Personist

This blog was started as an outlet for my inner monologue to be able to vomited unto the world without fanfare. And as I do not expect anyone to ever read this I get to say whatever the hell I want.

So today's topic is my problem with feminist...or feminism...or whatever.
First off is masculinist a thing? I couldn't think of an appropriate antithesis to feminist and it occurred to me that only the counter-movements get to have an -ist, though I doubt that would stand up to intellectual critique. Also nothing in this will have citations so I'm simply writing about my particular world view as it was formed and not about yours, or hers, or his.



So why am I against the feminist movement? The answer is that I'm against any movement that seeks harm to others. I have no issues with girl power or women doing what men do or getting paid the same or being portrayed appropriately or whatever but I do take issue when it gets to the point of being "men repressed us so we need to repress them".
Yes I can empathize with the whole come-upance thing I just don't think its good or healthy.

I've always been more pragmatic and meritocratic. If a person can do something then they should do said thing regardless of any non-related biological issues to include gender, race, handicapness...whatever. Its why I take issue with the military have two sets of standards for similar MOSes. This is why I don't understand the empowerment thing, or well I mean I do understand it intellectually but I've never held the belief that women were inferior simply based on gender...results matter and damit if a woman gets results then great. This is also why I take issue with...or well part of why I take issue with the whole gender based wage gap. If a person can perform the job well pay them accordingly. But see the real issue is greed and power as we have seen over and over with high paid executive fuck ups and their golden parachutes. Fuck them.

Some background. I grew up in a household with two working parents. My mom was highly successful and even has an award from her field named after her. (well I thought she did but google seems ignorant on the issue, that said she WON many, many awards in her field). She was a strong independent woman who eschewed the traditional role of mothering...yes I am bitter about that. She was also an alcoholic. But damit she was smart and strong willed and really really amazing at her job and I loved my mom while she was alive and miss her now for the most part...I miss the sober her at any rate.
My dad on the other hand was not a misogynist. He didn't particularly seem to have any stance on gender issues as far as I can recall. In fact he was mostly very neutral about everything while I was growing up.
So I never had any strong indication that gender really mattered. I lived in this naive bubble where people succeeded or failed based on ability and not gender or how society treated gender.

But feminism isn't simply about gender based discrimination of ability, no it also includes a component about how women are viewed sexually and this is a much harder topic to talk about.
So first up I never find it ok when someone uses an imbalance of strength to take advantage of the person on the weaker end of the scale. Rape is wrong. Physical abuse is wrong. Cheating people out of adequate wages...I don't feel I get paid enough for what my job is, can you tell?
And so from this I extend the rape thing to also include society forcing anyone, not just women, to take on sexual identities which they are uncomfortable with.
Having said that I take offence to the feminist extremists who try and tell girls and women that is not ok to be "pretty".

So let's talk about this for a second. When we are born we have a certain set of genitalia (some have both sets but I'm not going there right now) and then we live our lives and come to associate and identify with a particular gender and have a particular gender we find attractive.
As with everything in our lives it is far easier to generalize and define things binarily than to consider that there is a vast array possible whatevers. So with gender we get "Men" and "Women" and with sexuality we get "Straight" and "Gay". Though lesbianism is an outlying case that I find interesting and we will touch on that later.
Black and white. Yin and Yang.
But see the thing is the world is actually various degrees of grey with white and black being simply the extremes and further more the yin and yang contain within them a piece of the other as a way to show that everything is interconnected and not as simple as we or hollywood would have us believe.

So.
As far as I am concerned our society has a severe problem letting people simply be who they are. If you like to wear lipstick and baseball caps then damit your genitalia and sexual orientation should have no impact on that. Furthermore history has plenty of fine examples of showing us that things we equate to one gender having been equated to the other at some point.
I think its perfectly ok for a woman to be "pretty" and want to dress up and wear "pretty" clothes and bras and all of that. It is also perfectly ok for a man to do the same both literally and metaphorically but with the gender identity reversed (so just to spell that out, if a man wants to dress "butch" or whatever the term would be). The trick is that the person dressing the way do feel comfortable or at the very least view it as a functional choice and not feel they have to do it or be shunned. This is also why I dislike the term cross dresser. I mean I suppose there are some who dress to the cultural standard and not the aesthetic and I suppose they could be considered to be voluntarily and very intentionally "cross dressing" but a dude wanting to wear a dress or a chick wanting to wear...what? women can pretty much wear whatever right?  
The thing is no matter how you look there is sure to be at least one other human out there who will find you sexy and at least another who will thing you are doing because you want to use your sexuality (this is very much in response to the Nostalgia Chick and her Charlies Angels thing, damit you are attractive, almost doesn't matter what you wear because you just are attractive and honestly I find you the most attractive when you are wearing something you appear to feel comfortable in which almost everything you wear so get over it).

So what I'm saying is we should allow people to be themselves and not define their sexuality based off our own conceptions of sexuality. Butch women can be straight and so can effeminate men. Men can be gay and still be "men" and women can be....

Ok so we need to take a second to discuss lesbianism and lesbians. See there are really two types of lesbians, Disneyesque lesbians and real lesbians.
Disneyesque lesbians are the ones you find in porn created by and/or for men. They are attractive to "men" and basically have heterosexual sex just without a man present. Strap-ons are often involved. My theory is that the more extreme of the homophobic male community are worried that porn may be bad because they are watching a man....fucking a woman and this might confuse them because they may not be sure if the it is the man or the woman that is the reason they are getting turned on. They can't see the fucking through the penis as it were. Because of this they like "lesbian" sex that is really just heterosexual sex but doesn't include a man. I mean sure that strap-on is a big god damn penis but the person wearing it has tits so its ok. For this type of person a Butch lesbian is a real lesbian and a hot lesbian is one who would do the guy if he seduced her but she fucks women when she can't find a real man. This is why I think that male "gay" porn and gay males are so much more vilified along with male-like lesbians while girly-pretty-lesbians are ok and heterosexual porn that has only women in it is also very much ok. I would honestly love to see porn made by lesbians for lesbians...and not just porn but also erotica.

whew.

One last thought as I am getting lost by this point, I don't think that women being the center of attraction within our society is simply due to the fact that men control the world and thus all sexual imagery must be about women. Instead I think it is because, for the most part, women are simply much more appealing to look at than men. They have better features and structure and proportions...at least when clothing is being shed. Don't get me wrong there are lots of damn sexy guys but usually you want to keep at least their pants on because...ewww. And for that matter the vagina when spread open isn't exactly sexy or hot....arousing maybe but not sexy. But to be fair I haven't polled enough women or gay guys to find out if that is actually true or just how I view things.
haha, polled, thats funny.