Was reading some Internet article complaining about catcalling and sexism gone unnoticed and microaggressions. I thought this,response was pretty powerful. Maybe that means I’m another sexist pig…
“I look at the example of my mother: In the early 1970s when she was 30 years old, and a divorced woman with a young child, she couldn’t get a credit card because she wasn’t married. As such, once when our car broke down stranded us, she went to rent a car and couldn’t, because she didn’t have a credit card to use and they wouldn’t take a cash payment. We walked home for miles that evening, and she had to take the bus to work from then on until she could borrow a car. She wanted to buy a house when prices were cheap ($30,000 for a house) and she had a decent job, but nobody would give a single mother a loan. She worked, at times 5 jobs to make it so that she didn’t have to take any alimony – she was too proud, but accepted child support to pay for doctor’s visits, since she didn’t have any insurance paid by her employer.
She went back to school, became an archaeologist, and for 30 years worked in hot deserts and ran archaeological digs as one of the few women in a field completely dominated by men and could out-survey (for 20-30 miles at at time), out-dig, and out screen the lot of them.
If a construction worker cat called her, she waved and said “thank you!” She never turned down a compliment, and yet didn’t take a single ounce of c–p from anyone who every treated her poorly because she was a woman. She never once let anyone take her dignity from her, and they tried constantly.
I watched all of this first hand on a daily basis as a young boy growing up. So, when I read some whiny screed like this, I just cringe. To hear such complaining over what amounts to just generic humanity idiocy, and so mild in comparison to the history of human evil as to barely even be perceptible is just ridiculous to me.
In my opinion, my mother, who is still alive, but in very poor health, puts to pitiful shame every single young self-identifying feminist female who whines about some guy making an off-color comment, microaggression, or condescending statement or action. Young women in the West have it so good, not only in this world, but even as women. Astronomically better than most human beings, male or female, in the entire history of humanity, and yet you freely give up all your dignity to simpletons who are too callous or stupid to be worthy of it. Nobody can take your dignity away by a dumb comment – only you can give it away. And you allow it. You give your dignity away like you’re giving out candy at Halloween, and then you cry about it afterwards and say someone hurt your feelings.
Such precious flowers you all are. Feminists talk incessantly about the harnessing “power of being a woman”, and yet, the power they exhibit is so ridiculously evanescent, that the slightest bit of antagonism causes it to disappear like a wisp of smoke. That isn’t power, its the most pathetic kind of impotence there is. You all are more like medieval “damsels in distress” than any generation of women before you, because you literally cannot tolerate the slightest bruise without falling apart.
I’m not in any way advocating or justifying the bad behavior of one human being to another, but the thing is, you can’t control other people. You can only control yourself. Why on earth a person would thus decide that their dignity and power could be so easily interrupted, stunted, and destroyed by the mediocre and passing words of another is totally beyond me. I just don’t understand this mentality. And, I have precisely zero examples of that growing up. All I grew up around were physically and mentally strong women, and to me, their example is immutable.”
