Not naive...open minded.

A few things that got brought to my attention after my last post that I'd like to clarify.....I’m not here to change the world….I’m working on myself. I used to think that I could change every person I came into contact with…now I realize I can only control myself, and my reactions to others. And keep an open mind.

I don’t want to change that black man who walks into the room and the first thing he thinks about is his color. Why do I need to? Why does he need to? I am sure he is proud of his color. What I want to change about myself, and raise my daughters to do…and if I’m lucky…bring it to someone else’s attention, is that being different is GOOD. Celebrate differences. If we were all the same – life would…suck. What I want my daughters…and for myself….is to determine if a person is someone we want to spend time with based on their personality, intellect and talents. If we want to further know someone based on these attributes, not the color of their skin, their gender, their hair color, their jean size, their jean brand or their sexual orientation.

Discrimination doesn’t just come in color or gender – it is largely social too. People can base whether they friend you on if you live in the right house; your parents (or you) have the right job; youmake the right amount of money; buy the right clothes; and have the latest styles and fashions. This is particularly sad to me.....and oh so shallow.

I was asked if I have ever felt discriminated against in my job. I think the presumed answer was going to be no, because I am a white female that has above average aesthetics I’ve been to college and served in the military. But the answer is hell yes!! I work with a population of largely 45-65 year old men, of all races, who have retired from a branch of the service and were generally officers. I just hit 35 this year and I have been in this civilian job for the last 7.5 years. From the get go I was dismissed by certain folks because I am young, because I am a woman, because I am attractive, because I didn’t retire from the military, and sometimes even because I was enlisted. The fact that I was a Sergeant that served “only” eight years in the Marine Corps has become my “dirty” secret. And it is largely thought that I got my current position because I am an attractive female. I was even told that once at a conference. And let me tell you…sometimes being told you are “pretty” is an insult. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like someone telling you that you are unqualified because of your birth year and ownership of a vagina. I wanted to put on a parka and wipe all the make-up off my face and be an invisible, ugly person. For a long time it really made me think…way too hard….about what I was going to wear to work, who I was going to be seeing that day, if they would take me more seriously if I had a pants suit on vice a dress. If I wore my hair up versus down did it make me look to young if it was styled this way or that. I eventually….and it took way too long to come to this conclusion….realized that these issues were THEIRS, not mine.

 I WAS hired because I was young, my boss got tired of hiring folks who were coming into the profession with a “I’m retired, I just don’t want to move to Florida and die yet” attitude. He wanted someone who had some passion and spunk, and hadn’t been beaten down by politics yet; had faith and hope that the world could change!

Is it the same as being racial discriminated against? Feck no, I’m not trying to compare it. That wasn’t the point of my previous post either. My point is BEING DIFFERENT IS GOOD!

Like I said I will NEVER change the world…I can change myself, and I continuously try to. I can “attempt” to raise my daughters to the best of my abilities with the knowledge that I have now.

Going from one extreme of hatred to tippy toeing around a race or gender is not going to fix the problem. It will only exacerbate it. And I would personally think this would be insulting to someone. It’s hard for me to even say how I feel about my personal situation - I got hired over someone that was retired with more experience because of being young, will it ever be seen that I got the job because I would have more longevity, passion and ability to go further in the career position? No, it will always be contrived based on being a young, attractive female.

 

How can we fix it? Well we can’t, I can’t. We can only worry about what WE do as a person in charge of our own actions. I know I will not look at a man who is homosexual and ass-u-me that he is weak because he has on female clothing or his gait is not that of a heterosexual man. I know I will not look at a Mexican woman and ass-u-me that she is stupid because she may not understand English. I will not meet a 20-year old intern and automatically ass-u-me that they don’t have valuable feedback or perspective just because they are “only 20”. The list goes on and on my friends. This reminds me of the meme that a fish isn’t stupid just because it cannot climb a tree. (Am I killing you with the meme's yet?)

Embrace being different, recognize that there are going to be folks who are NOT going to embrace your difference and that is NOT your problem. Love YOU, be good to you; work on being a better you – whether that is reading more books, traveling more (travel is one sure what to kill bigotry) 

or just stopping and talking to someone you normally wouldn’t. Be open minded – I didn’t say naïve…just open minded.

Slippery Slopes, race and gender domination.

I recently watched a video on FB of a teacher….or maybe she was an instructor (eye of the beholder) that was performing an experiment with her class on race domination. There was a white girl who cried and blubbered and screamed in unfairness to the experiment….and yes, I am being judgmental with my words I use to describe her actions and she did make a point for the video but wow, was she just crazy train. Anyways, the point of the video (and I am grossly over simplifying the meaning here) was that anytime a person of any race other than white walked into a room it was the first thing that was noticed.

I have a good friend who told me this once; that the first thing that he felt when he walked into a room was that he was black. In my inexperienced mind I thought this was “dumb”….I thought that was HIM projecting HIS issues on the folks in the room. As a much more seasoned human being I see that I was being an asshole.

The comments on the post were even crazier. People were commenting that the teacher was empowering folks of race to cry for indiscrimination…and I am rephrasing the comment to make it “polite”.

It got me thinking…WHY is there race domination to the point that in 2013 a black man walks into a room and it is the first thing he thinks about? It led me on a journey to a book (and National Geographic five part series) “Guns, Germs and Metal”. I will wrap a quite lengthy book and five hours of TV into one word….geography.

I definitely recommend you watch the TV series – the book is dry, but actually more palatable if you watch the TV series first. My daughter….god love this baby, she is her mother through and through…and she picks up on every damn word that slips out of my mind…wants to start a revolution to kill the Disney Princesses. After discussing with her, her plan to revolutionize and destroy Disney, I got to thinking after watching Aborigine tribes…and even the tribes that are still around today in New Guinea….why did the male sex become a dominant gender and why does my little female warrior need to make a plan to destroy Disney and it’s gender discrimination?

Sydney designed this meme that said everyone is a princess regardless of what Disney tells you; and my question to her was WHY do they have to be princesses? I mean, I don’t want to be a princess. Why can’t it just be all bodies are good bodies? WHY does it have to be gender specific? Men have the same body image issues as women. They just aren’t AS conditioned by the media and culture to be as self-conscious about it. They still are conditioned by the media, but not nearly as much as women.

Where in history did we move from an egalitarian structured society to a society with male structured societal roles of power and leadership roles? Yes, yes, I know there are plenty of women in powerful positions and leadership roles. Just like there are a lot of people of other races outside of white that are successful…..it still is a fact that a black man walks into the room and that is the first thing on his mind. It is still a fact that people will make jokes about a woman being president and we will go to war every 28 days. It’s still there….it is becoming more of an elephant in the room and something you shouldn’t talk about…….but it is still there.

Why do I see (mostly) women trying to become as small as possible? Why do some women put so much pride into being small, petite, pretty, and attractive to the masses to the point where it is self-destructive? And remember…I am asking these questions about general women, if you happen to be a self-empowered bad ass woman than carry-on, I’m not trying to fit all women (or men) into a box, but you also know from sitting in that position that you are not the majority. Where did this COME from? I have feeds on my FaceBook of vintage pin-ups and the whole goal of this genre is to have a “Barbie doll like” waist, large boobs, long hair and enormous amounts of makeup. Makeup to give you “flawless” skin, pouty lips, and large curvy shaped eyes. All with the goal of sex appeal. Not that there is anything wrong with this, I myself did a pinup ‘esque look for the Marine Corps ball I just attended. Again all bodies are good bodies, and more importantly it is YOUR body to do with as you please. Even if that means self-destruction for no other purpose than to look appealing to complete strangers, I am not here to destroy anyone’s happiness, if these things make you happy, by all means carry on. If you perhaps ask yourself, yea, maybe I am not doing some of this for myself but for some sort of acceptance than maybe you have the same question.

How and why did the male gender evolve to be the dominant gender?

It appears that the male gender domination came with agriculture….I’m still doing research on this (and trying to finish Guns, Germs and Steel so perhaps there is an explanation in the book I haven’t come to). One of the most popular theories I have read was that men were the hunters, and although gathering provided most of the food that a tribe ate when agriculture came about and having a food surplus allowed for trade skills and crafts, the men were in an advantageous position to take their hunting skills and translate them into skills of war, conquering other tribes, the start of slavery, and politics.

Among the more ill-informed things I read……“men are naturally more aggressive” “men were the protectors of their family and had to be strong” “because men have the courage and willpower to confront danger and hardship”

First off, back in da day, it was not uncommon for a woman to be pregnant and not know who the father was – she was part of a tribe, therefore the baby was received as a member of the tribe. There wasn’t much “protection of the family” by a gender specific role. It was the tribe looked out for each other as a whole, and if shit went down then it was a gene pole clean up….the strong survived, and this included men and women. “Men are naturally aggressive”….this really kind of cracks me up, this quite possibly could get the most ignorant statement I’ve read today award. “Men have more courage and willpower to confront danger and hardship”….OK I stand corrected….THIS is the most oblivious thing I’ve read today. Women aren’t genetically inclined to like the color pink, want to wear skirts, bake, clean house, primp their cleavage and wear more face paint than a Cherokee Indian by nature, this is strictly nurtured into them by their surroundings and the feedback they get from media, their culture and peers.

Men aren’t more aggressive than women – if you still believe this I invite you to spend a day with me and my husband and you can rationally deduct which one of us is more aggressive by nature. He can naturally be more destructive faster with his aggression than I but give me a few extra minutes and I can fuck a bunch of shit up too. My husband is by nature much more docile than I am and he is much more forgiving as well. That isn’t science – I know, if you want science you came to the wrong blog.

Men aren’t designed to endure hardship more than women –during hunting and gathering times the women were the gathers while the men went off to hunt. Hunting only brought in so much food – it took days to track an animal and one animal provides only so much meat. The gathering that the women did was a more lucrative food supply. Watching an aborigine woman cut down a sago tree and turn it into food will make your shoulder muscles ache and this was a process that took several days and once a tree was completed another would be started so that they could continue to eat. For hours on end, day after day, a woman would process a wild sago tree into dough, physically exhausting work….all just to eat. Eat or starve….sounds like hardship to me. I’m going to wrap up my thoughts on gender specific domination in a quick paragraph. After a teeny bit of research, my opinion is strengthened that racism, classism, and sexism are mutually constitutive systems. I don’t think one exists…or came to be…without the others. Therefore it came about with agriculture and agriculture was a product of geography. In short, men aren’t smarter, stronger, or better than women in any way. I know some women will spout off that women are a better gender because we can make babies. Well not really, a woman grows a baby, not makes them, and it still takes a man to make a baby. If there were no men the lands would be just as barren of babies as if there were no women.

I also know that most men will argue with me on the stronger piece and hell some asshole will want to debate the intellect piece too. But it just isn’t so. There are plenty of women that these inexperienced and unenlightened men can point to as examples of weaker and dumber – I will definitely agree with that. But it isn’t because of their sex, it is because of choice, and media/cultural/peer provoked exposure. Given the chance a male baby and a female baby raised with no gender expectations could be physically and mentally equal – just as a white baby and a black baby would be physically and mentally equal. There are those that are born genetically stronger and/or smarter – woohoo genetics – but race and sex doesn’t decide these factors.

In summary…..long live the Disney princess….wait….that can’t be right…..