Wherever there’s a victim, Frederick Marx writes, there’s also a perpetrator.
I know something about victimization. I was taught it pretty well by my mother. She grew up very poor in a fatherless household in the Jewish ghetto of Philadelphia. She often went hungry. No one bothered to mention to her as she went off to school that first time in 1931 that she would be hearing a new language – English. She only knew her mother tongue, what everyone in the neighborhood spoke – Yiddish. She spent much of her first year in school in a state of shock learning a foreign language from scratch.
Coming of age during the Depression she grew to expect to be mistreated, misunderstood. She adopted a “beg for mercy” posture when dealing with strangers. Highly sensitive by nature, she felt easily offended by things others might say or do. She felt battered by the world, the victim.
But wherever there’s a victim there’s also a perpetrator. The two go hand in hand. My mother would perpetrate passive-aggressively, usually by turning her back on her victimizers. Once and for all. Forever. For life. She lost a lot of friends this way. Needless to say conflict resolution did not come easily.
Perpetration also took the form of the cause of justice. When victimized she would wrap herself in the flag of righteous indignation and set out on the warpath of revenge through social justice.
Not surprisingly I share many of those traits. My default position is victim. I can walk out of my house in the morning, have a pigeon shit on my head and, rather than laugh, declaim in anguish, “Why me Lord?!”
My perpetrator also looks like my mother’s. I burned a lot of friendships by writing people off. Those who betray me usually go down in a hail fire of righteous bullets. At least in my mind. It’s not enough to reach and find compromises with my tormentors, solutions that work for all, the win-win. I want my victimizers to go down hard. All the way down. I want to perpetrate on them.
This is important stuff to be aware of. If this dynamic is to stop with me, if I want to break the family chain, I have to consciously and constantly work to mitigate against my “natural” impulses. It’s not easy but I’m making great progress.
As an independent filmmaker of many years, I have seen foundation and government support for independent filmmakers increasingly go to women, people of color, and less experienced filmmakers than me. This is the new reality in the social funding side of filmmaking and it has taken shape over the last 30+ years. We were turned down for a very large grant to complete Hoop Dreams because, as we found out later after much digging, the panel was not going to award a grant to white filmmakers for a film about black families. It was not politically correct.
Did it piss me off? Yes. Did I see myself at the time as a victim? Honestly, yes. But I like to think I’ve grown a bit since then. Which is what this article’s really about.
Has the new social reality of filmmaking adversely affected my ability to raise money for my films? I believe so. There are certain bodies and funders I will not seek funding from. In their political correctness I believe they will not fund a lone white male filmmaker. So clearly I’m a victim of this new order, right?
I don’t think so.
What?! you say. How is that possible? Am I not justified?
First and foremost, because of that family history, I choose not to see myself as a victim. I know it is a dead end for me to indulge in the mental drain game of victim. And mental drain of colossal proportions it is. In the past I’ve spent countless hours vacillating mentally between victim and perpetrator, licking wounds and plotting revenge.
But I genuinely don’t feel victimized by these new social realities. How can I be victimized by the realization of values I hold dear? The crime is not with those “perpetrating” political correctness on me. The crime is with those who for many years before didn’t allow women, those of color, and inexperienced filmmakers to come to the table. But wait, isn’t this new reality just two wrongs trying to make a right? No, because I don’t see the political correctness of the age as a wrong. I see it as righting historical wrongs, readjusting the imbalance of the scales.
50 or 60 years ago it was virtually impossible to secure funding for a film if you were a woman or person of color. It’s still tough today but it’s a hell of a lot easier. I’m glad these changes have leveled the playing field.
More importantly, not receiving funding from PC funders has not stopped me from making films. I simply have moved on to other funding streams. For the last 15 years I’ve increasingly sought and found support from individuals. It actually appeals to me a lot more to make my films directly for the audience that wants them, that funds them. In some ways it’s actually a dream come true – cutting out the middlemen, the distributors, the broadcasters, the foundations.
I’m glad to be less engaged in pursuing grants. To me it’s a process that’s grueling. Each grantor demands you dress up your project to look something like the ideal project they’relooking for, regardless of the inherent social value of your original vision. Then once you’ve crawled through all their hoops they give you a ticket for the lottery. Not satisfying.
Could I “justifiably” rant and rave against a system that doesn’t recognize my “greatness?” Sure. Could I see myself as a victim? Sure. But that self-perception will not serve me in becoming the mature, productive and happy man I aim to be, and does not align with the important and necessary redressing of social inequalities.
It seems to me that many men who perceive themselves as victims either don’t share those values or don’t understand history. After 300 years of slavery and 100 years of institutionalized racism through segregation and Jim Crow we are not suddenly “color blind” in the last 50 years. Similarly, after 1,000s of years of women’s 2ndclass status we are not suddenly gender neutral in the last 50 years. We’re getting there but we’re not there yet, though we may be closer to solving the gender divide than in eliminating the social barriers of race and class.
Certainly any one person can be victimized by any other individual or group. But that victimization may not have a historical or social dimension to it. Individual middle class white men, even rich white men, can be victims of all sorts of terrible things, including judges that adjudicate against them unfairly in divorce proceedings. Including men that are victims of domestic violence. Including men that are unfairly accused of rape, or sexual harassment, or child abuse. But as a social class upper middle class white males are not historical, institutional and cultural targets the way white working men are, the way people of color are, the way gays are.
A couple years ago I was visiting my sister’s family in New York. When I went to pick up my 12 year old niece from her dance class the teacher wouldn’t release her to me because she didn’t know me. When I asked Emma to identify me she giggled and said, “yeah, he’s my uncle.” Still, no go. Not until my sister called and said “he’s my brother,” and I showed my driver’s license to her did this dance teacher release my niece so I could drive her home.
Was that teacher overzealous, a pain in the ass? I think so. Was she being paranoid in the extreme? Roger. Was I pissed off? You bet. I certainly felt like I had more “right” to my niece than she did. I felt like my niece would be a hell of a lot safer in my care than in hers. Are there lots of men who get similar treatment from dance teachers? Probably. But was I a victim of a social wrong, some discrimination against all men just because some men are child molesters and murderers? I don’t think so.
As much as she was a pain in the ass I’d rather have this woman grill men who show up to take my niece away than risk her being taken by one of those child molesters or murderers. They may be very few but they certainly exist. Just one more of the many social realities that still have to be redressed.
Frederick Marx is interested in starting an advice column on all things male related. We invite you to place suggestions, or specific questions, below on issues you would like to see addressed.
—Photo jesus_leon/Flickr
About Frederick Marx
The problem here is that you very clearly were a victim of discrimination. Whether you choose to feel a victim or not does not change the fact that you were. Had a woman come to pick your niece up, the lady would not have thought twice. Hell, even a friend’s mother could probably pick her up no problem but a father… forget about it.
You say 50 years cannot make up for 2,000 years of discrimination, but the real question is why not? Those generations are long gone, and the new ones know no such gender discrimination. In the United States today it is better to be born a woman than a man. Much better. You are more likely to go to college, more likely to get an advanced degree, you will live longer, you will get paid more for equal work, you will get special benefits for entrepreneurship and many other things. Why is it acceptable for women to get special benefits for discrimination from which they never suffered and men to be cast down for privilege they never enjoyed?
His example of the overzealous teacher asking for his license…is that discrimination or profiling? Is there a different? I think so; it’s just really subtle. Profiling isn’t ideal, obviously…because it is so freaking close to outright discrimination. But unfortunately it has it’s uses. I think it depends on the way any situation is handled.
Did the teacher accuse him outright of being a molester? Did she say outright that is what she was worried about? Did she treat Fredrick gruffly until he proved he was related to his niece? If the answer to any of that is yes, then yeah I agree that’s horrible. But if she asked for ID calmly, and was relatively pleasant the entire time, then that’s not as horrible. I mean obviously, were I in that situation I’d be pissed off at being asked to show my ID. But as Fredrick says, there are bad people out there, and better safe than sorry. I guess ideally the same question would be asked of any stranger (man or woman) who picks up a child after school.
Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve been asked to show id to pick up my own kids if the person at the school is new and doesn’t know me. All while my kids are saying “Mommy.” In all districts that I know of we as parents have to fill out a form allowing certain people to pick them up (neighbors or someone) and they have to show id, male or female.
Never underestimate the fear of litigation will put in the hearts of school administrators, businesses and so forth.
Could be discrimination based on gender, could be SOP in a culture that sues people at the drop of a hat because rarely, that One Terrible Thing happens and so EVERYONE and their lawyer figures out ways to make sure the stakeholders don’t get sued.
Every time I take my kids to the gym? I have to show my id when I drop them off and when I pick them up. Every time. If I left the gym and asked my neighbor to pick them up, I feel pretty certain they’d not let her take them. They’d call me and all kinds of confusion would ensue.
So, as Heather said, if he was harassed and accused, that’s shit. If it was SOP, it’s probably (in my opinion) less because he’s a man and more because they don’t want to get sued.
Ah, I was a victim of the auto refresh!
“You say 50 years cannot make up for 2,000 years of discrimination, but the real question why not?”
Because people and groups and institutions don’t work that way. At least they never seem to have
Slavery lasted for several hundred years and there were years longer of discrimination. I’m not sure we can say “Bam, done!”
Gays and Lesbians still struggle and it will take generations to normalize things and to ensure legal rights not to mention shifting discrimination.
There are great changes for women but there are, currently, politicians and religious institutions fiercely against contraception coverage, abortion rights, comprehensive sex ed, LGBT rights and such things, so I think it would be foolish not to be vigilant (as men and women, for those conservative ideals affect men too), about the brief window in a long history of some rejiggling of gender roles. 50 years is nothing in a 2K period. I don’t want 2K years of women/top men/bottom either. I’d like to see things balance and I’d adore seeing less anxiety in the system but that’s gonna take a long time.
I don’t see this kind of change like a teeter totter. It’s more like a 6 dimensional teeter totter that moves in increments and in varying directions. Or a pendulum which swings wildly and then finds balance. Or seeds where some grow and some don’t.
Systems take a very long time to change. And it’s important to remember how the change happens and to keep vigilant about maintaining a new system. Individuals can change more quickly, and affected (rightly) by personal frames on things. But personalizing an experience can mean less flexibility in a system. The system and the individual have different experiences. If I have a personalized view on MRA (due to say..bad experiences just as a truly made up example) it can (will) limit me in how I work with systems. I need to take care of the personal aspects for me, but I need to be courageous enough to meet people on the other sides and see what common ground there is for the real work, the long work, the system work to be done.
My opinion.
Thanks so much for putting it so beautifully, Julie.
This is total bunk and you know it. Like I said, a woman born in 1990 knows nothing about being a second class citizen. It is just history to her. It has zero impact on her life. Zero. Slavery doesn’t affect a black person born in 1990. They aren’t at a disadvantage because of slavery. 20 years from now, a child who grows up to be gay will have absolutely no understanding of the persecution of homosexuals because it will be history and nothing else. The problem with working on “the system” is that it continues far after something no longer needs to be changed. Let’s take the feminist machine for example. Women have gone well past equality in pretty much every aspect of life as I pointed out. Are there religious nuts who want to do religious nuttery? Yes. But I don’t think that is inherently targeted at women, it just happens that their nuttery affects certain women’s issues. With that said, the feminist machine is still pushing for more inherent, systemic advantages for women over men.
I have an honest question. Why do you think women are getting more college degrees than men? I think it is a direct result of giving material advantages to girls in schools. Feminists changed the way schools operate to be biased towards educating girls, there are far more opportunities for scholarships and financial aid for women, and others.
When men were earning more degrees than women, feminists would blame men for having a system in place that benefits men at the expense of women, which is true. Now, however, the system benefits women at the expense of men, but you will not hear feminists state that. The reason women now earn more degrees than men, according to feminists, is because “men are lazy” or “men are more interested in sports than education” or “men don’t have good role models” or some other excuse that blames men for their own underperformance.
Why the double standard?
You don’t have to agree with me or believe me but I see a big difference between how individuals born today experiences life and how there are still systemic residues that can affect individual lives. And we teach about those older dynamics in our history books. And we should remember.
I have no idea why males aren’t getting degrees. If I did, I’d probably be working for an institution who could pay me to help make sure the playing field was equal for all. My guess? That there are systemic dynamics in place including the things you mentioned, but probably other dynamics we don’t know about. And maybe some women are working hard and being aggressive and competing in ways that some men find alienating. And maybe the economic failures of the past 20 years has affected parenting. And maybe ADHD meds have fucked over boys. And maybe the over-stimulation of kids through media mixed with an absolute nadir in healthy foods, water, and increase in chemical exposure over the past 30 has helped create more cases of ADHD (or maybe screening is better and the drug lobbies LOVE getting more kids on meds, no matter their gender…PMS meds anyone).
And maybe it isn’t the evil illuminat-feminist cabal cackling in the dark corner that men aren’t getting degrees but each group (lobbyists, educators, politicians, non profit owners, parents, book sellers for pro girls, book sellers for pro boys, media outlets, pr firms) each having a small piece of a puzzle that we won’t likely figure out for decades and by then? Maybe that pendulum will have turned again.
If there is a cackling cabal to visit, I’ve certainly never gotten an invitation. I don’t much like dark corners, anyway.
I’m nearly 43 years old. I hate pulling the age card cause really the only thing age gives you is wrinkles and perspective, but I’ve just seen too much to ever see problems in this society as having One True Cause, when it’s nearly always a systems issue. Systems are filled with people, all of whom usually believe what they are doing is for good, and all of whom are often flawed individuals.
Do I want men to have great health, great education, great opportunities? Of course I do. I want that for women too. I’m an equal opp social justice cowgirl, Collin, and I tell it like I see it. Always open to new information, but I don’t see any need to give out bunk when I can tell the truth as I’ve experienced it.
Well I’m in agreement with Julia here, but I’d like to point out a couple things. First, the idea that, “Slavery doesn’t affect a black person born in 1990,” ignores a lot of how history works. The system of slavery depended on the socially constructed idea that if someone was black they weren’t really, truly, people. Fast forward to the 1960s, and there was still institutionalized racism in place which mean that in some states African-Americans couldn’t vote. That racism stemmed from the system of slavery.
Fast forward to today, and there stereotypes about African-Americans all being criminals, and a distinct lack of African-Americans on tv and in movies who aren’t ‘token black-guy’ characters. Why? Because the effects of slavery (as well as a whole bunch of other systems, such as capitalism, etc) are still being felt. A socio-cultural system doesn’t just stop, unless the country suddenly disappears. That system (such as slavery and racism) has effects on other systems (such as the media) and these trickle down over time.
I just want to mention that I’m not trying to start a discussion about racism on this thread. I just wanted to sort of flesh out an example of how systems can interact and carry on over time.
Thank you for laying that out. Yes.
Ah also, I think a lot of what Fredrick here is trying to say is that identifying yourself as a victim doesn’t do much to fix the problem, As typhon_undressed also points out, when you are labelled as a victim, you are in a sense stripping away your own agency. So when you (or anyone else) gives a list of the ways men and women are not equal, and then blame it on one entity (feminists or the male oppressors), you are framing your own experiences as victims. I think that’s not the most helpful way to frame the systemic problems that cause a variety of gender inequalities. In part because if you view yourself as a victim, you are effectively saying there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
I hope that’s making sense.
“Ah also, I think a lot of what Fredrick here is trying to say is that identifying yourself as a victim doesn’t do much to fix the problem”
The problem is that Fredrick is creating a situation in which we amplify the victimhood of women and dismiss the victimhood of men.
This is bad for both men and women. It strips women of their agency and men of their right to have their issues heard and responded to.
Ultimately what we’re dealing with, with women, isn’t institutionalized discrimination, it’s socialized discrimination. If we teach women to remove their agency by casting them as a victim-class, the net effects are that women will simply not be able to do certain things that men can do.
Funny how just *correcting* this one way of looking at the genders would do so much for both men and women.
First, sorry for getting your name wrong typhon.
“Ultimately what we’re dealing with, with women, isn’t institutionalized discrimination, it’s socialized discrimination. If we teach women to remove their agency by casting them as a victim-class, the net effects are that women will simply not be able to do certain things that men can do.”
I totally agree with that. I’m just not quite sure where Fredrick is emphasizing the victimhood of women. I saw him as trying to de-emphasize the victimhood of men. Maybe I’ve missed something in my reading.
” I saw him as trying to de-emphasize the victimhood of men.”
This is not something that’s really needed at the moment. Men aren’t seen as victims; they’re almost universally seen as having far more agency then women.
Saying that beliefs about past victimization of women (which I don’t personally ascribe to) means that we should still see women as victims even when they aren’t being victimized in the here and now. Yet when men are victimized in the here and now, we should not see them as victims.
I don’t think society at large views men as victims…but I do think that some of the rhetoric surrounding the discussion of the ways in which men are losing their rights involves viewing men as victims…victims of family court, victims of feminism, victims of profiling. Again, I’d agree that most of society doesn’t see it this way (and indeed tends to see women as victims instead). But I also think it’s important not to shift the discussion and start discussing men as victims. It could end up having the same effect victimizing women has had on women. Not like now…but eventually.
And I might be being really dense. That is something I am totally willing to admit…but I’m not seeing where he says that women were victims in the past either. I so totally do not mean to be obtuse or anything like that. I see him saying his mother felt like a victim. And I see him pointing out ways in which the system has screwed him and his mother over in the past. But I don’t see where he’s saying women truly are victims and men aren’t. You’re probably banging your head on your desk and my inability to see it, but I swear I am trying.
” Similarly, after 1,000s of years of women’s 2ndclass status we are not suddenly gender neutral in the last 50 years.”
This suggests to me a disproportionate burden of victimhood is being placed on women.
I don’t agree that women were 2nd class citizens historically. Historically men had more rights _and_ more responsibilities and women had powers that no longer exist in our consumer-based society. (Want light, heat, shelter, clothing, edible food, kitchen medicine(often the only kind available), as well as entertainment and social networking(in the upper classes)? Women controlled all of these along with domesticity and access to sexual intimacy in the past.)
I think there is a huge difference between casting an entire group as victims and pointing out specific instances of injustice. The difference seems to this:
specific instance of injustice = lets change that specific instance of injustice
group victimhood = lets justify hurting another group.
Ah that sentence. Way to pick it out…I glossed right over it. Thank you.
I wonder if Fredrick was explicitly trying to portray women as victims in the past with that sentence, or whether he subconsciously used language that implied women were victims in the past.
Either way, yeah typhon I see what you’re saying with that sentence. I agree with what you’re saying…I just hadn’t caught where Fredrick had mentioned it.
“you will get paid more for equal work”
Hi so I’m not trying to be challenging, I’m just curious. Do you have like an article, or stats, or something I could look up that discusses this? I’ve seen it the other way around (that men get paid more), and I’ve seen it mentioned that men and women get paid equally. But I’ve never seen it mentioned that women get paid more. Again, just want to emphasize, I’m not trying to debate this here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html?pagewanted=all
This is from 4 years ago. I am sure the differences are even more drastic now than they were before.
Ah okay well, again not to be argumentative, but that’s an article about a few big cities and the mean wage. It doesn’t necessarily apply to the rest of the US, or to jobs that don’t require a college education.
It’s about quite a few big cities that have a huge percentage of the total US population. They also tend to be ahead of the pack in everything. Also, if you read it you would have noticed it said women without a college education were making more than men without a college education too.
I must have missed the bit about non-college educated women making more too. Apologies. But still…do you know of any articles that discuss overall trends, not just in a few cities? I’m not trying to derail this into a discussion of equal pay, I’m just looking for sources of information to compare is all.
The over all trend is that unmarried, childless young women make as much or more then their male counterparts.
Okay, again I’m not trying to argue about it because I honestly don’t have any hard facts about this issue with which I can form an opinion. That’s why I’m asking for a reference….Give Me Stats….like a zombie wanting brains.
No seriously though, I’d just be interested in sifting through the information (hopefully unbiased toward either side) out there with regards to gender and employment, and I’ve no idea where I’d start looking. I mean if I google it, chances are I’d end up on websites that are out to prove a point, not just present the data.
Hey Frederick.
If you don’t want to be a victim, then why should I have to be one?
Men have always been treated as more expendable then women.
I was reading a book on first-person accounts of world war one. One man recalled being told that he shouldn’t worry if he was mowed down, there were plenty more troops where he came from. And so he was used as one more brick in a wall of human bodies, built to achieve a goal.
I keep looking throughout history for a story comparable to that for white women. I keep coming up empty handed.
Oops. That should have been World War Two, and the man was reassured that he shouldn’t worry if he died, they would still have enough soldiers to achieve their goal.
This is what really gets to me.
I’m supposed to feel like a victim because of ‘institutionalized discrimination’ that happened to someone other then me before I was born. Yet Fredrick gets to throw off the mantel of victimhood even when he is directly victimized by current circumstances.
It’s almost like people _want_ women to flounder under the mantel of victim. Almost like this agency stripping is satisfying some deep, primal need to cut women off at the knees somehow….
Collin:
When men were earning more degrees than women, feminists would blame men for having a system in place that benefits men at the expense of women, which is true. Now, however, the system benefits women at the expense of men, but you will not hear feminists state that. The reason women now earn more degrees than men, according to feminists, is because “men are lazy” or “men are more interested in sports than education” or “men don’t have good role models” or some other excuse that blames men for their own underperformance.
Why the double standard?
Julie: February 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm comment.
I don’t think he was asking why aren’t men getting degrees but rather using the degrees as an example for the generic question of why does it seem that when men outdo women in something then there must be sexism afoot but when women outdo men it can be anything but sexism. (I think another recent example of this is in the post about the dad shooting his daughter’s laptop where someone said that the dad doing so was misogyny. Are we really to the point where literally anytime a male does a bad thing to a female that it absolutely must be because she is female?)
Could I “justifiably” rant and rave against a system that doesn’t recognize my “greatness?” Sure. Could I see myself as a victim? Sure. But that self-perception will not serve me in becoming the mature, productive and happy man I aim to be, and does not align with the important and necessary redressing of social inequalities.
It seems to me that many men who perceive themselves as victims either don’t share those values or don’t understand history. After 300 years of slavery and 100 years of institutionalized racism through segregation and Jim Crow we are not suddenly “color blind” in the last 50 years. Similarly, after 1,000s of years of women’s 2ndclass status we are not suddenly gender neutral in the last 50 years. We’re getting there but we’re not there yet, though we may be closer to solving the gender divide than in eliminating the social barriers of race and class.
I think there is quite a bit of a leap going on here. It seems that since Frederick does not to wallow in victimhood men that perceive themselves as victims don’t share his values (which I can see where he is coming from on) or they don’t understand history (which I think is a leap).
There seems to be this I don’t know I’ll just call it a thing going on here where it seems that when it comes to gender in order for the experiences of men to count as victimization, sexism, institutionalized, etc… it must pass some sort of test and that test is usually “how does this relate to women?” I say this because what do most people that are adamant about saying there is no such thing as institutional harm against men reach for? The claim that it doesn’t compare to what women have experienced. I don’t think that’s fair if for any other reason that it props up the experiences of women as the official definition of victimization, sexism, etc… and at that point due to the experiences of men and women being different by default men can suddenly not be victimized.
Frederick: “But I genuinely don’t feel victimized by these new social realities. How can I be victimized by the realization of values I hold dear? The crime is not with those “perpetrating” political correctness on me. The crime is with those who for many years before didn’t allow women, those of color, and inexperienced filmmakers to come to the table. But wait, isn’t this new reality just two wrongs trying to make a right? No, because I don’t see the political correctness of the age as a wrong. I see it as righting historical wrongs, readjusting the imbalance of the scales.”
And this is where I stopped reading your article. So much potential in this piece and yet you threw it all down the toilet with this statement.
Fredreick, I am a survivor of abuse from females in addition to males, girls in addition to boys. I wrote an article on the subject “Bullied by Girls and Women: One Man’s Account”. It pretty much details how it still affects me after gaining awareness of the far-reaching impact the hurt and pain had been embedded in me at only 32 years of age.
It also details how NO ONE is looking at the issue of boys or men getting hurt or abused by girls and women. All the attention is paid to boys bullying boys, boys bullying girls, girls bullying girls, and that’s it.
My article is THE ONLY ARTICLE that addresses girls bullying boys. Since society has decided to get their jollies from deriving masochistic pleasure in seeing boys and men suffer at the hands of girls and women (and don’t tell me it isn’t true because I keep hearing boys getting bullied by girls is an unfamiliar issue when it has been happenning FOR A LONG FUCKING TIME! and society DOESN’T OPEN IT’S DAMN EYES!)
With that statement above, you are basically complicit in the problem. Thanks to you, and others like you, situations like that are hardly given a cursory glance since “Women and girls have it worse”. Or, in your words “Seeing it as righting historical wrongs”.
You are the reason why I sometimes find myself thinking I deserved the hurt from those girls and women who tormented me. You are the reason why I’m all alone, save for a small minority of like-minded individuals, in getting this problem recognized. You are the reason boys and men aren’t listened to in this arena.
You and the mindless glob that makes up society.
Thanks for nothing.
PS: Okay, I need a break for a minute.
Since I’m under moderation again, I’ll just say I agree with Danny and hope my previous comment is cleared.
Eagle, we have a very complicated list of words that sometimes cause things to enter mod. Sometimes very long or link heavy pieces wind up in mod. If you have questions, as I’ve mentioned before, you can email us to ask.
Eagle, I’m truly sorry you were abused by men and women, boys and girls. No one deserves that. Nor should they be compelled to forgive anyone for it. But there is nothing in my article that defends or should be construed in any way to defend women and girls who abuse men and boys. In fact, if you had read on you would have read this:
Certainly any one person can be victimized by any other individual or group. But that victimization may not have a historical or social dimension to it. Individual middle class white men, even rich white men, can be victims of all sorts of terrible things, including judges that adjudicate against them unfairly in divorce proceedings. Including men that are victims of domestic violence. Including men that are unfairly accused of rape, or sexual harassment, or child abuse.
In your case Eagle, I’m sorry my article doesn’t further state: “Including men who are victims of abuse from women and girls.”
I believe I need to start posting this caveat at the beginning of every article I write: [Generalizing alert! I will now be generalizing about men and women. Please note that I am in no way saying all men or all women are like this. If these distinctions don’t fit for you, dear reader, great.]
If your article didn’t defend abusive girls and women, the passage I quoted about “Righting past wrongs” reasonings being used as an excuse for injustices against men wouldn’t be included. Yet it’s still there, isn’t it? So I don’t believe you.
And as far as that paragraph presented as a counterpoint, you seem to forgot that there are men who are far from the income brackets of middle class white men and rich white men. Again, why are you emphasing “White men” this and “White men” that? Anyway, those low to poverty level men experience the same thing.
All I’m asking for you is to quit aiding and abetting this “Righting past wrongs” justification crap that DOES lead to society refusing to support or even listen to men like me.