Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Yes, I'd Like To Exchange This Vagina For Some Equality


So I’m sitting here, reading this bullshit article on the internet about how men are becoming less manly. Well what does that mean for women? Well the internet seems to think women are TOO manly these days. Not enough of us wear dresses and know how to cook a ham apparently.

What does it really mean to be “manly” or “feminine” anyway? Many people have told me over the years that I’m quite manly myself. Hell, when my grandma was around, she’d complain up and down about how I never wore dresses and should act more “like a lady.” While it’s true I detest dresses and skirts, I don’t really see a wardrobe primarily consisting of jeans, t-shirts and jackets as tomboyish or feminine. I like to think of myself as unisex in many aspects. “Androgynous” is a term I am very fond of.

To me and many of my friends here in the modern age, the phrases “act like a lady” and “man up” mean precisely shit. Why should we? Does it get us anything we don’t already have? What purpose does it serve to further widen the gap between us, started with our genitalia and ending in the amount of money we earn?

In all honesty, manly and girly are not natural ways of perceiving people or the world we live in. When children are born, their gender provides guidelines to others on how to treat the child, whether they like it or not.

“Oh, you’re having a baby? Is it a girl or a boy?”
It’s a fucking baby is what it is. What’s it to you?

Experiments have been conducted on children where people were asked to describe little boys and girls just by looking at them. The girls, of course, were all “precious” and “sweet.” The boys, on the other hand, were “handsome” and a “chip off the old block” (so I guess this study was done in the 1950’s?). Guess what? They’d lied about the genders. Some handsome little girls they had there I guess.

Now I haven’t taken nearly enough liberal arts classes to be able to make an educated guess as to why this is so hard-wired into us as a society, but as far as uneducated guesses go I’d say it’s because people are goddamn stupid. We don’t treat animals this way. God knows that I treat both my dogs, boy and girl, the same way and don’t go out of my way to find the female a pink collar and the boy a blue. No one gives a shit. So why do we put so much emphasis on it for people?

I’m not a modern day feminist by any means and this isn’t because I don’t believe women should be granted the same rights as men. I do. Problem is that feminists have a very skewed way of looking at things. Let’s take (you guessed it!) ponies as an example. When My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic first started its reign over the internet, the fandom began calling themselves bronies. Then a bunch of bitches got their panties all in a twist and decided they didn’t want to be bronies. They wanted to be pegasisters.

Let me tell you… why that’s bullshit.

Aside from the fact that the term pegasister excludes unicorns and earth ponies by way of its very description, it also excludes males. While you may think you have the balls (you don’t) to look me in the eye and say, “Well BRONIES is a term exclusive to males,” I’m going to go ahead and tell you that that’s wrong and you’re retarded. Bronies, a combination of bro and ponies, can be used to describe either gender. I’ve met plenty of women who have earned the title of a bro. We can be dudes, we can be guys, we can be bros and any woman who responds to the phrase, “hey guys” with “UGH I’M NOT A GUY” is probably a complete cunt and should be cast out from the rest of society.

You see, I’m an equalist (and not in the Avatar sort of way), not a feminist. Feminism is the idea that, “Oh. You have a thing. I want a thing, too.” Equalism is more like, “Hey, you have a thing. Can I share that thing?” Equalism is an ideology that does not have room in its ranks for terms like “girl gamer” and “male nurse.” We are gamers and we are nurses. The fact that I have boobs does not hinder my ability to whoop your ass in DPS and having a penis has never gotten in the way of anyone properly impaling someone with an IV. If I ever in my life hear someone say anything along the lines of, “Sorry I couldn’t save that child from the burning building; I am, after all, a female firefighter,” I think I’d swallow my own head and shit it right back out due to the silliness of it all.

What really gets me is this strange concept of everything needing a label. We can’t walk 5 steps out our door without categorizing and sub-categorizing everything and everyone we see. Does it benefit us in any way? It honestly just kind of makes us dicks. Over the course of my life, I’ve heard shit like, “A man isn’t a man unless he does this, that and the other thing.” FALSE. A man isn’t a man if he has a vagina. (Hell, as far as I’m concerned, a man can be a person with a vagina who claims they’re a man because they want to be. I don’t give a shit; call yourself a goose for all I care.) That’s it. It’s really fucking simple. I eagerly await the day we are classified as people before we’re labeled as man, woman, girl, boy, trannie, or (my personal favorite) OTHER.


Though I doubt that day will come in my lifetime. 

7 comments:

  1. It's true, man, woman? Fuck that! Try human! I think some people make distinctions like male nurse and girl gamer due to the (somewhat) rarity of either group. It's like saying midget track star or Jamaican anti-drug lobbyist. Do they exist? Sure, but they're damn few and far between. The problem arises when those labels extend beyond a comment on rarity and into a judgement of ability or personality.

    Also, male nurses are crazy common now, and so are girl gamers, so those labels can go fuck themselves anyway. :D

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  2. What do you see 20 years from now. What perceptions will men/women have of each other and all the inbetweens and exceptions? Gay rights and acceptance of alternate sexual preferences/genders/non-genders has come a long way. When do you think we'll hit a plateau when there will be general acceptance of all of the above?

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  3. We can see, even today, gender lines being blurred. Although it's mostly something you see in rebellious teens, you can go to any mall and at least once the thought, "Is that a boy or a girl I'm looking at?" will cross your mind. It may seem like an insult but does it really matter? The person you're looking at, whether it's male or female, is still just a person. Does it make a difference? It doesn't change anything about what you're seeing or how you judge them. What they're sporting between their legs doesn't make their septum piercing any less ridiculous.

    As for what's to come next, I think (and hope) the lines will blur even further until people can finally feel comfortable in their skin. I don't understand why things like makeup and dresses should only be acceptable for women to wear yet women can dress in pants, a traditionally male clothing article, and have no one question it. I don't mean trannies and cross-dressers, I mean regular, every day men. It's almost like women get to cheat. We get the privilege of altering our face a little bit, making our eyes stand out and our skin tone more even while men have to walk around with their aesthetic imperfections for all to see, willingly or not. I'm not saying all men have to wear makeup so I don't have to see their acne but I'm all for at least having that choice. If they want to put on some concealer and mascara, by all means. I can so why can't you? I think aesthetic things like that should be the next step.

    Eventually I hope we get to the point where we choose our friends, sexual partners and companions based on traits that don't have to do with gender. The lines will be so indistinguishable that people will be forced to get to know one another on a personal level, judge them first by how they present themselves, their interests and their mannerisms instead of immediately writing people off based on gender. "Oh, I don't like being friends with women. They don't make good friends." Well now you won't know what they are so you can't make prejudiced decisions to exclude someone from your life so quickly. "Men are all pigs." We'll see about that.

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  4. I'm sure you're familiar with calcification of habits and such. Since humanity's large constructs such as cities and networks mimic a general outline of organisms I believe that change much like evolution will take a proportionally large amount of time correlating to the size of the organism. Another thought that comes to mind is the ingraining of personalities. Such as when moving to a new school or new work place people might think "I will get a fresh start! I can totally act like a different person, time to ditch the old me!" That expectation does not become reality as easily because people retain their personalities around family members and familiar people, and have an internal subconscious pressure to maintain a certain style of mannerism which gets in the way of a full reboot.

    Tradition will have to be eroded and I do not think that subjective disdain for other people's clothing/aesthetic preferences will ever be fully wiped out. Since you frequent 4chan I'm sure you've seen the immaturity and overwhelming evidence against peaceful/harmonic interactions against a single troll OP, people will mindlessly bump a troll thread without reading warnings of "don't feed the troll" in the first few posts. Likewise despite warnings against prejudice people will continue to bite the bait of criticizing others for their choices in aesthetics because they can't help the impulse of pointing out the one that doesn't fit.

    I think to some degree clothing designed for a specific gender is justified. Different cuts for women's and men's clothing serve the purpose of accentuating the body's natural form. Because the two genders are innately unlike each other on the exterior there will ALWAYS be a divide among clothing which caters to either genders. Minor modifications such as piercings, tattoos and length of hair should be overlooked, at least more than they are today. People with body modifications are looked down upon for job selection because of stereotypes they belong to. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

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  5. I'm sure you are. Unfortunately, I have a day job.

    While I don't disagree with any particular point, I still hold an almost naive optimism about the future of gender roles. I agree it will take a long time since old ideals will need to die out or be severely weakened. Some people still hold that men should be bread winners and women should be bare-foot and pregnant in the kitchen. I hope that 50 years from now, such a concept will be nothing more than a ridiculous chapter in history books where school children will read and go, "No fucking way. People actually thought that at one point?"

    People CAN change if they really want to. If you went up to someone in their mid-70's and asked, "Do you think men should be allowed to wear makeup?" they'd likely say "hell no." But if you asked "Why not?" they probably wouldn't have a very good answer. "Because it's always been that way/it's tradition/that's just how the world is" are the most retarded excuses for maintaining a mindset and I sincerely hope the future generations will come to understand that and take new ideas into consideration before immediately writing them off because it doesn't fall into their comfort zone.

    As for clothing, even now we see men wearing v-necks with more exaggerated necklines and long hair. Do I think men should wear heels? I mean, sure, let them, but I don't think men have particularly nice feet. Doesn't hurt me if they do. As for body modifications, that stereotype is slowly dying off. I have a gauge and 5 tattoos and have never had it be an issue in an interview.

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  6. Didn't mean to rush, I was just didn't know if you planned on responding or not.

    I think in 50 years we'll definitely see a drastic change, pretty much all baby boomers will be dead by then and I see us being a lot more accepting of different types of genders/roles. You're right that most people don't have a good reason to justify their dislike, but sometimes its just a gut feeling for people to be revolted by the anomaly which is a shame.

    I'm surprised you had no problems with interviews with a gauge(why not 2?) and 5 tattoos. Then again it depends on the place you're applying to.

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