As Kitten and I fell into infinity, we heard everything. All of time, all of life all of the universe all singing at one time. It was like the time we went swimming and the whales were singing off in the distance, it surrounded us and vibrated through us and we just knew. It was beautiful as the song wove around and through us, it all made sense in that single moment in time. Then the color, every color all at once all painted around us like we were swimming in a swirling sea of color. It was even more intense and beautiful than watching the star being born. As I started to fly through it, Kitten sat up and started humming with the tune and swirling her fingers through the colors and started to paint pictures in the fabric of infinity.
I received the following email in my FaceBook account today and it pissed me off and forced me to get on my soapbox. I know that this person is misguided and trying to do the right thing, but in the end it shows the total disregard for the true force of the female. I earn double the amount of men in the relative same position as me and I have freedoms and choices opened to me that all I have to do is go out and decide I want them. These things come to me not because I am a woman, but because I have worked and sacrificed to live the life I want to live. The fact that someone has to act ‘special’ around me or give me things just because I am a woman? grrrr….
Practical things men can do to end sexism
Howdy! The person doing the NOMAS.org website asked council members to come up with practical concrete things men can do to end sexism. Lots of these lists have heady consciousness-raising items, and we wanted practical items. I’m writing to some of the powerful women in my and my beloved’s circles and wondering if there are any things YOU would add to this list. Here’s what I was sent, followed by a few I’m planning to send in.
1. Don’t interrupt women when they speak.
2. Support women’s leadership and help elect women to political office.
3. Don’t support the pornography and sex industry.
4. Don’t condone, laugh at, or tell sexist jokes or stories.
5. Listen, believe, and be accountable to women and their stories.
6. Share responsibility for birth control and reproductive health and safety.
7. Be the kind of father you always wanted to have.
8. Be the kind of partner you would want your daughter’s partner to be.
9. Tell the women and men in your life that you love them, out loud.
10. Support women’s equality in education, sports, and in the workplace.
11. Speak up when you see violence or abuse directed at women or children.
12. Don’t make fun of or invalidate anyone’s emotional reactions.
Talk to someone who does have power in your circles (boss, clergy, politician) and when there’s an issue to be addressed, recommend to them a woman you trust.
Next time you have a job to be done, find a local LGBT directory, and see if there’s someone in there who can do that job.
Next time you see anti-choice protesters at Planned Parenthood, stop in and make a cash donation, no matter how small, and then tell the protesters that you’ve done so.
When you see a woman behaving badly, choose to let other women make that observation to her.
When telling a story about bad behavior, think of a way of telling it that does not perpetuate stereotypes.
My reply:
My answer may piss off all the feminist out there, but if you want to end sexism, strop treating me ’special’. The fact that people have to even hold meetings on this subject or write out the above items to me is very demeaning and belittling and makes me feel like I am a second class citizen that needs to be treated differently because I can’t do it myself.
You want to end sexism? Here is a very simple answer… Treat everyone regardless of sex, gender, race, religion or socio-economic stratosphere as a human being that deserves respect and kindness. Replace every comment above where you called out ‘females, those poor second class citizens who need our help cause they can’t help themselves’ with a non specifying nomenclature.
THAT alone will go very far in changing the ENTIRE world.
Off my soap box now.
The most important power we have is the power to help select the lens through which we see reality - David Brooks.
Sometimes I go through life wishing I had the view point of everyone else, wouldn’t that be nice to just be able to fit in with the norm. Other times I go through life wishing I had the great insight of the geniuses of our time, the ability to see beyond the mundane of reality and express my views in such a way that it touches everyone I come into contact with.
Each and every day we make choices, choices of who we are and what we are.
What makes us who we are?
I read a blog this morning which really started to get my mind running around inside of its shell. It was talking about a woman who had Alzheimer and their loved one looking on and the look of confusion and sense of loss on their faces. The slow insidious leaching of the persons memories till they wandered around in the world unable to recognize the people around them, unable to know what makes them essentially them, but the loved ones still loving the person. But, what makes them loveable? Each and every one of us has gone through life and ‘loved’ someone with everything that we are, whether it is a close friend (BFF) or it is a lover, and we have also felt that loss and confusion as the relationship ended, the person changed, where once was love now is hate or even worse disinterest. What is it that allows us to continue to love someone who does not know us, yet can’t continue to love someone who is still ‘sentient’?
In all my close friendships that I thought we would be in each other’s lives till the end of time, the end was not for lack of ‘nothing’ but more for the person starting to do damage to the other. At that point when they start to affect the essential ‘us’ where they start to damage our own identity and tatter our souls. Then you end up leaving to preserve your essential self.
But, what makes us who we are? Have you ever met someone and felt the ties that bind the souls together, the instant recognition? You do not know why or how or who they are, but there they are and you know that they are important to you, that energy, that resonation of two souls on the same frequency. You may only have met them for a minute, a heartbeat or a breath before you are parted again and sometimes you are lucky enough to know them for a lifetime.
Is the loved one who is looking on the person who has lost their sentient self, still resonating with the person’s energy or are they remembering past thoughts of the person that cannot be destroyed as there is no thought of destruction from the person? Does love exist regardless of the material person and is it always there at the soul level and we are all just struggling to understand the world that we are living in now? When sometimes it would be easier just to feel rather than think?
What makes us who we are?
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The Blog that started me thinking:
At the end of the film A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, after many struggles and setbacks the heroine is reunited with her adored fiancee. The only problem is the lover has suffered a grievous head wound that erased all of his memory. When they are reunited, he doesn’t know who she is. In Julie Christie’s recent film AWAY FROM HER, she plays a woman with Alzheimer’s Disease who gradually loses her memory and with it her ability to recognize her husband of many years. At the end of both stories the ones “left behind” look at their partners with equal amounts of longing and confusion because there they are right in front of them, but no, they aren’t “there” at all any more. In both cases it brings up the essential question– what makes us who we are? Our physical selves? Our memories? Our ties to other people? Our achievements (including our children)… Other, perhaps more ineffable/undefinable things? It’s stuff for a serious ontological discussion (or philosophy class), but also an intriguing question that can be batted back and forth across the ping pong table of your own mind when you’re in the bath tonight: what makes me who I am? If you took away this or that (my memory, or my sense of humor, or my eyesight, for example) would I still be me? Or would the loss of such things disappear me?
www.jonathanCarroll.com
