Sunday, April 3, 2016

Please Stop the Gender-Baiting

Has anyone else noticed that whenever certain people – and by “certain people” I mean certain feminist internet “journalists”, bloggers, and YouTube celebrities – speak, they speak as if every single issue contains a component of male vs. female and then proceed to tell you how its all part of the “war on women?”


Am I the only person who has noticed this?


Its almost as if they are in a contest with each other to see who can generate the most inter-gender division. The goal seems to find the most outrageous way you can frame a narrative in order to make it absolutely about how the world is out to get women always, every time, regardless of what the specific issue actually happens to be. This seems to be a very popular method of talking to people, and I am constantly seeing more and more supposedly “mainstream” journalists, commenters, and talking heads beginning to follow this same route. Up to – and including – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton engaging in this same tactic at one point.


Honestly, what does it take to honestly see every single issue, every single event, every single thing in the world as being a part of the so-called “war on women?” What kind of special type of stupid does it take to hold this attitude? But the attitude is held nevertheless. I've actually had one of these people tell me, with a straight face, that “everything is misogyny.”


In a world where – supposedly – everything is misogyny, is anything really misogyny? Do they really believe this horse shit? Even more important, are the various non-involved masses who hear them talking buying into it?


If a man disagrees with this sort of absolute stance on misogyny – if he believes that catcalling, just to pick one issue out of the air, is subjective and that what one person might consider offensive and/or threatening might not be seen as offensive or threatening to another person, for example – he will inevitably be met with comments like, “You're such a misogynyst! You're talking about something you know nothing about! How dare you think you should have an opinion! Stop mansplaining!” Even if he has real world examples with which to support and validate his perspective, the people pushing the “everything is misogyny” party line will paint the man's viewpoint and statements as just another part of the “war on women”. No matter how right he is, he is wrong because he's male. And how dare he disagree in the first place, because only misogynists would dare disagree.


I am proud to say that I have female friends who think objectively as opposed to blindly falling in line with “the Sisterhood” that demands all women adhere to the “everything is misogyny” party line just because they are female. They are willing to logically analyze the arguments as presented and quite honestly have often disagreed with this attitude on the basis of fact rather than adherence to dogma.


The fact that not all people – men or women – use this same logical, reasonable process in thinking when it comes to gender issues is a damned crying shame. Instead, every single day there seems to be a widening division occurring between men and women, as if we were each other's enemies.


Women are not the enemy of men. The very idea is stupid.


So why do we allow these people to continue perpetuating the constant division between the genders?


Why?


By allowing these people to get away with perpetuating such a lie, their message spreads. It begins to seep into the consciousness of our children, which is why you have so many young girls today believing that rape is an act that all men everywhere are rapists just waiting for the chance to attack and violate a woman. That women must be on guard against men 24 hours a day, seven days a week lest they become victims of violence.


There is an interesting fact that these gender-baiters fail to mention, because they know this will undermine the paranoid bullshit they are promoting, and ought to nullify their agenda of dividing men and women into armed camps opposed to one another.


Simply put, men are four to five times as likely to be victims of violence than women are.


This nonsense has to stop. It has to stop. We as a society cannot afford to allow it to continue. I genuinely believe this this sort of thing is a form of brainwashing. It does nothing to help when it comes to solving the honest problems facing men and women. All it does is get us at each other's throats, and that helps no one.


If you want to have a conversation about gender and gender-based discrimination – whether the victim of the discrimination is male or female – then by all means go for it. Such conversations need to happen. But gender-baiting puts a stop to the discussion before it begins, and does more harm than good.

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