No right to wrong

Recently, I've had the good fortune to come across a blog I just adore. I have for a long time been an advocate for queer rights, including the legal right to marry and to be free from persecution. Yet this site taught me alot and is one of the MOST well linked, comprehensive blogs I have found. Please check it out. The link again, is http://transdada.blogspot.com

Calling myself any specific "ist" is a bit difficult. I find such disclaimers and categories to be quite exclusive. Yet I've also had the interesting luck of being caught in a conversation with a fellow student on what "feminism" actually is. I should phrase that differently. He looked at me and said, "Hey I've got these folders and they're quite girlie. I want folders like yours. Do you want to trade?" I said, "What do you mean by girlie?" He said they had pictures of dogs on them. DOGS? I said. "What about dogs is girlie?" He said, "Well they're cute and I'm a man and I need folders that aren't cute."

I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at that comment. I thought, oh boy, did you pick the wrong person to approach on this one. I said, "Well I suppose you could draw tanks and dead people and guns on the folders and perhaps then, they'd be manly enough for you." He laughed.
I asked him then, "So are you going to see Gloria Steinem in February when she comes to BSU?"
He said, "Who's that?" I said, "She's a feminist." He blushed and backed up a bit, saying "Are you a feminist?" I said, "YEP." He said, "OH. Well I'm not." I said, "Obviously."

Funny thing though...he's a very small guy, almost effeminate, extremely intellectual and very nice. I thought to myself, why would this guy feel the need to prove so hard, that he IS a MAN?
What is so threatening to him about appearing anything otherwise? Why did the word feminist shut him up and what did it mean to him after I said I was one? Did I suddenly change in his eyes as he had in mine? My first reaction was one of irritation. After thinking about it though, I felt actually rather sorry for him. I could imagine him as being one of those boys shoved into a high school locker simply because he's so small or beaten up because he's so quiet. I could be wrong on that too. Who knows? Certainly though, this guy has some sort of preconceived notions about what masculinity and femininity are and especially about what constitutes a feminist.
If he'll talk to me again...if...I plan to ask him to define that word for me. It took me an awful long time to call myself a feminist because I too had preconceived notions about what that word meant. I too thought it had something to do with women who hated men fighting for a cause that didn't include other struggles such as those against racism, class discrimination or even human rights and one that didn't necessarily include lesbians and transgendered people in their ranks. Historically speaking, the last two points are true to a point. Yet, the first one, I believe is entirely a socially constructed gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation, thanks in no small part to the hateful backlash of such buffoons as Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.

It has taken me alot of reflection and the good fortune to have studied feminism from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (namely sociology and history) to see that my pereceptions were wrong and that the feminist struggle is truly a human struggle not only for women but for men as well. I have no "right" to wrong him by thinking him stupid or uneducated even or a bigot.
He may well be these things but I have no "right" to think myself better or smarter or somehow in a position to "put him in his place." What I can do and plan to do is try to approach him on the issue a little more delicately and respectfully and inclusively to see if he can at the very least see me as a human being rather than just a word, just an "ist," just a cause waiting to be explode
all over someone's smallest transgression or vocalized objection.

The page I mentioned earlier and linked in this post is so very worth your time and worth your effort. Please check it out. I don't think we can accomplish much as individuals or as individual fault lines waiting to erupt. We need to find new and more imaginative ways of bringing about change that makes people feel equally relevant and not excluded from the "cause." As bell hooks' (one of my favorite authors on the matter) has said: "Feminism is for everybody." We all have a stake in making the world a better place for everyone not just for ourselves or for just our nation or for just our way of life. peace!


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Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant. Ani Difranco