-- quick hit (cn for misogyny, rape culture, racism)

[kaberett]

Over on tumblr, give or take the vagaries of its formatting, we have the following:

When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women. -- Sally Kempton

I feel this is very important.
-- (via yourenotsylviaplath)

It’s been apparent to me for a while that most men can’t really imagine “equality.” All they can imagine is having the existing power structure inverted.

I cannot decide whether this shows how unimaginative they are, or shows how aware they must be of what they do in order to so deeply fear having it turned on them.
-- (via lepetitmortpourmoi)

I’d say the latter, given that the exact same thing is true of e.g. a lot of whites when it comes to racism. Any attempt to advance equality is seen as a desire to dominate or wipe out white people.
-- (via doomhamster)

Oh. Oh. Is this why, in relationships, I am discomfited and incomprehending when met halfway? Is it because my ability to imagine "equality" in this context has been systematically destroyed? Because I think it might be.

Comments

[vass]

It's the biggest reason I can't imagine wanting to be in a relationship with a man.

Not just in a "I would never find a man who really believed in equality" way. I know plenty of men who hold sincere feminist beliefs. But society's structured in such a way that if I were in a relationship with a man, even a man with the best intentions in the world, we would both have to swim upstream all the time against the way others treated us, our assumptions and experiences, the structural inequalities. And it just sounds exhausting, and like a pain I couldn't take comfort in sharing with my partner, if I had one, because we'd experience it differently in ways that would mean we'd hurt each other when discussing it.

I mean, it helps that I don't tend to get crushes on men or feel drawn to men anyway. But if I did, all that would still be true. :(

It's not that I hate men generally or individually. I just wish they weren't men, that the categories "men" and "women" didn't exist.

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, I hear that.

[kaberett]

So I was contemplating whether this was actually a thing just about my relationship with men, and I came to the conclusion that it isn't: that I've been so carefully and thoroughly socialised that this is just Yet Another Thing where despite my best efforts I'm influenced by the kyriarchy, and the effect of my queernesses is more to have me smear heteropatriarchy across everything than to end up with different modes of relating to men & not-men.

(I do find that dating queer men goes better than dating straight men, in terms of the assumptions they bring to the table and their familiarity with the work needed to constantly unlearn this shit, but.)

(Enh, I know people for whom those gendered categories are a comfort and a necessity? but yeah, if we could ditch the oppositional sexism and the toxicity...)

[alexseanchai]

... *hugs?*

Funny, I literally just came across this from Radical Neurodivergence Speaking earlier this morning...you know how allistic people talk about meeting autistic people halfway, and then expect autistic people to do functionally all of the work?

[kaberett]

Huh, thank you for that link. Interestingly I actually can't imagine how I could be met halfway in communication; I know that there are some people with whom communication is just easier (they're usually autistic), but *chinhands* Chewy thinking!

Hugs. <3

[silveradept]

Also, perhaps, the possibility of having to guard against someone else deciding that equality, in whatever form they conceive it, is overrated and they no longer want to meet halfway, or any way at all?