As for marriage, it’s not heterosexual privilege. And never mind that it’s a (mostly) religious institution recognized in a legal context, anyway.

“i also can’t perceive what it’s like to be a black man trying to get approved for a loan and refused”

What does being either black or a man have to do with that situation? I just got rejected for a loan this month.

RQ=”listening is the first (and most important) step.”

Except, of course, to people who don’t agree with you. Those people, you call “privileged fucks” and “asswipes.”

thank-you, b/c that is an angle that i am trying to see.

i don’t know where my patience comes from. perhaps from some naive thought that people will eventually take a step back from their own privilege and try to see another point of view. ya know, i live w/ three grown men, and it isn’t hard for me to see their point of view on a lot of things when we discuss these topics. it’s mostly about admitting that their’s may be a side that you haven’t considered. no, i don’t know what it is like to be a man living w/ a feminist and trying to make sure that you don’t cross a line…but the fact that they make that effort makes life a lot easier, and the fact that i will listen when they tell me how they feel about our discussions helps.

anyhow…on the issue of the actual post.

i am trying to step out. i am beginning to engage in discussion where i can, and where i feel i am not over stepping. i let my presence as an ally be known, and then quietly read and absorb. i want to be sure that i understand b/f i comment.

it’s like Jane Fonda said (to whom i own a blog letter):

You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don’t find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do.

anyhow…thanks for coming by again!
and Tobes, you flatter me, really.

Ouyandan has more patience than I though. And his comments on this post show that someone needs the feminism 101 post on “why not a humanist movement”.

Back to the topic at hand- listening is the first (and most important) step. But you can’t be afraid of talking and saying something stupid. Look at JC at my place. Two years of saying stupid things (often) and he is becoming a feminist and learning what it’s really like. Now none of our arguing would have done a damn thing if he wasn’t open to begin with.

We are open to changing our thinking about racism. We have to brave too.

This week has been horrible. As a white feminist, I just feel like– THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING I CAN DO — but like you, I sort of find myself unsure as to how– and if– i can help this.

PS: Who’s this Will? I’m getting a mega bad vibe

i am the one pretending that things don’t exist. i am the one w/ the narrow view, huh?

no, i don’t have to face men’s issues daily, very good observation. i could never fully understand them. what i do understand is that i live in a world where men’s issues are default. the concerns of men are the standard, and anything else is strange, or other people whining. when two people get married (BTW, a heterosexual privilege, but i guess i am making that up too, to help my LGBT friends avoid their personal responsibility too) it is assumed that the woman takes the man’s name. people start calling her Mrs. [husband's last name] w/o even asking. if she keeps her maiden name, not even asking him to take hers, mind you, all of a sudden it is assumed that the man is not manly enough to keep his nagging wife in line.

when a child is born, the father, absent or not, whether or not he even concerns himself w/ the child or any obligations thereof, he gets joint legal custody, by default, for being the father alone. even when he was abusive to the mother. even though he didn’t want to be involved to the point of avoiding and dodging a paternity test.

i also can’t perceive what it’s like to be a black man trying to get approved for a loan and refused. i can’t perceive what an asian woman who gets assaulted on a plane and then yelled at for not living up to the docile asian woman stereotype has to deal w/. but at least i am not sitting in the corner w/ my fingers in my ears pretending that these things do not exist, or refusing to acknowledging the fact that perhaps i might just be better off that huge fucking sections of people out there.

at this point, i know i could paint out about a nonillion other examples that, as in the past, you will ignore. so i am done doing that. it isn’t my fucking job to educate you, especially since you seem happier than a pig in shit w/ your flagrant ignorance.

so go back to your imaginary land and pretend that you have all the answers. but some of us will never be able to conveniently pretend that the playing field doesn’t exist or that straight white men don’t have an advantage over everyone else by default. in all honesty, if i could choose to live in your ignorance, your “freedom” as you call it, then i would.

but that is one luxury that i will never afford.

I’d say the playing field is never even, but that implies that one even exists in the first place. When you realize it doesn’t, then you’ll be free.

If you don’t think I deal with civil rights issues on a daily basis, you don’t understand what civil rights are.

it’s convenient to say that it isn’t ever about women’s issues or civil rights issues when it isn’t something you have to deal w/ face on. when the playing field is even then i will agree w/you. until then, i don’t care for your rhetoric here.

congratulations, you have missed the point again.