Okay, no, not really. Actually, MOST men are actually pretty decent individuals. They are honorable, and committed, and strong, and gentle, and ultimately, kind.
But…
…there are just enough assholes out there to skew the equation.
Men, guys, dudes….we have GOT to do better. To BE better.
This is not a feminist anti-man rant. This is not some gloating, self-righteous screed about male privilege or the patriarchy. This is not some self-abasing capitulation by a hemp-wearing beta proto-male seeking affirmation from the modernistic apologentsia.
It’s straight up, man-to-man talk.
I come to talk to you about women. Yes, those enigmatic creatures who populate our life from birth. Our mothers, our sisters, our co-workers, our lovers, our friends. They are different, (yes, shocking, I know); and yet…they’re not. Not really. Not where it counts.
I’ve had an awakening of sorts in recent weeks. I’ve discovered that I am a naïve waif, a veritable simpleton when it comes to the struggles women face, every day, in every walk of life, simply to be accepted as an equal. I have learned, I have come to understand, that women face struggles, often silent battles of which many men are simply unaware.
What I have learned, much to my dismay, is that…Every. Woman. Has. A. Story.
This should break your heart, and if it doesn’t, you might just be part of the problem.
Every woman has a story about that time. That boss. That supervisor. That co-worker. That colleague, that fellow student, that man in a position of authority who at some point decided in his mind that it was okay to grab her. To leer at her, to make a comment, to let his eyes wander. To assume that he had some right.
That maybe she’d be flattered if he pinned her up against the wall and stuck his tongue down her throat. In his office. At work.
The stories are all different, and yet, they are all the same. Maybe it doesn’t happen all the time, maybe it only happened that once.
But it happened.
And in case you were curious…she wasn’t flattered. She wasn’t pleased. She wasn’t aroused.
She felt trapped. And betrayed. And a little dirty. And helpless. And confused. And angry.
Angry that you abused her trust. Angry that she couldn’t feel safe, not even here. Angry that she couldn’t JUST BE A PERSON.
You took that away from her.
Not all men. But enough. Enough have done it. Enough have broken that trust and abused their position of authority and treated a women under their command as nothing more than an object to satisfy his lust.
You should be ashamed. But you probably aren’t. Maybe you thought it was your due. Maybe you thought, “that’s just the way things are done.” Maybe you thought it was, “no big deal.”
You were wrong.
In the story of The Garden, and Adam and Eve, God created the earth, and the Garden of Eden as a paradise, and He said,
“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
Not over each other.
Every day women struggle to be accepted on an equal footing. They fight an often invisible battler for their opinions to be given the same credibility as a man with equal, or even lesser experience.
Every day, women struggle to not have to struggle. To not have to fight just that much harder for the same pay, the same consideration, the same respect as their male counterparts. In ways I simply could not comprehend.
Until they told me. Until they shared their stories of just how appallingly common this kind of utter bullshit really is. How often it happens, and how terribly hard it is to seek justice in an environment where the whistleblower gets fired and the offender goes free.
About how you learn to be silent if you want to keep your job. About how you learn to accept being victimized, rather than accept being unemployed and homeless.
Men…we have to do better. We have to step up and fight alongside these women. We must speak out when they cannot. We have to police ourselves, and punch these ignorant, mouth-breathing assholes in the throat when they take such liberties with the women we respect and hold dear.
We. Must. Not. Be. Silent. Not anymore.
If we have power, we must help the powerless. If we have strength, we must help the weak. If we have authority, we must use it to correct injustice.
We just, simply, have to do better. To BE better. To be the kind of men that God calls us to be.
Strong, yet gentle. Powerful, yet forgiving. Confident, yet compassionate.
Or…we, quite simply, are not men at all.
Tattered Bits of Brain 