I’m looking for the transcript (found it)because sometimes the applause drowns out the speaker. In any case, this is a command performance and emphasizes a few important points about discourse in our society in general and feminism in particular.
I remember how the park, outside of parked cars, was frozen with quiet and darkness, when your anger shot through the night.
“Why do you call yourself a feminist? You guys are equal. And as a man, I am always expected to be a man, to make the first move. If anything, it is harder for me; you get all of the good stuff and none of the bad.”
With your brows furrowed with concern, with the capacity of my inferior mind, and your eyes grasp my shoulders, pushing me down as if to add to the gravity of your words.
“Do you understand where I am coming from now?”
I sat there small, draped in a label that was then too big for me. Struggling in the creases that were smothering the pieces of ideals taped together to form my skeleton. Feminist fell over my frame like an old baggy shirt. Suddenly embarrassing, the tag started to itch.
All of the good stuff and none of the bad. Women like Orwell’s pigs squealing to be more equal than others, while you’re pressured to be a man in relationships. The dilemma of having to choose who you spend your most intimate moments with. So while I sympathize with your burden of boyhood bravery, it’s hard to be the problem of a cloud’s troubled position of [working the ward] water while you’re the parched flower waiting for the rain to come only to be bother by the thunderous booms of ingratitude.
This is when you tell me not to get hysterical.
Hysterical, the word invented as a diagnosis to given to women showing inappropriate emotion, like anger. Supplemented with a daily dose of the question”Are you on your period?” As if an internal chemical explosion is the only thing that warrants my passionate opinion. But I am not suppose to talk about it. So I’m still trying to figure out why the hell I am to hide the fact that I bleed.
You illegitimatize the cries of my sisters. You try to deny me of my history. Give me hysterectomy that misdirects me dissect the women from this.
You know what? I am done with the futility of civility. I feel like cussing you out.
I would call you a pussy but that would mine. Cunt is the same predicament because it’s your dick I meant to insult. Can’t call you a slut, bitch, or whore because those are reserved for the ladies. I’d call you a son of a bitch but that would just insult the women you came from. The male equivalent of a bitch — bastard — is calling your mother a whore. Douche-bag, one of the dirtiest descriptions, just depicts the drippings of a woman. How about motherfucker? Throw in a feminine connotation to make it extra horrifying. Or a universal fuck you punctuated by erecting a phallic middle finger, in order to provide you with a visual representation of how I want you to be fucked… like a woman. Use sexual politics as the ultimate degradation.
But I don’t say any of this. I sit in silence because it has been hard to be a word in edgewise over your alpha male gorilla chest pounds. King Cock atop dangling buildings squeezing me in your leathery grip dangling me over the edge asking me why the hell I don’t enjoy the view. Oblivious to the fact I can’t even talk to you without choking on the language designed to remind me of my place. And anything I throw at you as an insult simply boomerangs back and burns my own tongue and threatens to drowned me in these thick veiled fabric of sexist dialect. But I will continue to rip these assaults apart, tearing these baggy rags and tying them tight and proud across my body, filling to the limit the fabric will allow until they fit my feminine form.
Reflecting back on your furrowed brow, I ask, “Do you understand where I am coming from now?”
8 comments
September 22, 2012 at 3:01 pm
Reneta Scian
Very interesting insight. It is impossible to insult a man in the way you can insult a woman. Prick comes to mind, but most men aren’t really insulted by that, and even that world is equivalent in many ways… To be “less of a man”. It would seem that the only insult that exists for a man is something that basically equates him to a woman, or a less of a man. Even to call him a Dick, that would just be a compliment, to tell him and confirm for him what he already has. I can’t, even being an intelligent person, come up with a word that would insult a man through his gender. Misogynist isn’t an insult because it’s culturally accepted of men, or at least not discouraged or scorned as it should be, misanthrope is above the heads of most men with unchecked privilege.
It is really “funny” how all insults that have any clout all seem to lead back to the fact that to be woman, to be an “unman” is really what the insults are about. Because derogatory words about male anatomy don’t carry the stigma of female anatomy. But really, sex driven insults fail, period… Regardless of what gender they pertain to. Sexism is to genitals what racism is to skin. “Dick” as an insult to men equal to “cracker” is to a white person. But what’s worse about it, is that as a woman to use a gendered insult is either ineffectual or self-deprecating. Being oppressed is lose/lose, and any insult that centers someone’s identity around their passive traits fails, EPICALLY.
And lastly, we know that separate but equal doesn’t work. Defining sex with differential treatment, whether it be sex segregated bathrooms or the sexualization of female bodies matters not as the end result is the same. Seeing sex before you humanity will always breed this, and will continue to do so. At least, that is how I feel about it. Sexism is everywhere, but cultures vary all over the world… So what thing do they all tend to have in common, as a factor… Sex segregation, sexism’s foundational premise, that there is a different and that the difference requires different treatment. In the same token though, adults in our current culture aren’t ready for that, and can’t handle the responsibility, civility, or change required to make that happen. One day, just not today.
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September 22, 2012 at 5:10 pm
The Arbourist
You hit the nail on the head here.
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September 28, 2012 at 11:04 am
Reneta Scian
I found this vapid piece of “mansplaining” on YouTube, hardly the only one, but I reported his video as hate speech against women. I avoided the urge to go any further, as I am sure I could spent all day reporting vapid excuses for humanity in the form of misogyny and mansplaining. I doubt YouTube will do anything about it though. Even more, it disheartens me more to see that he deletes dissent and that there is women even supporting him. There is not nearly enough dislikes on that video if you ask me. It’s quite sad.
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September 29, 2012 at 8:38 am
The Arbourist
@Reneta – Ugh.
Stereotype much?
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September 29, 2012 at 10:28 am
Reneta Scian
He actually didn’t delete my comment, but yeah, rediculous harmful stereotypes indeed. Hey, I even got one of his mansplainer followers to call me a feminist cunt, and tell me that basically “western women” who demand equality are all cunts/bitches/insert derogatory female insulting word here. Apparently, he said fuck it and moved to another country. I say, thank God.
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September 29, 2012 at 10:29 am
Reneta Scian
Though obviously I don’t believe in God.
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September 29, 2012 at 10:52 am
The Arbourist
You know you’re doing it right when they roll out the baldfaced misogyny. If only bitchez knew their place and would STFU.
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September 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Reneta Scian
It doesn’t necessarily take a video like this to bring out the misogyny on YouTube, but that is why videos like this are so harmful. This man in the video may do nothing more than be a misogynistic ass-hat, but his unchecked, unchallenged and permissible misogyny emboldens men who “aren’t so nice” and leads to incidences mentioned on the “One-sided conversations on a train” that I have been following on CaptainAwkward.com. It does more than embolden the abuse women face, but promote it, and make it somehow seem like it’s the “norm” to be vehemently upset about “women’s shenanigans” (even though they are obviously already products of the oppression, and objectification of women, not to mention stereotyping). They then as a result act like entitled children throwing a tantrum when a “woman” doesn’t conform to what makes things “easy on man-folks”.
What’s more sad is that it promotes “girl hate” (mentioned on ThosePeskyDames channel on YouTube, which I highly recommend, thought I can’t think of how I found them.) I have on many occasions been the target of girl hate (some of that mingle with transmisogyny to boot), either for my looks, or for not following some other woman’s notion of womanhood. A woman I know (who isn’t a feminist) called me out and asked me to be sympathetic to this guy. She said, “how would you feel if someone reported your video and it got pulled”, but that misses the point that my videos aren’t openly endorsing the mistreatment of men, the devaluing of their worth, basing their value on looks as a sex class, et cetera. My videos, if you have watched them at all, talk about misogyny, and oppression when I talk about feminist issues, but often I have other issues I discuss most of the time.
One look at the fan base that follows this man, and the misogynistic shuffle to defend him speaks volumes for why people should get called out for it. Would you agree?
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