Dear Men and Women of the World, Fathers and Mothers,
I hope you will be conscious of how you raise your boys,
because the next generation’s prevalence of abuse toward women depends on you. You
are raising the boys that will eventually marry my daughters.
The acceptability of abusive attitudes and behavior is
determined by the way people are raised. Which is not to say that every parent is
responsible for their child’s actions, but overall, our ideologies are
developed in the home.
It is not beneficial to teach boys and young men to be
tough, to keep from showing emotion, to refrain from expressing themselves. If
a boy is shown that his feelings are not valid, then others’ feelings are also
not valid. If a boy is scorned as weak for showing emotion, then when he
encounters other people expressing emotion, they will also be seen as weak and
worthy of scorn (whether overtly expressed or not).
The attitude that considers it acceptable to tie a woman’s
value to her looks, to rank women, or to make comments about women’s appearance,
should, with our massively accumulating technological and scientific bodies of
understanding, be as far behind us by now as is the clubbing of a female to
bring her back to one’s cave.
And really, how far are we from that now, anyway? No
clubbing or hair-pulling in public, sure, but the idea is still prevalent that
a man should be able to pursue the woman he wants until the woman, finally,
relents. The fact that her ideas and desires matter not a fraction less than
his is a sadly lacking concept. Do we laugh and sigh over stories of a woman
showing up at a man’s home or place of business repeatedly until he gives in
and loves her? I think generally she would be called a ‘crazy stalker,’ and
probably a ‘crazy stalker b----.”
If males are raised to believe that women have equal
importance, all of the various forms of abuse will be far, far less likely. But
still today, many men continue in the belief that either one woman or all women
belong to them, that women owe them something (whatever it may be).
May we banish forever the phrases “Be a man,” “Don’t be a
baby,” and “Boys will be boys.” I have been around men who tote phrases like
“Bros before hoes,” as if it contains some sort of moral wisdom. To many,
whether they ever define the belief or not, males have more value. Women are
nice prizes for pleasure, while everything that’s really important belongs
within men. And may the negative implication of the phrase “… like a girl” burn
on the same pyre that reduced the science of Nazi physiognomy to ash and
bizarre memory.
And of course, as important as subtracting the inhumane is
adding the necessary. We need to teach boys to view females as having equally
important voices, equally valid opinions, and being equally capable of doing
all of the things boys may want to do. We need to teach boys the massive
importance of being respectful, and the unacceptability of controlling others,
inhibiting others, and abuse of power. We need to teach boys that they are important,
and that everyone else in the world is just as important as they are. We need
to teach boys defend those who need help and to speak up when someone is being
mistreated.
Because their voices are important. Despite all of the
stories I’ve heard, conversations I’ve shared, and articles and blog posts I’ve
read by women about the things we do and don't deserve, one of the things that most impacted me was hearing Joss Whedon give
a speech about powerful women. It made me cry. Because although a man’s opinions
do not actually mean any more than a woman’s, in a culture where people are raised, at least subconsciously, believing that men are in charge, that they are the
rulers, that they are smarter and are our leaders – even to someone who abhors
the idea – part of it seeps in. Part of it stains. Part of it maintains and persists and perpetuates. And
so until we can truly reach that place where women completely believe themselves to be no
less, to have just as much of all of the good things as men, until we can reach the
place where men’s voices and women’s voices have incontrovertibly equal weight – until we
get there, the weight men carry in their voices can do enormous good, have
enormous impact, and help the world to finally get where it needs to be.
If men are willing to make themselves less – to bring themselves down to an equal footing with those often, erroneously viewed as lesser, if men will stop trying to control,
stop trying to cling to the power they think they deserve or want, and begin
trying to serve, to listen, to love, to help, they will be able to do immeasurable good
in countless lives.
Of the men and women who served along the underground railroad
in the 1800s, none of them had the obligation to spend that time, to sacrifice
those resources, to do that work and put themselves in that danger. Our nation
didn’t need people flogging themselves over the horrors being committed, what
it needed was people who cared, and people who were willing to get down and
dirty and do the hard, messy, dangerous work of taking something that was wrong and
misaligned and working to align it.
The state of our society can
improve, but it will not come about through moderate, mild, meek
disapproval of the brokenness that is so dispersed. We should not be violent in
the cause of human rights, but we should be strong, persistent, intentional,
and we should not be silent. We have the potential to improve the environment
in which billions of females, males, and all of the successive generations will
live.
As we improve, while we mustn’t forget all of the things
that have been put onto and taken away from countless females for so much of our history,
we ought to wonder with incredulity at the ignorance and inhumanity that
allowed it ever to happen.
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