Will she agree, or make excuses, so as not to be racist?
Posted on 07/17/2017 11:21:13 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Jody Allard July 6, 2017
Share285 men If the feminist men—the men who proudly declare their progressive politics and their fight for quality—aren’t safe, then what man is? No man, I fear.
I have two sons. They are strong and compassionate—the kind of boys other parents are glad to meet when their daughters bring them home for dinner. They are good boys, in the ways good boys are, but they are not safe boys. I’m starting to believe there’s no such thing.
I wrote an essay in The Washington Post last year, during the height of the Brock Turner case, about my sons and rape culture. I didn’t think it would be controversial when I wrote it; I was sure most parents grappled with raising sons in the midst of rape culture. The struggle I wrote about was universal, I thought, but I was wrong. My essay went semi-viral, and for the first time my sons encountered my words about them on their friends’ phones, their teachers’ computers, and even overheard them discussed by strangers on a crowded metro bus. It was one thing to agree to be written about in relative obscurity, and quite another thing to have my words intrude on their daily lives.
One of my sons was hurt by my words, although he’s never told me so. He doesn’t understand why I lumped him and his brother together in my essay. He sees himself as the “good” one, the one who is sensitive and thoughtful, and who listens instead of reacts. He doesn’t understand that even quiet misogyny is misogyny, and that not all sexists sound like Twitter trolls. He is angry at me now, although he won’t admit that either, and his anger led him to conservative websites and YouTube channels; places where he can surround himself with righteous indignation against feminists, and tell himself it’s ungrateful women like me who are the problem.
I teeter frequently between supporting my son and educating him. Is it my job as his mother to ensure he feels safe emotionally, no matter what violence he spews? Is it my job as his mother to steer and educate, no matter how much that education challenges his view of himself? I think it’s both, but the balance between the two has proven impossible to pinpoint. When I hear his voice become defensive, I back off but question whether I’m doing him any favors by allowing his perception of himself to go unchallenged. When I confront him with his own sexism, I question whether I’m pushing too hard and leaving him without an emotional safe space in his home.
As a single mother, I sometimes wonder whether the real problem is that my sons have no role models for the type of men I hope they become. But when I look around at the men I know, I’m not sure a male partner would fill that hole. Where are these men who are enlightened but not arrogant? Who are feminists without self-congratulation? If my sons need role models, they may have to become their own.
I joined Bumble recently, after a six-plus year break from dating. I’m not overly interested in dating in the first place, but I’m starved for adult conversation so dating feels like a necessary evil. Bumble, as I explained to my married friends, is like the feminist Tinder. Women have to initiate contact with men, so at least there’s no inbox full of dick picks every day. But, feminist or not, the men are no different from the men anywhere else and I quickly felt deflated. If the feminist men — the men who proudly declare their progressive politics and their fight for quality — aren’t safe, then what man is? No man, I fear.
I know I’m not supposed to cast an entire sex with a single paint brush — not all men, I’m sure some readers are thinking and preparing to type or tweet. But if it’s impossible for a white person to grow up without adopting racist ideas, simply because of the environment in which they live, how can I expect men not to subconsciously absorb at least some degree of sexism? White people aren’t safe, and men aren’t safe, no matter how much I’d like to assure myself that these things aren’t true.
My sons won’t rape unconscious women behind a dumpster, and neither will most of the progressive men I know. But what all of these men share in common, even my sons, is a relentless questioning and disbelief of the female experience. I do not want to prove my pain, or provide enough evidence to convince anyone that my trauma is merited. I’m through wasting my time on people who are more interested in ideas than feelings, and I’m through pretending these people, these men, are safe.
I love my sons, and I love some individual men. It pains me to say that I don’t feel emotionally safe with them, and perhaps never have with a man, but it needs to be said because far too often we are afraid to say it. This is not a reflection of something broken or damaged in me; it is a reflection of the systems we build and our boys absorb. Those little boys grow into men who know the value of women, the value that’s been ascribed to us by a broken system, and it seeps out from them in a million tiny, toxic ways.
I don’t know what the balance is between supporting these men and educating them, but I know the toll it takes on me to try. I am too valuable and too worthy to waste my time on men who are not my flesh and blood. But as my boys grow into men, I wonder whether I’ve done enough to combat the messages they hear from everyone but me. They are good boys, and maybe that’s the best they can be in the system we’ve created for them.
Jody Allard is a former techie-turned-freelance-writer living in Seattle. She can be reached through her website, on Twitter or via her Facebook page.
In short, she hates everything, especially herself and her life.
By far, the legions of mis-socialized women’s most distressing proclivity is to evaluate any and every “thing” by its theoretical impact on herself.
And who do that fall for?
“Yo, bimbo
I’m Mister Sleaze
I’m what you want
I’m what you need
We go to my place
We do da wild thing
Then after that
I slap you ‘round some.”
And they go gaga eyed.
And after Mister Sleeze has his way, they go “All men are pigs yada yada gabba gabba”.
And who to they go after again? They may toy around with Sensitive New Age Guy (neutered male), but will dump him n a New York minute for another Mister Sleaze. The cycle repeats ad nauseum ad infinitum.
And people wonder why I stopped playing the game long ago.
Lady please send your sons to their father... Good or bad they need it..
Progressivism. What garbage.
let me break it down.
Men want to have sex. Some women are jealous of theater some have been “Hit on” too often. 40 years a gal movement started to dampen the basic instincts off men by being able to sue them for sexual harassment on the job.
now they can be sued for harassment anywhere and charged other rape of women are drink when they open their legs. entertainment has shown men as kinder, gentler, metrosexual and homosexuals have been portrayed as leads. all contrary to the 98+% of men who remain instinctively sexual and latently aggressive in fear of being arrested, fired or sued ion they act 0n their basic nature.
The person who cannot “trust’ her sons is acknowledging that men are sexually aggressive and that he sons may be animals she cannot train and trust to not approach women they desire.
Strong women on the other hand learn and have the ability to socialize, date and marry men and work with them without being raped or having to endure a constant sexual onslaught because they know what to do around men and don’t require lawyers and allege administrators to protect them.
instead of women learning how to handle male aggressiveness verbally, we now expect men to change and repress their basic nature. thus the current level of frustration by “well meaning, progressive, feminists.”
I’ve been reading Hi-tech RedNeck for years and I’ve always read him as male.
Stupid of you to make it an issue RC
I’ve been reading Hi-tech RedNeck for years and I’ve always read him as male.
Stupid of you to make it an issue RC
I one time dated a woman like this twenty years ago. Thought she had two prior divorces (turned out to be three I found out later on). She got paranoid, and did an amateur background check on the internet, and found someone with a similar name who was tied to Aryan Nation. Aha! She found something! So that was the dark secret I was allegedly hiding! And she unleashed her full man hating fury. Fortunately I was no where near marrying the psycho witch.
Later she found another mark, married him, and destroyed him through divorce number 4.
“I can’t understand what this person is writing about. What is she saying?”
Best as I can tell, it’s a paranoid psychotic critique of masculinity. She fears her sons might rape her or something because of secret messages they are receiving from everyone but her.
really lost me on that when she misspelled “pics”
Thank God for Eastern European and Asian mail order brides so that American men no longer have to put up with wing nuts like her.
Now she's free to become a cat herder.
Will she agree, or make excuses, so as not to be racist?
She almost certainly votes for Progressive Politicians who refuse to deport illegal immigrant rapists. I am not a sensitive feminist man-- I am a knuckle-dragging conservative who believes that if women can't walk down the sidewalks without fear of molestation, then all the talk about empowering women is just b.s.
The idea that this b**ch complains about the "rape culture" of the West while supporting the importation of millions of immigrants from Muslim countries is simply gob smacking.
LOL.
Probably not serial killers, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they chose to bat for the other team.
This woman is seriously deranged and I feel for her sons.
“This women would be offering sex acts for a piece of cheese...”
Only in the places that are still civilized. Everywhere else they will not be allowed to bargain.
Well your problem is failing to speak for God. We should all be speaking for God if God had His way.
I don’t go for this “I yam what I yam” vision of maleness. Whether Popeye cartoons or the Village People (yeah, there is a kind of self-fetishism in it) it’s so fall-of-mankind. There was a reason Adam and Even wanted those fig leaves. And God hates it when you abuse those loin skins He substituted as yet another token of your private tuffness.
I go for “I am what I am by the grace of God” vision of maleness.
This means less macho chesty thumping and more referring to other things that are good and true and beautiful.
Did you know Jesus Christ, as the preincarnate Son, created every pretty little flower in the world? As well as the tumult of stars thousands of times larger than the sun in countless numbers in galaxies?
Maybe you’re confusing pulling out all the stops on the organ, from the delicate to the thunderously robust, all in its proper time, with being female. It isn’t. Don’t criticize others’ wideness with your narrowness as the standard.
And don’t get her started on Blacks and Muslims ...
Thanks for the moral support...
I think there’s so much hyper-masculinity in the world today and it’s stupid. But it comes from trying to make up for the losses incurred in the fall of mankind. And when it’s heard from someone too timid to even TRY to “speak up for God” — it’s really pathetic.
For heaven’s sake St. John did... scandalous! ... lean on Jesus’... scandalous! ... breast.
They weren’t worried about what the world thought. They were up at God-grade love. But it was also chaste.
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