In the great tradition of open letters, earlbecke of the new feminist blog, Definition, has posted An open letter to all the liberal straight men… (… who just don’t understand why women could possibly be impatient or annoyed with them.).
Dear Straight Guys,
I respectfully submit that perhaps, if you really want to be seen as an understanding or sensitive individual, that you need to start treating women as people. This goes clear down to your core: it’s not enough to pretend you understand this, it’s not enough to think that, so long as your sexism is benign and not overt and is carefully disguised as either concern or misguided admiration, that we will somehow ignore or appreciate the specialized sort of attention that you give. You need to change the way you think, the very way that you perceive your world.
I want to give this post a further look, but since I’m on mental vacation for the moment I figured I’d highlight this great new blog before I forgot. I suggest hopping over to Definition and giving earlbecke’s entire post a read.
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Hi i’d just like to say that i’m an 18 year old hetrosexual(straight)male and i compleatly support feminism and i always treat all others with the utmost dignity, respect, compassion, kindness and as an equal because all people deserve to be treated this way.I’m also reading a book called “The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer” which was recomended to me on a feminist blog and this book is really helping me to fully understand feminism and to understand how i need to act and behave towards women to hopefully become a male that no woman will be offended by or feel scared of and will be proud to know.I’d also like to say if anyone has any ideas to help me become the kind of male i have just described please, plsease let my know either on this blog or you can e-mail me on aza125@hotmail.co.uk thank you ever so much.
December 26th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Nice to meet you! I’ve read about masculinity, non-white-ness, foreignness, transgender, homo- and bisexuality, and non-Christianity for the same reasons.
I really like the way you put that. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but that’s a large part of why I do it. I’ve got a Robert A. Heinleinian view of what “sin” is (hurting other people–hurting yourself is just stupidity), and therefore literature about and by members of social categories that I don’t belong to is important to me.
But rather than just saying “not hurting,” I like adding “not offending,” “not frightening,” and “making proud to know me.”