END THIS NOW, Part 2 of 2: Ends & Means This is horrible in oh-so-many ways. Let’s talk about Feminism. The central battle of feminism has been FEMALE SELF-DETERMINATION. It has been fought in all realms -- legal, religious, social. So that women could have voting rights, go to school, be doctors or professors or whatever, love who they wish & how they wish, not allow rape and abuse to be tolerated, etc. Sometimes it’s not even legal or social, sometimes it’s logistical. I think Madam Bovary is kind of a feminist anti-heroine. She is a pretty terrible person, did nothing to advance women’s legal rights and if anything set back women socially... But she is admirable, beyond these admissions, insomuch as she was not complacent in her role, she fought for her self-determination. She married the wrong man and wasn’t allowed to divorce him; she couldn’t be a skilled surgeon herself, she wasn’t allowed to be, etc.; but she didn’t let the constraints of being a woman in that time stop her from seeking the love and status and success that she thought she (& her household) deserved (however ill-fated). She fought to carve out this self-determination in her own life, even if she was not a ‘feminist activist’ in any more far-reaching sense. This system is anti-feminist because it steals our self-determination; in fact, it steals girl-type self-determination even worse than it steals mine. Neither of us gets to live a life we want to be living. But my girl is required to *play a character* she doesn’t like, while I am *allowed* to *struggle nobly* to try to hold us together, hold onto our values, to stand up for our rights, etc. She is required to play the villain in her own life story! She is required to lie, to betray, to say & do horrible things, to give up her agency, TO WORK AGAINST HER OWN LIFE DREAMS FOR YEARS ON END. ***To work against her own life dreams for years on end!!!*** Find me anything more anti-feminist on earth than this last sentence. It is literally better (feminism-wise) to be denied your rights and dignity... then at least it is OTHERS doing it, working against your life dreams, and you can struggle nobly for your beliefs! :~( There are times when “ends justifies the means.” Usually this is a cost-benefit situation, e.g., stay inside on a nice day to study, pass your test later. But, as Gandhi says about Peace, “ends justifies the means” fails when you are talking about VALUES YOU BELIEVE IN. Let’s talk Love as well as Feminism. WHY: 1) INTRINSIC. Nothing obtained by oppressing love is worth having. My girl deserves self-determination just like any other girl, she shouldn’t have to live years like this in order to “earn” that fundamental right! 2) INTERNAL CONSISTENCY. Are we really advancing Love if we are forced to abuse it in the process?! Are we empowering girls, if we are stealing their self-determination to do it?! This is maybe easiest to consider in the context of Peace activism. 3) PRECEDENT. If it is OK to oppress Love in the cause of Love, maybe it’s OK to oppress Love in the cause of Peace. Maybe it’s OK to oppress Love to advance Universal Health care. Maybe it’s OK to oppress Love to stop Fracking. If you really believe in Love, or Peace, or Feminism, then you need to be really careful before you start making excuses for subverting it (when you could find better ways!!!). There are always going to be exceptions, e.g., if someone commits a horrible crime, sure, he has to leave his family behind to spend time in prison; or you are welcome to defend yourself when Hitler is waging violent war of aggression on your homeland; or a girl before she is 18 can be compelled to do her homework against her will, because you know that she can quit when she is 18 but that it will give her more options & ability to be self-determined at that time. THIS IS NONE OF THESE EXAMPLES. This is CLEAR CUT. If she/we gain “self-determination” eventually it is because you have designed a perverse system this specific way ON PURPOSE. You force us to “earn” what we had but we ain’t even really earning anything! It’s all artificial and illegal and bullshit. End this now! Because LOVE IS ENDS and LOVE IS MEANS! And GIRL IS ENDS and GIRL IS MEANS! “A time for peace, I swear, it’s not too late!” A FINAL NOTE ON "SELF-DETERMINATION": When I say this, I don’t mean, I want to live in a palace, I want to have servants wait on me, I want a private pool. That’s not what I mean by self-determination. I mean, I can sleep in bed at night next to a willing partner. I can save my money and travel to whatever reasonable destination I choose. If I go to a public pool, they won’t keep me out because I am black. This is what I mean by self-determination. Not everyone can live in a palace. But you are free to try, to live how you want still, to make the best choices with your time & opportunities, to do what you can & want within what you can manage. to have AGENCY. Here is another analogy. It is the difference between, you go off to work on the railroad, leave your family behind, and you cannot Skype with them in the evening because, SKYPE HAS NOT BEEN INVENTED YET, versus, BECAUSE SKYPE HAS BEEN INVENTED BUT YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 17:11:04 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015