“Women Feel Routinely Unsafe and You Can Change That”
“But I’m not into shaming men. I do, however, believe in taking responsibility for our role in the reality we’re living. And the reality we live in is women routinely feel unsafe in our society; they are constantly subject to behavior from men that devalues their worth as human beings with something meaningful to offer the planet beyond male sexual release and motherhood.
Women are unsafe and aggressed upon because so many men are stuck in a perpetual adolescence. As a male culture, we haven’t yet fully achieved the mature experience of our masculine nature. Too many men still demean “girls” by pulling on their pigtails, bullying and hitting them, tricking them into showing their boobs and calling them bad names. They just do it now wearing business suits and NFL uniforms, drinking beer instead of kool-aid.”
Ummm yes to this part.
The article is a really interesting perspective into how a man experiences all of the quotidien violence and dehumanization of femininity, and a little call to arms to other men. I appreciate it because I am increasingly feeling as though street harassment is not something that I can do anything about, because harassers don’t respect me so they aren’t going to listen or be impacted by my negative reactions to them
What we need is a set of very visible masculine men who come out with a strong stance against bothering women on the street — including clarifying what is and is not a compliment (and when it is and is not appropriate to compliment a complete stranger). This is just part of a solution, but I think it would help re-frame what is socially appropriate and what isn’t.
This could be a great job for Bill Clinton if he is our first First Man. (note: When I first wrote this summary in 2014, the “if” above was “when”. I happened to re-visit and update this in Sept. 2015 and felt compelled to change it. The political climate is so different.)
