I want to talk about my experiences
with various forms of racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice
that surround our society. I feel that they shine light on an issue
that I feel has been ignored about these topics. The
events in question that I want to talk about are actual things that have
happened and
occurred within the last few years of my life. Before I make the point I
need to describe some of these events but I need to describe
them as if they had happened from a different perspective then the
one that I currently share. Please understand before you read these
things that my goal here is not a presentation of “woah is me”,
but rather instead I wish to bring to light an unpleasant truth that
I have encountered that serves to “stall” the process of growth
in regards to various forms of bigotry and social problems. I have
simply been told
countless that as a while heteronormative cis gendered male that I can't
possibly understand or
appreciate certain things; so let me represent things.
For the purposes of highlighting the
events in my life, I wish to present this not in my chosen sex ,
orientation, or gender. (because these are often used as counter
arguments) but rather I wish to replace the gender terms and one or
two other terms when possible.
#1 I fell asleep one night only to
wake up to a man I trusted going down on me, I was shocked and didn't
know what to say or do. He took my silence and the fact that I was
wet as a “yes” and then proceeded to have sex with me.
When I went to my guy friends to ask
them for advice, they said that I had put myself into a situation
where it was understandable where a man would think that was
acceptable.
#2 I went to a festival and then proceeded to have a good time joking around with a man about the fact that he was wearing nothing more than a loin cloth and horns. He took this as interest and then proceeded to hit on me, when I told him that I was a girl who was interested in only other girls he took it upon himself to prove me wrong and spent an hour describing why it was a fact that I should at least try having sex with a man once just to prove him wrong even though I already told him that I had tried and it really wasn't my thing.
#3 I was working one night on a public
when a man asked me if he could take a crack at it. I let him try
his hands at it and he proceeded to look at me and said that I was
really really good, but I could never be quite as impressive at it as
man. The real pisser was that I was actually technically better.
Each of these events happened to me in
the way that I have described, I was sexually assaulted by a woman,
I spent the better part of two hours explaining to a gay guy that I
really didn't want what he was offering. And I have had female fire
performers flaunt the fact that they were better than I was because
they have T&A.
I have tried to argue for the fact that
privilege exists within a given context or situation and been scolded for lack of a better word. But, I can talk
about the fact that instances such as the ones that happen above are
individual instances. What makes them wrong has nothing to do with
“societal” issues. Society influences the individual but at the
end of the day each individual is in my view responsible for their
own individual choices. What society does is validate our individual
choices.
Being raped as a woman is not wrong
because I am a woman, it is wrong because it violates my body and my
right to self-determination. Being harassed is not wrong because I am a
woman, it is wrong because I am objectified in a way that I do not want
or like in my life. So if I take away gender from this, it is still wrong. Issues of gender and such then come into play at a larger societal level in terms of how that behavior is validated.
When we go to our group of friends and
say what happened during the course of a day, our friends give us
support or don't give us support. They tell us that were doing is
right or wrong, or that we should go with our gut and that they
support us. This is a process of social validation of behavior.
When that behavior is validated it says “Go ahead and do it again;
there was nothing wrong with it”. Or on the other hand the
behavior is said “No, you shouldn't do this” and we feel socially
obligated to reject or avoid that behavior(at least publicly).
I have a question for the reader, did
the difference of gender, orientation, etc make a difference in how
you reacted to those above statements. Because nothing changed that
had any real importance. If I die, I die as a human, if I pay my
bills I pay them as an American. If it did, the question I ask is
why did it make a difference? How does me being sexually
assaulted, harassed, or dealing with a pay difference between genders
make up for someone else of a different socially constructed identity
who is going through the same thing?
When I talk about the pendulum of human
nature ,what I speak of is that it feels like we as a society seem to
have a non-homeopathic perspective when it comes to at fixing social
injustices or problems. Instead of fixing the root of the problem, the
cause, we attempt to simply bandage it or, even worse, apply a
counteractive agent to the issue. We are not balancing the scale of
justice we are causing it to swing back and forth like a wrecking
ball destroying lives in the process.
The events that occur are individual in
nature. We as individuals, and as a society, need to perceive and
interact with them as such. Because a man or women should never be
laughed for being sexually assaulted, because a straight or gay
person should never have to spend two hours of their life dealing
with someone who doesn't get the concept of “not interested”, and
no one should ever have pay differences “shoved” in their faces
as if the other person was simply spiking a football.
