey girls if you’re experiencing sexism, remember it’s your own damn fault or maybe the fault of your female friends, but certainly not the fault of any men. remember! men are all Pure and Good.  its the Perfect Gender :D”). (<—i s2g every time i read a post implying this i strangle the air like. please stop. please. yes girls can be sexist too, but please stop casually blaming women for their own experience of sexism, it is ….very rude and upsetting)

On the other hand, heaven forbid we recognize how, even in the most sexist of cultures, men women are all individuals who exist beyond the categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed”. Yes, some women do in fact espouse and perpetrate sexism. Some women are abusers. And some men are truly gentle and harmless and kind; some men find themselves in situations where they may experience disadvantages (non-structural sexism, if you will) on account of their sex (kinda like how a white person in america can be bullied for their whiteness by a group of black peers, and it really can hurt them, and it is real bullying and a real problem in that situation, even while lacking the clout of Structural Racism).  So (this is a delicate point) while it is extremely understandable that oppressed classes be distrustful of oppressor classes, many of us are in situations where we are capable of transcending a strictly survivalist mentality. We can understand situational complexities and evaluate individuals as whole people rather than judging them by crude categories. And those of us who have the mental energy to do that….should? Yes, rage is cathartic, and sometimes a very important part of healing and fighting back. And god knows reactionary ideologies and hyperboles can be good cheeky fun and also a part of healing / combatting the drudgery of being oppressed (i meanbcatch me flippantly yelling things like FUCK THIS HET BULLSHIT and HELLO NAUGHTY CHILDREN GENDER IS CANCELLED 8D on the regular). But it can go too far. Sometimes, we slip into deliberately espousing rage and digging our heals hard into catchy reactionary ideologies and making snap-judgements and wide sweeping statements about other groups more because it’s easy and “the cool thing to do” than because it’s helpful or healing. Like…maybe we just do it because group mentality takes hold, and that’s gratifying and secure, and we feel righteous doing it, and idk this is just a thing humans do (forge reactionary ideologies around group identities and then fling them at eachother like grenades)? It’s natural, and to an extent inevitable, be we can catch ourselves, we can apologize where we have hurt, we can do better. So yeah, idk, as an afab, agender individual, i fucking hate that sexism exists, i hate it every goddamn day, and yeah it kinda fucked me up a little, its probably a huge part of why I’m agender*, but i personally am not suffering SO MUCH that i need to take it out in blind rage on every man i encounter. So I don’t, not even online. Because guess what? That guy who sits next to me in microbiology? It’s not his fault. Is he part of the priveleged class in a sexist soceity? Yes. But “privilege” does not automatically make a person bad (hell, it doesn’t even automatically make them lucky: some other disadvantage might might come along and completely counteract all the advantage that privilege could be giving them; you never know). Evil is not inherited or biologically bestowed. The bad parts of our culture rub off on all of us: we live and speak and breath them, and yeah, within that structure, historically oppressive classes are in general endowed with more power to abuse / don’t have to deal with all the layers of bullshit that oppressed classes have to put up with. But those realities and trends don’t define who we are as individulas, and pretendign they do really flattens the world into a very bleak, helpless determinism. 

So on the one hand, it’s really hurtful to deny the very real disadvantages that many women have and continue to experience simply by virtue of existing in a culture that traditionally empowers men at the expense of women. It is ESPECIALLY rude to make sweeping statements blaming “women” for their own sucky situation (by denying the responsibility and/or existence of an oppressive class). AT THE SAME TIME, it is deeply fucked up to imply that anyone is inevitably going to become a monster because of their gender identity and/or because of the way they were born. We can’t treat race and sex/gender like they’re some kind of original sin, whereby one inherits the collective guilt for all the evil deeds of one’s predecessors. Its just….its a very fucked up hole to go down and i’ve been down it and, no. Bad shit. 

So idk, forging a think-space somewhere between “All Men Are Monsters” and “Sexism Against Women Doesn’t Exist / Is Women’s Fault” would be a really nice.

*transphobes DO NOT TOUCH THIS WITH  A 10 FOOT POLE, I WILL CUT YOU and your gender WILL be cancelled