March 27, 2012

I seriously want to cry at what I'm hearing and seeing.

I seriously want to cry at what I’m hearing and seeing.

Guys “jokingly hitting” their girlfriends or female friends, saying they’re going to kick their ass. And these girls laugh about it.

I hear men telling girls to shut up, fuck off, and then half-heartedly “apologize” for how rude it was (in an ~ironic~ way.)

If this is the kind of treatment that is implied by wanting equality and egalitarianism, then I am really, really scared.

The older I get, the more I realize that freedom and equality doesn’t mean you get to treat people like shit. It means you’re free to acknowledge the common humanity of all people and treat them in a way that that acknowledgement obliges.

I just…I can’t stand when violence and disrespect are normalized or that people are taught that this is just “what people do.” It makes me really sad.

It should make you sad. It should make us all sad. I am amazed at the general lack of simple good manners, common courtesy. People don’t like to say please or thank you; they simply want what they feel they’re entitled to, and will seize it if it isn’t given. We say excuse me only after we’ve pushed somebody out of our way. And don’t even get me started on basic courtesy among drivers.

I know this is sounding like somebody’s grandma harping on the good old days. But you know what? I don’t care! The basis for civility and good manners is seeing each person you encounter as a person who is entitled to respect and dignity, for no other reason than that they are a person. They are no better than you, but they are no worse than you. Scorn and contempt belittle us all.

For a great lesson on this, go watch My Fair Lady, and pay attention to Professor Henry Higgins. He is a complete a**hole, because he believes that all persons should be treated with scorn and contempt, for no other reason than that they are a person. It’s no wonder he’s so desperately unhappy.

Filed in equality courtesy civility violence

23 Notes & Comments

July 17, 2010

“Go Live as a Man for One Week.”

michellehaimoff:

…..

I lived as a woman for 50 years, and was a real feminist. Then I transitioned to living as a man, and I was shocked at how different it felt on an every day basis, to be accorded the regard and deference that men are automatically given as their due in this world.

The first thing I noticed was how people moved out of my way when I walked down the street. That became my metaphor for how much easier it became to move through my world. Then it became stunningly clear that people no longer interrupted me when I spoke - they listened with a new interest and regard, and started taking my ideas seriously for the first time in my life (and I have an IQ of 160, so I was never a slouch in the idea department).

I found that I no longer had to earn and re-earn respect in every situation in my life, I was given authority and power to move decisions and change the course of events, automatically, and without having to prove myself again and again. Society seemed to constantly feed me positive energy and esteem. That powerful current of high regard bolstered me, fed me confidence and self satisfaction in a way I had never before experienced as a woman.

Gone were all the slights, interferences, being ignored, and challenges that seemed, by comparison, to diminish and drain my energy as a woman, not support it. Women get elbowed out of power all the time, and it becomes “normal” to be less than. …..

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Undercover Nun may not be a man, but she insists on being treated with respect and dignity… as every person should, woman or man, black or brown or white or anything in between, gay or straight, transgender or in the process or “natural”, every person.

They Kingdom come, O Lord; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Filed in women equality authority power respect justice

0 Notes & Comments

July 6, 2010

In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950 (via fuckyeahradicalquotes) (via revolutionnow) (via silas216)

It’s uncomfortable to confront this truth about ourselves, is it? We want to say that of course we don’t consider anyone to be beneath us, but we know that our actions belie this idea. We refuse to allow shelters for the homeless — or even for battered women or abused children — in our neighborhoods. We want soup kitchens to be off the main streets, where we don’t have to see them. We walk past anyone begging on the sidewalk, studiously avoiding eye contact so that we don’t have to feel guilty. We see a dark-skinned man crossing the street, so we lock the car doors. We buy into the lie that the poor choose to be poor. We make jokes about the people who work in call centers. We treat those who work in service and hospitality as slaves, as beneath our notice and respect. And we have the audacity to call this a Christian nation.

The US is far from a Christian nation. It was founded as a secular nation, and we have yet to live out the values Jesus demands of us: to love all persons. Jesus didn’t say “love all persons who have equal or greater social status.” No, he commanded us to love all persons, regardless of social status. Jesus even told us to love our enemies!

Undercover Nun prays that God will have mercy on us all.

Filed in Bertrand Russell class USA equality