Where to begin? I’ll start with the fact that I’m a girl and when I feel like it I play with power tools and build things because my dad taught me how and I always get all sorts of pats on the back and oohs and ahhhhs and it’s sort of okay but it sort of isn’t okay either to be so “surprised” that girls can build shit. I also sew very well because my dad’s mom was a tailor and she taught me when I wanted to learn. I don’t get very many wows for it even though I do it better than I build stuff and it serves almost as much need and purpose in daily living. I have been very capable my whole life, it was expected of all of us on the ranch to gain our full potential. For what ever reason, in my family I was never told what I could do but I was told to do what I could and that turned out to be a lot. Many times when working for other people I was not granted the opportunity to reach my full potential because I have boobs and a vagina. I suppose you can attempt to diversify my work place in order to be more fair to me where sexism is concerned but I’m still being placed where I am because I have boobs and a vagina instead of what I’m really capable of and what I have earned the opportunity to do.
We saw how this worked when Robyn had to deal with people telling her that gays had earned the chance to have certain rights and transexuals had not. Like we have to earn the opportunity to have a right or have our rights. I know a lot of people are mystified about the current fight taking place and I want to say my piece of my peace. My son has a gene mutation and he isn’t like anyone of you and he isn’t even like me in most ways but he’s a human being. I have no set parameters to follow as to how well or not so well he is doing. I had to throw his baby book in the trash completely enveloped in tears because he began to attempt to speak at around 10 months….he couldn’t get around very well on his own and he was getting very frustrated….and he didn’t walk until he was two and we didn’t even know if he ever could. Try documenting that in one of those cute little babybooks. I really just wanted to take a hammer to it first because it hurt but I learned sooooo much.
Human beings are born with all of their rights and it takes “structures” to take them away from them and they can take more away from some of us than they do others. It is the ignoring and ignorance of our simple human sameness at our very cores that has brought us all to this place.
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I like your post but I will not like the conclusion some will likely draw from it – to wit,that all that has past can be forgotten with a wave of the wand.
We must fight the racism imbedded in our culture, in our lives, in ourselves.
We must use the government, public institutions, and ourselves to fight that which is within us.
It will not happen one to one.
It will happen and has happened ONLY at the larger scales.
Consider if you and I get along and overcome our racism and sexism and bigotry that means nothing about what everyone else and our institutions and society will do to each of us.
This is not a problem that can be managed at a micro level.
It takes something bigger.
how similar the various tasks we all do are. Mixing Concrete is very similar to making bread dough, you try to achieve a similar consistency, then plop it in a form of some sort.
Many of the concepts of industry came about as a result of sewing and weaving techniques, including layout, templates, combining small things to make larger things, looms, etc.
And apparently, based on the commercials, drilling for oil is just like going to a 7-11 and ordering a slurpee.
I often wondered what happened to the Women’s Movement. Perhaps this time around we should work on a Human’s Movement.
not all people being treated the same……wow
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I do remember one time when I felt very small and very vulnerable as an Anglo. When I spent the summer in Korea while my husband was serving there his Captain paid for the debt owed and married a girl who had “belonged” to what we would call a pimp in this country. She had been brought in from Russia, told that she would be a dancer and well, yeah, I guess she danced sometimes too. She was very pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes and my husband told me what had happened to her before I met her but when I did meet her I remember thinking “JESUS!”….”this could have been me once too if I had only been born in a different country!” It was a very scary shock and what had happened to her was perfectly legal and fine in the country we were in.
I am not bemoaning being a white anglo female minority, I am calling for all of us to treat each other as we would wish to be treated, with respect and dignity.
Or as my father used to say ‘Mrsdoasyouwouldbedoneby’. Because language is nuanced and it is easy to be misunderstood and inadvertently hurt or disrespect others by lack of sensitivity to other cultures and racial, social and cultural backgrounds. I know who I am and how i feel and you know who you are and how you feel, but we don’t know each other well enough.
essay was written that started this brouhaha, Before it erupted when I posted my comment I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because I had dismissed the issue of racism as a distraction, not looked at what the essay was about. Because I was looking at it from my dishonest little corner of the universe. ‘I’m progressive’ does not excuse my dismissal of the root causes which bite us all. If I can’t let go of defending my delusions what good can I do.
I can see sexism, I experience it everyday though I live among mainly enlightened males. It’s not the overt that I can deal with, it’s the ingrained which I too have been programmed for, and defend if I look inside it’s in me too . One can use it to maneuver through the culture, or stupidly strike out at others. Racism is our bad karma as a nation and to bury it and say Oh no not me I’m a liberal, I did not do this, still leaves it sitting there at the core of our policies and rationalizations, and self interest.
Hard to dig down deep. The comparisons of oppression are somewhat akin to the comparisons of progressives, are my credentials better then yours. Labels, which I blithely use as they have become weapons in my insane ‘war’ against war agains’t who? Just further the separation between us all. They too become ammo.
Numbness is not so good, waking up from it brings, painful tingles. Barriers are erected, defenses go up. How can one cleanse the accumulations of history and the personal. My experience is never yours, my gains are never yours. Hearts bleed we all cry foul and yet the beat goes on. Thank you to however and why ever I get glimpses of that which is beyond my own skin, culture and defenses.
I can’t use power tools. I can’t use hand tools. I also can’t sew or crochet or do crafts.
I like math (guy thing)
I don’t like sports (ooops)
I like beer (guy thing)
I also like wine (perhaps I’m gay???? :-)!)
(oh, but only red wine, please)
I’ve got kinky hair (Guess I’m Black)
And a wide nose (there it is again)
And very little body hair (need I say more?)
OTOH, all 4 grandparents are Jews from Eastern Europe (there goes the Black thing