Politics aside, I am not voting for Hillary Clinton. Shockingly, someone with a vagina is not voting for someone else with a vagina. When I vote for a female candidate for president, she will be a feminist. Not a woman elbowing into a man's world. Fuck that world. It's limiting. It's inauthentic for women to play that role. It's probably why many men viscerally dislike Hillary, although based on her past choices, they should really be desirous of her as a partner and leader. She stood by her husband through sex scandal after sex scandal. Maybe she henpecked him in private, but she stood by his side in public. Why? Was it for love? Or was it because she wanted an "in" on the political world that he had mastered? Hmm, I mean, I guess it's a toss-up, but since she's running for president, I am going with the latter.Well, good for her that she's getting it now, but she could have stood on her own merit. No need to ride the coattails of a lech.
But why are women as intellectuals, who stand on their own merit, so frightening that a woman who could, like Hillary, chose not to? She played it safe, waited it out, and alienated me, the feminist female voter [Nice GOING, Hill. ONE VOTE DOWN THE DRAIN!]. So why am I so alienated? As a woman with a brain, I'm just tired of this shit ======> gender roles, hypersexualization of the female body (because now we've alternated between selling 'club-wear' to children and/or viewing anything they wear through a lens of sexiness), being excluded because I'm a woman, being included because I am a woman, and the general perception that I am different because I am a woman. Essentially, it's hard out here for a pimp. But ain't nobody got time for complainers, so let's unpack this issue in relation to what I recently wrote about intellectualism.
There is a clear resistance to intelligence being expressed in the United States. This extends doubly so to women expressing intelligence. Domination over women cannot happen easily if they're articulate, informed and able to poke holes in one's argument. A clear indication of this being true actually comes from outside the US - Malala. The Taliban, a group of poorly educated militia-type shitheads from the backwoods of Pakistan and Afghanistan is run by religious fundamentalists and intellectuals with axes to grind and time to waste manipulating others. The leaders have so convinced the Billy-Bobs that do their dirty work that women must be suppressed and controlled that these morons shot a female child on a school bus in the face. I have 1 question for these asshats: If you are that threatened by a young girl, why are you even pretending to be capable of being in charge of a country? Sure, there is no one in the US that is shooting girls in the face because they're learning to read, but there are people like this who felt some sort of entitlement to be with particular women, or any woman because he was a man with needs. Sorry dude, but fuck your needs. I know he had mental health issues, and that is another tragedy for a different post, but at the same time, his ideas on women being submissive and at his beck and call is not as crazy or isolated as the media would have you think.
Sure, this dude was twisted, but reading parts of his manifesto makes me worried, because I bet there are "normal" men who agree and though they might never shoot women indiscriminately on a college campus, that sentiment is there and affects how they treat the women they encounter and god-forbid, the children they raise. His thoughts aren't as "out there" when you put them in the context of our society. Women exercising free will and intellect are dangerous because they don't have to listen to you. Women with the ability to express themselves don't need men to do it for them. Women with time on their hands to explore their own interests might find they don't want to watch your children, or maybe they do. But there is uncertainty in a society with equality because everyone's role hasn't already been predetermined by their skin color, sex organs, religion, etc. And that's really what it all comes down to, the predictability and security of a world that's been color-coded and labeled, like some sort of global three-ring binder. And of course, everyone loves a good, neat three-ring binder, but for papers and articles and shit, not people. Maybe that's why "a binder full of women" was so absurd.
But that represents where we are as a culture and a species now, at the precipice of throwing that stupid-ass binder into the ocean and starting fresh. All of the labels and cross-indexing and other sort of structural nonsense has blinded us into thinking that we have it all figured out. That it's all so neat and clean. But now we're lugging some giant, annoying binder with us everywhere. And we have to stop and look for answers to everything instead of ever intuiting anything from our experiences, or worse, stopping to THINK through a problem. And when something isn't easily answerable, or if our info isn't up-to-date, then we tend to freak. Whenever I ask students to research a question or topic, they immediately google the exact phrase or question. And when there isn't a clear answer, they get frustrated and call me over and say, "Is this the answer?" or "Is this what you're looking for?" to which I usually say, "What do you think?" which usually gets answered with a huff or a sigh because I am not answering in a clear way. On purpose. And now they have to think about whether the information they just looked up really fits in with the question. So that's where we are too, frustrated by our growing pains of becoming more egalitarian. But since we haven't found the answer on Google, let's put our heads together to solve it.
No comments:
Post a Comment