fierceawakening:more-equal:shanneibh:fierceawakening:earlgraytay:I think you’re being a little

fierceawakening:more-equal:shanneibh:fierceawakening:earlgraytay:I think you’re being a little uncharitable here. I was raised Mormon, and since Mormons are hyperconservative and patriarchial, men used to say things like this a lot. When men say “I didn’t realize how bad things were for women until I had a daughter” (or something along those lines)”, they’re being literal. They (usually) don’t mean “I completely ignored my wife’s struggle but now that I own a small girl-child I must Protec”, they mean “I literally have not seen some of these problems in action before and now I’m seeing them happen to someone I love in gory detail”.  Imagine for a second you live in Zimbabwe and don’t follow American politics much. You hear weird news coming out of the USA every so often, but mostly it’s just background noise. Then Trump gets elected, and suddenly every day there’s some new crazy shit happening in the US. You hear about it and you’re like ‘this can’t be real, can it?’ But of course, it is real, and the more you look into it, the more you see it’s fucked up. This is kind of like that. Speaking as a trans man who transitioned early in adulthood– there are a lot of things women* just don’t talk about around men, because it’s socially taboo. Things like, say, periods.  Or why you need to be buying all that expensive makeup and clothing. Or the ways that girls/women bully other girls/women and how it can fuck you up. Or menopause. Or why you’re afraid of walking home alone at night. Or abuse and/or sexual assault that’s happened to you in the past.Sometimes it’s because women don’t feel safe talking to their male partners about it. Sometimes they think it’ll hurt their male partner to hear about it. Sometimes, it’s just that it’s Not Done– it’s as socially wrong as taking off your pants in a restaurant. If you’re lucky, you have a good partner, you’re both willing to step outside the gender role box you’ve been assigned, you feel like you can tell them anything and you’re right, and your partner takes you seriously when you tell them and doesn’t get grossed out or go “bzuh? That’s batshit insane, it can’t be real”. A lot of people– especially people in conservative/patriarchial societies, but even egalitarian people in lefty parts of the country can fall into this mess– do not feel like they have this kind of safety with their partners. They feel like they can’t discuss the problems they’re having with their partner, because their partner is a Man/Woman and you Don’t Talk About These Things, it’s Not Done. So if you’re a man– even if you are a good man, even if you’re kind and empathetic and care about other people and try to treat other people right– there’s a good chance you’ve never been exposed to the full brunt of the ~female experience~. It’s entirely possible for a man to grow up with no sisters, a mother who doesn’t talk about these things with her son, and no female friends until you start dating in earnest, without hating women or ignoring their problems. It’s then entirely possible that your parther won’t talk about the problems she’s having, because she’s still relating to you as A Man as much as she’s relating to you as Her Partner. Socialization is a hell of a drug.  Speaking as a trans man again… a lot of the problems that women have are not immediately obvious to the naked eye. I’m not saying ‘women don’t have problems’. I’m not saying ‘sexism is over’ or ‘feminism is unnecessary’. But if you never go clubbing**, don’t ask your coworkers about their salary, don’t watch much TV, and don’t talk to women about Taboo Topics… you’re never going to realize just how deep the rabbit hole goes, just as much as our hypothetical Zimbabwean isn’t going to realize just how bad Trump is as a president.And then you have a daughter. Your daughter has not yet learnt that you don’t talk to men about Taboo Topics, and you’re her dad. She trusts you with everything when she’s tiny, and even as she gets older, she knows you’re one of the people who unconditionally love her, no matter what. You see her getting hit with all the misogynistic messages women get hit with every day and how it changes what she feels safe doing. You see her struggling with misogyny and bullying and ridiculous beauty standards. You see her dealing with the basic biological functions that women usually have under control by the time they’re getting married but are a scary mess when you’re a young teenager, the gross boys and men who treat young girls like shit, the way she gradually absorbs sexist toxicity and stops believing she can do anything she wants. If you’re  unlucky, you see the fallout that comes from her being assaulted. And it’s in your face, in a way it might not be with your wife. The misogyny that happens to young girls is much more blatant and terrible than the misogyny that happens to grown women (grade-schoolers are not known for their subtlety). What’s more, you’re seeing it all happen in real time- you’re seeing a girl who’s cutting herself down to size to fit society, not a woman who’s already done it. So it’s entirely possible that a man won’t realise the full extent of misogyny until he has a daughter, without that man being a shitheap in any way. …I’m not saying that this is right or good or the way things should be. This is the very definition of ‘male privilege’– you have the ability to ignore bad things in the world that other people don’t get to ignore, just because you’re lucky enough to be a cis man. That is a bad thing. It needs to stop happening. It is a tragedy that men and women are not taught to communicate properly with each other, and it’s not women’s fault that they don’t feel safe talking about dangerous things with men. That is also a bad thing that needs to stop happening.But at the same time, men saying “I didn’t realise things were bad for women until I had a daughter”… it’s not necessarily “hurr durr I didn’t realize women were people until I had a daughter because I’m a horrible person who ignores what women say :V”. It can mean “wow, I didn’t realise just how much of a problem misogyny/sexism was until I had a daughter, because there are things I didn’t know. Now that I know the full extent of the problem, I’m going to change the way I act about it”. Stop assuming the worst of people, ffs.   *(Speaking in broad terms here, just assume the tag “cis” usually-but-not-always goes here. Trans people do tend to relate to gender/their partner’s gender a little differently.)**(As An Sperglord, it confuses me just how much feminist discourse is about the club scene and why it’s bad. It seems disproportionate to the amount-of-a-problem-it-is.) Oh my goodness, someone put it into words.I have always found dissing people who say “I had no idea, then I was trying valiantly to protect my sister and I couldn’t” to be… mean and ugly and wrongheaded.Doesn’t the very concept of “don’t compare oppressions” rely on the ground assumption that NONE OF US KNOW FOR SURe exactly what happens to people who are members of groups we’re not in?If so, WHY IN THE FUCK do we scream at people the minute they go “yeah! I didn’t know!”Y’all can either have the confessional culture or The assuming everyone already knows everything. You can’t have both.That’s a good way of explaining what kinda irks me when people jump at men who tell you they know x because they have a daughter/wife/sister. They don’t experience these things personally so they rely on the women in their lives to tell them and explain. There’s also a difference between caring generally about a thing just as a decent human being and caring on a personal level. I care about children and their well being. But if I hear a kid is gravely and I say, as a mother, “I have a child that age”, nobody assumes I didn’t care about kids getting ill before. They just hear me making a specific personal emotional connection to the issue. Can I also just say this goes both ways? Women who didn’t grow up super close to men (whether it was because they didn’t have brothers close to their age or whatever) also tend to not realize the shit guys go through. I see it all the time when women say men don’t have body issues or whatever. However, being a big sister close in age to her little brother and watching him deal with a lot of similar insecurities as me, I see those comments and it’s so frustrating knowing what guys also deal with because I grew up seeing its effects first hand. These women that complain that men didn’t get it before they had a daughter are doing the exact same thing they complain about.My best friend in college, a Cis gay man, clearly had a problem with disordered eating. It’s super fucked that some women ideology widget themselves out of noticing when men are dealing with the same shit they do.I was visiting my brother and having a blast (I am a favorite uncle to my 19 nieces and nephews) when I heard a conversation from the other room. My sister in law was putting my nephew (5 yo) to bed and he said fairly explicitly that he was gonna put his penis in his 3yo sister. When she asked where he had heard it from he said it was from me. I sat reeling in shock, watching my life pass before my eyes, but she didn’t believe him and after a couple minutes he admitted it was from school. A couple of days later during a conversation she mentioned that I am crazy sexually repressed because I respectfully avert my gaze when my young relatives are naked. I spent almost an hour carefully explaining that my life and my relationships are in the balance, as one accusation of sexual misconduct could potentially destroy the trust of others, so I take care to live above reproach. She couldn’t understand. My uncle abused my aunt and my cousin abused my sister and possibly me. My family is the most important thing to me and I don’t mess around when it comes to our relationships. That is the most striking example in my mind, but there are tons of others where the difference if experience makes it hard to see what men are going through (and visa versa). -- source link

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