For me, these two topics are inextricably linked. Obviously, there is the moral component that provides the foundation for the belief that there is imbalance in the world which must be corrected; whether one is religious or not, human rights are essentially and necessarily a moral value. There is no other justification for the idea of natural rights, nor do I think there needs to be. Perhaps moral justifications are not entirely defensible using logic, though I suppose one can turn to evolutionary psychology and explain that, as social creatures, it is in the best interest of everybody for all people to be treated with equal dignity, but that rings as disingenuous to me. When we need to philosophically or biologically justify acting in a decent manner, I think the point has been missed, though I suppose it makes for an interesting exercise in thought. However, how one approaches or interprets the issue is a personal matter.

The spiritual aspect of my feminism is much deeper than merely a guiding sense of right and wrong. Though I hesitate to assign myself a particular set of religious dogma, or, really, to be labeled in any area, the ideas I like best and fall most in line with are those of Buddhism. (And, ideally, I think, the same philosophies are also at the heart of the teachings of most prophets; the difference is that Buddha never said anything about needing a God.)

If I can be said to believe in God at all, it is a blind God. It is not a being, not a consciousness, at least not in any sense of the word which implies desires or wants or direction. It has no will of its own other than simply to be, to exist, and therefore favors no particular parties and bears no malevolence or benevolence to anyone in particular. And this is because I believe in no other divine motivating force behind the universe than the universe itself. I think the need to personify and symbolize things is understandable, but ultimately only gives rise to confusion and conflict. Perhaps abstract ideas are harder to understand, less convenient to explain, but they are also simpler and make more sense once one has a grasp of them. This kind of pantheism doesn’t really conflict with any other system of belief, because they can all be explained and incorporated into it. (This does not go both ways, of course, because faith in one particular personification of the divine usually precludes a belief in any other, which I think is part of the problem of using symbols to begin with. Mutual incompatibility of belief leaves no room for common ground, though a cynic might say it’s certainly a convenient way to perpetuate the ancient tribal survival-of-the-fittest mindset, keep the population in line ideologically, and generally control every aspect of people’s lives with relatively little effort. But someone wouldn’t start a religion just to control people, would they?)

I believe that God is just, and in the idea of karma. This is only because, as every being is a divine being, as every creature or substance arises from the same source, when one hurts another, one hurts oneself. Equal and opposite reactions don’t have to be limited to the realm of Newtonian physics. Realistically, we are all made of the same atoms and particles and charges in different and temporary, constantly changing arrangements. There’s no clear delineation on the subatomic level between anything; it’s mostly just empty air, infinite space that gives the illusion of a physical boundary from a wide enough perspective. Most of an atom is simply that: empty. There is just enough bound together within it in order to allow what seems to be a unit to form. And, essentially, on the quantum level, everything is simply part of a shifting tapestry of charged particles. We’re all part of the same vast sprawl of loose energy, frozen just enough to form into physical mass.

Whether or not one believes literally in the idea of reincarnation, I think the idea of rebirth is real enough to justify it as a useful metaphor. All matter is eventually recycled. One thing dies or decays and other life is nurtured by the same matter, up through the food chain. No energy is ever essentially lost, it simply shifts in form and configuration. (There’s entropy to account for, I know, but that’s another topic altogether — so I’m going to be general and gloss over that, for now.) We are also the sum of our genetics, and our culture. None of us is a completely new and original being; we all come from somewhere, and inside our cells we hold the lives of thousands of years of ancestry. All death creates life, as food or fuel, as natural selection, as written or spoken history. Rebirth is used in the Buddhist sense not simply to mean the reincarnation of a particular consciousness, but, at the most basic level, this vision of the universe, as a creative cycle of destruction and disintegration in order to form something new.

This in mind, I think it is, therefore, absolutely necessary (for me) to adopt a feminist position. Everything is, broken down to its constituent elements, essentially part of the same thing. This is why I cannot accept any other position than that, though everyone and everything may be a minor variation on the same universal energy, everyone, by virtue of being a part of this system, deserves to be treated equally, to be allowed the same rights and dignity. Though we do not live in a universe where it is possible for life to be sustained without deriving energy from other life, in the process destroying and assimilating it, this does not mean that it is desirable, justifiable, or right that one group of people should always oppress another in order to survive and have the advantage. This hurts all parties involved, and is the essential injustice in any hierarchical system of oppression. This is also why feminism must fight not only sexism, but racism, classism, and a host of other discriminatory prejudices based on physical or social characteristics.

We are not all the same. We do not all have the same resources, abilities, or needs. But we are all similar enough that we deserve the opportunity to express our abilities to the fullest extent, and to have all our basic needs met. It is only when allowed to exist in this state, able to express our potential, whatever it is, that we can give our life meaning and express our ultimate purpose. Our purpose is ours alone to decide and define, and it is different for everyone, but what is important is that it must be ours — not altered or limited by anyone else.

I “love” (meaning: hate) how people keep taking my open letter completely out of context, or simply, completely misreading it, or insisting there are ideas or malice in it that just aren’t there. Do you people honestly think this is how I feel about all men, ever? Or that I don’t realize that not all men are like that? (But far too many are, and far too many men like this think they’re being sympathetic to the cause when they’re really perpetuating the same sexist heirarchy yet again–which is the POINT.) Maybe, you know, certain “liberal” men do some of those things and not others, or they don’t do any of them but can’t see it when other men do, or that maybe sometimes they’re just huge sexist pigs who think that by hiding behind a shroud of “liberalism” they can get away with it? Saying you’re one thing and then acting like the exact opposite doesn’t work. Or that I don’t think that, fundamentally, people are people regardless of context? (I got a comment to this effect, actually. “PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE!” Yeah…that’s what the whole damn blog is about if you bothered to find out what I’m about, but I suppose you somehow missed that or something.) Did you bother to actually, like, read anything I’ve written before feeling the need to spew self-righteous defensiveness everywhere?

(This said, I’ve gotten a few thoughtful comments from people who didn’t quite understand what I meant or thought my statements were problematic, worded in a respectful way. Fine. Great! Constructive discourse ensues! Careful, we might accidentally make this a trend.)

Read my other, more serious posts, before assuming you have any idea what I think or what you are talking about when you criticize me. Especially since I specifically wrote some of them to pre-empt this kind of criticism. This blog is less than two weeks old, there’s not too much you have to wade through. Thank you.

EDIT: Apparently, the issue is that my tone is “hostile”. Any time a woman confidently expresses her displeasure with something, she’s being “too angry” or “overemotional” or “hostile”. I’m sorry my not being all nice and full of rainbows has somehow single-handedly brought down the entire feminist movement by alienating men who aren’t very good “allies” to begin with. (I’ve also been told I “hurt the feminist movement” and “give feminists a bad name”. I have only two things to say: feminists had a GOOD name? Dear lord, when? And, of course, well-behaved women rarely make history. I think I’m off to a good start so far if this is any indication. Soon, the WORLD!) I’m hostile against hypocritical people, yeah. If you want to see hostility: FUCK YOU. I HAVE OPINIONS. DEAL WITH IT. Have a nice day.

Dear antifeminist men who like to try leaving comments on my blog,

It’s cute that you actually think anyone cares. Really, I find your idealism quite endearing, but this is the real world, sweetie. Maybe if you tried to be nicer. Then you wouldn’t scare people off with your “radical” message. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, after all.

I also think, from your comments, that you are all really overgeneralizing. You all tried to post comments on the same blog entry, most of you obviously without reading any of the content on this site, so accusing all feminists of acting a certain way and believing certain things, especially when you have clearly made no effort to understand what I believe and why, is a tiny bit unfair of you. Conversely, if you don’t take me seriously enough to understand me and form a decent, well-reasoned argument, then I certainly don’t need to waste any time taking you seriously either.

I’d like to thank you all for enlightening me with your abusive comments. For instance, I would never have known that a woman cannot be both intelligent and attractive, because intelligence is only developed as a compensatory mechanism in order to attract a male mate. Little did I know that all the gorgeous, intelligent women I know, myself included (it’s my site, I can actually like how I look, thank you), are actually just faking it all for attention or exist only in my imagination. Also, thank you for making me aware of the nonexistence of lesbians and gay men, and especially people who do not fit into the traditional binary concept of sex and gender. We queers weren’t marginalized enough already. Really.

And, as a matter of fact, I, too, sometimes find it troubling that some of you were ever given the right to vote. After all, how can it not be troubling that those who believe not everyone deserves basic human rights are helping make important political decisions? However, the difference between you and me is that even if I don’t like you, I still think everyone has the right to vote. Yes, novel, I know, because I realize that we feminists are all hypocrites who want able-bodied white heterosexual rich men to be stripped naked and kept in cages all day while we engage in satanic lesbian orgies at the UN. (And before you protest that you didn’t say that, I recall seeing the vast lesbian feminist new world order conspiracy being leveled on the internet a couple of years ago, and I assume it’s reasonable to believe all antifeminists subscribe the same set of ideas and values, since it’s certainly true about us!)

Finally: why do you hate women? Your comments, to me, really seem to genuinely be expressing a hate for women. You may not think your comments are misogynistic, but I really sense a lot of resentment. Have you been hurt or rejected by strong, gorgeous, intelligent, somewhat intimidating women in the past? While I love people of all sexes and genders, and genuinely respect all men, inasmuch as they are human beings worthy of respect, even when they say unbelievably stupid things, you seem treat women as if they are a lower form of life. If you hate us so much, why do you want to have sex with us and marry us? No, really, I realize now that we’re all disgusting and nasty and stupid and gross, so I will henceforth stop being attracted to anything that looks remotely female, but I’m worried. Where the women I’ve known often treat me with a certain level of acceptance and support, how will I ever land a man if you all hate us so much? Why would you want us, if we’re so awful? Even if I weren’t a feminist and conformed to all your contradictory expectations, apparently, you still wouldn’t want me.

But anyway, I don’t have a lot of time and I want to keep this short. Just one final, heartfelt, sincere “THANK YOU” for showing me the error of my ways through the use of profanity, attempted intimidation, and a complete ignorance of the concept of satire (you thought the SCUM Manifesto was serious? REALLY? and where did I mention it anywhere on my site except now, since you brought it up?). Now that I know how evil feminists and our suffrage and everything is, I’ll immediately take down my site and stop being attracted to girls and shave my legs and wear a bra and quit my job as a psychic and get a good, godly career at McDonald’s or something until I land myself a man and can pop out five or six babies like my mom did in Utah!

After all, I can only assume that’s what you want me to do. Otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort attempting to convince me of the error of my ways when I’m obviously not going to listen to anything you have to say?

So… I think I missed the part where I was part of some kind of militant lesbian feminist police state that kills anyone who disagrees with me. Apparently, I have the power to “force” people to agree with me while not being subject myself to scrutiny. Because my impression of what I’m doing here was advocating for all people to be treated with respect, and for their opinions and ideas to be dismissed on their own merits rather than based on an arbitrary judgment of the body the person putting the ideas forth happens to inhabit.

Here’s what I believe:

1) Every person deserves basic human rights. Every person deserves the right to live in relative comfort (with shelter, enough to eat) and should be able to live life however makes them most happy, according to their personality and who they define themselves to be. No one else can tell a person what makes them happy, or who they are.

2) When any person, ever, is prevented from living life in this state through the actions of another person, this is a source of injustice. Thus, if one person’s “happy life” consists of raping, murdering, killing others, etc., obviously, the right to the pursuit of “happiness” no longer stands.

3) I, as a fellow inhabitant of this world, have a duty and obligation to speak out and attempt to do something about the situation when I perceive injustices of this sort being perpetrated, and to criticize the structures of power which I believe are responsible for them.

I don’t think any person who actually cares about other people could possibly argue with the essence of 1 and 2. The particulars vary from religion to religion, but I think this idea is at the heart of any genuine moral philosophy. Obviously, there are people who don’t care if other people live or die, and if it’s fair or not, and these people I clearly do not hold in particularly high esteem. 3 is merely my own belief, and I recognize that not everyone is willing or able to expend time and energy into trying to change the world. I respect that.

On any statement other than 1 or 2, I’m willing to accept any difference of opinion as having some possible validity. People all have different life experiences, and process these and their meanings differently. Obviously, the universe is far more nuanced and complicated than just these two statements and there is plenty of discussion necessary to determine exactly how these ideas apply to the real world. People are free not to agree with me in the abundance of gray area surrounding. All I ask is that they disagree with my opinions respectfully and address my ideas, if they seem problematic, rather than attacking me personally in order to avoid a real discussion.

The problem is that any argument justifying oppression in any form does not agree with statement 1. A person who does not believe that all other human beings are deserving of basic rights and respect obviously cannot respectfully discuss such an assertion. The fact that I’m not willing to go along with, or accept as valid, any argument which assumes people are not fundamentally deserving of the same basic equal rights does not mean I am “forcing” my ideas on anyone. It means I have principles.

Another principle I’m committed to is absolute freedom of speech. That’s why I and other feminist bloggers are free to speak our piece, on our own websites, and why we are free to ignore, delete, and not publish comments which disagree with our core principles. If you somehow can find a way to actually justify disagreeing with the concept of treating others with respect, buy your own webspace. It’s no God-given right of yours to waste my time and bandwidth in the name of your freedom to disagree.

Obviously, this will not come as new information to everybody, but I feel it is important enough to warrant repeating again and again, especially where issues of gender and sex are going to come up more than once. I believe that in the few comments I’ve already received this requires clarification.

Listen carefully:

There are not two genders. There are not even two sexes.

This is fundamental to understanding my point of view and any feminist or queer discourse. Without realizing that this is the underlying assumption within my arguments, misunderstandings are certain to arise. Even those who know what I am talking about without an explanation could stand to keep it in mind, because the people who do not fit into these narrow categories of male and female, masculine and feminine, are too often forgotten and marginalized within the greater context of feminist debate, which is entirely unfortunate. I know I do this too on occasion, in order to simplify my explanations, however, I hope that everyone will realize that I do carefully consider every gender when I form my opinions, not simply a narrow binary of male and female, and that I try to carefully craft my language to be as inclusive as possible, even if it goes unappreciated by those unfamiliar with the idea of gender and sex as a spectrum.

Sex:

A person’s sex is dependent on genitalia. A penis is a male sexual organ, the vulva, female. Sex is physical a combination of medical, biological, and genetic characteristics. Not everyone’s sex is purely male or female — there is a wide range of variation. Intersex people are born with a medical condition where they possess ambiguous or mixed physical sexual characteristics. Usually, in the past, these people were called “hermaphrodites” (now an antiquated term which can be considered offensive). Advances in medicine also allow for sex-reassignment surgery and hormonal treatments which may leave a transsexual patient “in between” sexes, so to speak, and therefore sex is a continuum between male and female features.

For this reason, rather than discussing “male” and “female” medical issues, I will always refer to “people with testicles” if I am discussing testicular cancer for example, “people with uteruses” if discussing women’s reproductive issues, “people with vaginas” if discussing the vagina, et cetera. This is also more inclusive and acknowledges the existence of women who have had hysterectomies and men who have had their testicles removed, as well; thus, no one’s gender identity is contingent, in my writing, on the presence or absence of a certain set of narrowly defined physical characteristics.

The idea that a woman is not defined by a vagina, by a vulva, by a womb, is one of the basic ideals of any truly meaningful and inclusive form of feminism. Any feminist who defines a woman based on her genitalia is fundamentally no better than the systems of oppression that we try to fight. I am a radical feminist, meaning I believe in the deconstruction of every assumption and framework used to define and oppress women and other marginalized genders, but I am willing to accept almost anyone under the feminist umbrella who has the basic ideals of male and female equality, even if we have wildly divergent ideas about what this means or what is important. However, any so-called “feminist” who defines women based on their bodies will not be considered truly feminist by me, because that is the same attitude utilized by the patriarchy to strip women of their identities.

No one would say a cisgender woman without a womb was no longer a woman if she’d had uterine cancer and had it removed. I don’t see why this is any less true for a transwoman born without one — any argument that these issues are not the same is nothing more than hypocrisy and transphobia. The problem is, a transwoman may need specialized medical care based on the body parts she does have, and this is why the recognition of those organs is still important despite the wide range of variation in physical sex.

Because sex is changeable and sometimes is not clear due to birth defects, genetic abnormalities or whatever other reason, I think sex as a category is a useful tool of categorization for the vast majority of the population but from a real standpoint, essentially a meaningless concept with no real definition. I rarely speak of physical sex for this reason. It may be based in statistically relevant biological human trends, but that does not make it a reasonable indicator of very many things beyond the chromosomal level — and, sometimes, not even then. It is good for sweeping generalizations and nothing else.

This is, incidentally, also why I think any claims of inherent biological differences between the sexes are bunk. We can’t even clearly define what sex is, at least not from a two-sexes perspective, because it’s entirely too complex. A binary division of sex is totally arbitrary and ignores the reality of many individuals who do not fit within either category. They are only a very, very small percentage of the population, but that makes it all the more important to recognize their existence because otherwise they will not receive the specialized medical care that they need. They are effectively rendered invisible by the assumption of an absolute binary system.

The problems with gender and sexual identity raised here are easily solved through simple, conscious re-structuring of language. Hence, I refer to people with certain body parts when I mean to talk about certain body parts, rather than relying on sex as an indicator. This is more precise and accurate language anyway. I do not see why this would be an issue of contention, though I know some people are very defensive about having their dualities challenged and will rail loudly in favor of their right to free speech even when it hurts, dismisses, and denies even the existence of certain groups of other people. These people are being cruel, dismissive of others’ unique experiences and issues, and enforcing their own views of what other people are onto people who do not themselves subscribe to that identity. This is Wrong. I am not willing to say that many things are absolute moral wrongs, but the absolute sense of entitlement over another person’s very being is one of them.

This is not up for debate in this forum: the entire premise this blog is based on is the basic human right of every individual to self-identify, and that another person questioning the existence or validity of another’s identity is a violation of that right. If you do not agree with this idea, even in the abstract idealism of a perfect world, you need to stop reading and leave now, or otherwise realize that I will never engage you in a debate on this topic and will not allow you to post comments questioning this subject. This is not censorship; you’re free to disagree elsewhere and I’m free to judge you and believe this to be not only unspeakably rude behavior, but a fundamental moral flaw. You’re free to call me a bitch, and I’m free to ignore you and continue a blissful life which does not involve rude people derailing, invalidating, and clogging up my blog.

Gender:

Gender, at least in the modern academic sense, as used in feminist and queer theory and thus in my writing, is a function of personality. It is not in any way necessarily connected to physical sex. It is an identity, a label one gives oneself. (It goes without saying that the paragraph above applies to this definition of gender, too. Debate elsewhere.) That is the point of self-definition. Gender is a characteristic integral to one’s identity which is defined only by oneself to define oneself. No one else can tell an individual what hir gender is. Ze can only decide for hirself. (Note: confused? Ze and hir.)

Most people are cisgendered. They identify strongly with their physical sex as male or female. For them, this issue is simple and the words “gender” and “sex” seem synonymous and interchangeable. However, they are not. I will never replace one for the other because I use them with extremely specific definitions. I try to refer to “wo/men” in terms of gender identity, “fe/males” in terms of sex. There is evidence that gender is a product of brain structure, which does not always correlate to physical sex, however, I’m inclined to say that the reason is a fascinating scientific inquiry but largely irrelevant. People ID as they ID. The reason why has no bearing on their identity, and identity can be fluid.

Some people ID as the “opposite” gender from the sex they were born into. They are transgender. Often, the traditional social role of gender is confused with gender identity. It is assumed that certain behaviors are part of gender identity, when, in fact, there can be many reasons for a person to behave as they do and form the preferences they have which have absolutely nothing to do with either gender identity or biology. (As some who believe either in brain structure differences or the correlation between sex and gender would have us believe.) This is a huge issue with trans people who are attempting to medically transition — the medical establishment is usually discriminatory and assumes that a person who does not act the part of a certain gender role cannot possibly really be the gender they ID as. This is a very real and extremely harmful effect of people’s personal identities not being taken seriously, and is exactly why the right to self-definition is not up for debate. There are too many real victims in this and many other cases for me to give any ground on the pretense of being friendly or approachable. The search for radical change in the name of justice and human rights is not going to be soft and fluffy and accessible to those who oppose this goal.

Cisgender people are given a greater range of expression within the confines of the social gender role, although when they step outside of that box, their sexual orientation or, to a lesser extent, gender identity is often questioned. This is often more lenient for women than it is for men — which may be counted as a blessing but not a feminist victory. The fact that women can act in a “masculine” way, but men who act in a “feminine” way are often mocked, derided, and sometimes even targets for physical violence is unfair and horrible for the man who does not fit the masculine gender role. However the patriarchy hurts these men, it is a side effect of the real problem; they are still not the real victims, because the idea that being feminine is inherently “bad” or “lesser” is evidence of the deep misogyny of society. Women’s relative freedom in this regard compared to men may seem to be the oppression of men at the hands of the patriarchy, but it is merely an incidental effect of the oppression of women. This is not to say that this is not horrible for everyone involved or that it should be accepted, but that the continued fight for feminism is the solution to this problem as well.

Not everyone’s gender identity fits into one of these categories, and most people’s fall somewhere between gender roles. Genderqueer is a blanket term used by anyone who IDs somewhere outside the binary and wishes to describe hirself this way.

Sexuality:

Because of the complexity of the gender and sex spectrums, sexuality is an increasingly difficult subject. I find most existing terms to be problematic because they equate sex with gender and operate based on binary assumptions. In general, heterosexual people identify strongly as one gender and are attracted to people who either have the “opposite” sex, gender identity, or gender role. It can be a combination of these. Homosexuality is the compliment. What it means to that individual is up to them to decide. What attracts people to certain partners is a deeply individual thing which may have more to do with appearance than sex, sex than gender, gender identity than sex or appearance, or, well…you get the idea. And it can be none of these things.

Bisexuality, strictly speaking, by operating on the assumptions of the binary, excludes genderqueer, trans, and intersex people. Many people who ID as bisexual do not actually feel this way (some do), but I still see the binary assumption to be an issue. For this reason, I ID as pansexual, meaning that I have the capacity to be potentially attracted to members of any sex or gender, although I will not lie and say there are not certain physical or aesthetic characteristics which appeal to me more physically, and that there are not certain self-identified characteristics which I find more attractive. However, I, personally, fall into the “primarily attracted for none of the above reasons” camp and am mostly only physically attracted to people with attractive personalities.

So there is pansexual and the synonym, omnisexual. There is pomosexual, or Post Modern Sexuality, which rejects gender as a social construct and not an actual meaningful descriptor, which is, again, problematic, because while I believe gender roles are a social construct, and think that in many cases gender identity is similar — I do not have the right to question that identity, an artificial social construct in my mind or not. All that matters is that others ID that way, and by labelling that identity a “construct” I would be implying it is false. I don’t have the right to do that. I think that pomosexuality is well-intentioned and, at heart, mostly a good idea, but it skirts shady ethical territory for me.

In Conclusion:

Well, there really is no conclusion, except to say that gender, sexuality, and even physical sex have no real boundaries, and work together but don’t necessarily have anything to do with one another. All of them exist on a wide and diverse spectrum upon which the individual in question has the right to place hirself, however ze likes, wherever ze likes, whenever ze likes, and for whatever reason, without needing to explain, justify, or prove hirself to anyone else. This is the one basic underlying principle upon which all of my philosophy is based.

NEWSFLASH, world!

I do not care if you find me physically attractive or not.

Mind you, I know that many of you do. I think I’m hot, too. I’m not trying to sound conceited although there will always be someone who misinterprets this post this way. But I am truly, for the most part, happy about what I look like. I don’t see anything not to love, and the stuff I don’t quite accept unconditionally yet I’m working on. This is not something that has come easily to me, liking myself; it doesn’t come easily to any woman who’s been exposed to this world. It doesn’t matter where you are, even in the most primitive and isolated part of the globe; if you have magazines or television you’ve been bombarded with the message of the unobtainable ideal.

But fuck you all if you think that I somehow need your approval in order to allow myself this. Don’t think that by gracing me with your assessment of me I will be so overcome with gratitude that I will drop to my knees and blow you. Chances are, you’re probably staring at me and totally creeping me out. Not a good way to get me to like you back.

But if you think I’m intellectually sexy, I’ll take that as the highest compliment available.

… who just don’t understand why women could possibly be impatient or annoyed with them.

Dear Straight Guys,

I respectfully submit that perhaps, if you really want to be seen as an understanding or sensitive individual, that you need to start treating women as people. This goes clear down to your core: it’s not enough to pretend you understand this, it’s not enough to think that, so long as your sexism is benign and not overt and is carefully disguised as either concern or misguided admiration, that we will somehow ignore or appreciate the specialized sort of attention that you give. You need to change the way you think, the very way that you perceive your world.

1. So, first of all, it doesn’t all revolve around you. If I am discussing sexism or the unique difficulties women face, I can understand and appreciate the frustrations that men also grapple with in our society. Really, the problem isn’t so much men and women as the fact that all powerful institutions want to make everyone feel worthless, so that we will do whatever they tell us to. But, for now, I am talking about women and women’s unique position in the world, and it is not about the big picture. It is about us. About me. Your tangents derail the conversation and shift the focus so that the issues I want to raise are ignored. This is the problem.

This is symptomatic of a greater issue: the fact that men are trained to keep the focus on themselves. It’s not the conscious insecurity of the male ego which causes this to happen, but rather, the result in living in a culture which focuses on men the majority of the time. When attempting to give women equal time, and an equal voice, the fifty-fifty split (or, since this doesn’t exist yet in reality, even the attempt to approach it) seems unbalanced and skewed to the minds of many men. Women trying to have an equal voice seem to be silencing the men, simply because the men are not the ones currently talking about the current topic.

Resist the urge to assert yourself in defense of the male voice. We’ve already heard it, and doubtless we will hear it again. Save it until we’re finished. Do it somewhere else.

2. Second of all, it doesn’t all revolve around you. Whether or not you find someone attractive, whether or not anybody else might possibly find someone attractive, whether a woman is pretty or not: it’s not relevant to feminist discussion. EVER. We should not be valued based on our attractiveness to men. We should not be considered only in this context. When I am talking about women who behave in a traditionally unladylike manner, or who are unconventionally attractive, or are in any way otherwise outside the gender norm, their saving grace is not that they still happen to make your particular penis happy. So you like her. Big fucking deal. It’s not about what you like. Women will be who they are regardless if you, you in particular, happen to approve of them or not.

It’s rude and condescending to act this way. This, again, detracts from the focus of the discussion. This devalues women as unique individuals with opinions and ideas and lives. Our worth should never be dependent on other people’s opinions in this way, and least of all in feminist discussion, of all places.

So stop it, already.

3. We are all human beings. We are all similar lumps of fleshy matter that moves and grunts and goes around its daily business. Until you can look at any random woman on the street and see the human being before you start placing significance on the gender presentation, until being human, of any variety, any color, any sexual orientation, any genitalia, any anything, is the nebulous vague default in your mind, you still need to try harder. If you automatically assume a person of unspecified gender or sex is “he”, or white, able-bodied, and heterosexual, that is your problem. And this is why so many of us have no time or patience to try to explain things to you.

4. Speaking of which, I am not required to explain myself. I don’t need to justify myself to anyone but myself, and I sleep well enough at night, thank you. If you don’t understand a concept, certainly, ask. If the answer upsets you, makes you defensive, or confuses you, don’t insist on continuing the conversation. Actually THINK about the answer, and what it was that upset or confused you, and after you have carefully considered what we say, and actually listened, then we can talk some more. But you are not necessarily entitled to have everything placed in a pretty little box for you.

5. I hate that I even have to disclaim that, sure, okay, “not all men are actually like this”. I’m sure in some hypothetical world my sweeping generalizations are grossly inaccurate. But, realistically? In the world I live in and with the men that I know and love and interact with on a daily basis?

You pretty much all do this shit at least some of the time.

If you are one of the handful of men I have met who actually treat women like people, though, this disclaimer won’t mean anything to you. If you aren’t guilty of the offenses I’ve outlined, you aren’t defensive about it. You’re one of those guys who reads the whole list and nods along and then genuinely apologizes for your gender (while not feeling the need to defend yourself by insisting you do not represent these men). You don’t need the disclaimer because my stinging man-hating feminist barbs don’t really hurt.

The rest of you, though, might have a few things to think about.