Men Being Helpful Is Not Sexist
Men these days are damned if the do and damned if they don't help a woman.
In my recent post True Feminist Karen Straughan Talks About MGTOW - Response To Jordan Peterson Karen talks about how a neighbor who once saw her sister carrying more groceries from the car to the house than her boyfriend carried later came over to tell her that she should leave him because he was a sexist, freeloading bum living off of her and she deserved better.
Never mind he was supporting her completely at the time. That was all the evidence she needed to make that assumption.
In this video, Sydney Watson talks about what feminists call benevolent sexism (BS) where they say it is sexist to want to help a woman by, for example, opening the door for them.
Apparently Men Being Helpful Is Sexist Now
I really think some women can get a little crazy with analyzing a simple act of kindness.
Men are naturally inclined to want help people. I open doors for men too, not just women and in neither instance am I doing that because I think they are incapable of opening a door by themselves. It's just being kind.
So, to all those extreme feminists who read oppression into every act of kindness a man does, just stop it.
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I think there is no problem with helping someone, no matter which gender, in general. The problem appears if someone does it with the wrong attitude, which is the one of the generous hero. Not that I am not thankful if a man/women helps me to carry something, but I am sick of mainly guys that show me through their body language that they think of me as "in need" of their help. The body language that says: "I am part of the superior gender and I won't question this believe of mine because it is just so much nicer to belive in this, than to recognize that all people are valuable".
Men who are gentle to push their ego should learn some modesty and I think they deserve critics as well as the women who generalize all helping actions as sexist behaviours. The difference is that it is always easier to critizise a women because there are more sexists out their to applaud the attacer than if one attacs a man for something sattle like the attitude that he shows in his actions.
When I read this sentence: "Men are naturally inclined to want help people" I was at first thinking that you ment to make a generalizing statement about the male gender. Then I questioned this since we met at Steemfest II and I have not experienced you as someone who would make such gender specific empty statements. Then I realized that having English as a second language tricked me again (men=humans). I think in this context another choise of words would have made it easier to grasp that. I think a man who enters the gender and sexism discussion must be aware that this is a sensible topic and that a lot of women experience sexism in different ways in their daily life.
Your last sentence: "So, to all those extreme feminists who read oppression into every act of kindness a man does, just stop it." Seemed like you have created some kind of enemy picture of extreme feminists who would punch you to pieces if you dared to open doors for them. If this ever happend to you I guess you met a psychologically ill person and I am sorry you got hurt. If not I do not know why you have such concerns about those women...
Thanks for responding. I really do want to understand this from a woman's point of view.
That has happened to me on more than one occasion. All i did was open a door for a stranger. Just standing by the door anyway, they were walking towards it with their hands full and they verbally attacked me as if i assaulted them.
It's just rude. I didn't mean anything by it.
That was a generalizing statement about men naturally wanting to help people, but I did mean it as men. We like to fix things, build things, create things, and lend a hand where it is needed. Women are like that too. It runs deep in a man's psyche though because we cannot create life like a woman can so we express creative energy in external ways.
I'm interested in this woman's perspective in this video because some of the things she talks about I have experienced personally. I'm interested in all women's perspective about these topics.
My last statement in the post is a plea perhaps to hopefully reach those women you have been hurt by men to realize not all men are like that and acts of kindness don't automatically translate to men thinking women need their help.
Not once when I have opened a door for a man or woman has it crossed my mind that they needed me to do so because they were inferior. That whole premise seems so odd to me. I mean who does that.
I have never witnessed anyone opening a door for anyone or any gender who:s body language conveyed such a message. What would that even look like?
Well I am sorry you have experienced verbal attacks because of opening the door for someone. I will watch the video tomorrow for now it is really late and I need to overcome my antipathy for vlogs to do so. I am more old school and prefer written things.
About the argument that men want to be creative because they can not give birth. This is argument looks like women have the power of creation which is not true. Nature creates live and allows the womb of a woman to give birth. Yet there are women how gave birth who are very creative (to give an extreme example: JK Rowling was a single mother when she wrote Harry Potter -an extremely creative novel series) and I think it is natural wish of conscious beings to create, no matter of which gender they are and it is part of the oppressive male paradigm to claim that women should be happy with the act of giving birth as their source of creation. Here on steemit we have proof that a lot of women are creative in the external world. I really do not get the argument at all and I will not count it for it is also claiming that men should feel unfulfilled because they are not able of giving birth. It basically makes no sense to me why this should create needs since we are living on an (humanly) overpopulated planet and we are destroying the natural habitats of the beings we are sharing this planet with by multiplying exponentially.
About your hopeful statement. I hope as well that you can let go of the way women hurt you. Because it appears this is the reason why you wrote that post at first place and being hurt is never nice. As well as you seem to be not able to recognize how a disrespectful degrading body language looks like (because as a white male you will not have experienced such a thing probably) I have not come across women who say nasty things to men who open the doors for them. Our perspectives are dependent on our experiences and I thank you as well for giving me an insight to your worldview even though I truly disagree that anyone should speak about general male or female qualities. I would rather talk about the individuals qualities. In you I see that you honor the magic of birth a lot. Please note that not all women are your opinion and some willingly choose to not give birth. I am sure these women still have your respect. Even though you have somehow come to the conclusion that theoretically being able to give birth "actively" is already such a big gift that all men feel inferior besides this greatness?
I have experienced sexism in my daily life. Opening a door disrespectfully would be for example afterwards slapping the as of the women, or since we were talking about body language only, checking out her body making it very clear that the man is thinking about how much he would like to do something like that even though he does not dare to in public. Or just showing a grin because he can look down to a woman (rather tiny women experience this more often). I am clearly not thinking this is the way you behave but you meet this kind of guys on a rather regular basis when you are a women.
Sexism is not about opening doors usually (this is why I was really wondering how you made this experience so often) and also not only about physical harassment. It happens on so many levels and I am sometimes so sick of it that I just want to ignore it away... But then, what does that help. I can also not just let my sisters suffer because I am to lazy to make a statement. I hope this chat we are having is helping the understanding between genders. Medically speaking there are more than two, and many people who are not part of eater the male or the female gender are discriminated too. Sexism can also be directed towards men. I am sure those women how attacked you would have not done so if you had female features. I will watch the video tomorrow. It is 6:33 am and my night shift is ending soon. I hope you are well and you are having a great day :)
This is not true? I don't understand. Did you think I was implying that wpmen are not as creative as men? I was not at all. That's why I wrote
Of course, there are creative women driven by the human need to create things beyond just creating babies. No one was implying that at all. But men cannot create other humans directly and I was suggesting men are driven to create, in part, because they cannot create life directly. Why can't a man say something like that without women thinking they are making a comment about women? Each sex has the right to define and defend itself. Men have that right too.
I think I understand what you meant by the sexist body language you described in your comment above. If I had acted that way I would understand how a women or anyone would react that way. But it is also true, at least in my case and on more than one occasion, that some women react as if your act of kindness such as opening a door for them, is met with anger and insults toward a man when he was not in any way acting sexist by any stretch of the imagination. Not through body language, gestures, facial expressions. It is just an extreme reaction to someone else's preconceived ideas that a man showing kindness is sexist. That is absolutely ridiculous to me and is why I made this post.
I really do appreciate your comments and for trying to explain this to me from your point of view and even though I don't completely understand it, your viewpoint really does help.
So I think the women in the video makes some smart observations and at the same time repeats the pattern of making prejudgemental statements like:
"Women do have limitations, when it comes to our physical capacity."
I think this really depends on the women and the social context she grew up in.. For example in the Mountains in Morocco the women carry huge amounts of wood and gras to the villages and the men are not used to lift such heavy weights. A Moroccan man told me that he once met a tiny women with a big pack of wood and he thought she would not be able to lift it. When he tried to he was actually not able to do so while the women could not only lift it but run up the mountain with it. So I think this is a prejudist that has to do with our socialization. If we want to overcome sexism I think it makes sence to stop making such statements because it is just applying to a certain group of women. Eventough western women are ushually not brought up to lift heavy weights they can learn to carry their things alone if they are challenged by their partners rather than just helped. I do not mean that being helped is not nice and I do not like it if someone helps me carrying something or carries it for me. I just think we should raise children of no matter which gender to believe they are able to do things on their own.
"Men need to be needed, they need purpose, they need value!"
Women need those things just as well. Again I think this is a general need of a conscious being. Maybe women are just more used to not recieving those things from the external world (because they more likely recieve sexism -starting with your parents or highschool education f.e. when your teachers tell you that you should not be this good in math because you are a girl)? Maybe not maybe women recieve more purpose from the external world, like uhhh motherhood, or ähhm dressing nicely. The struggle to find purpose is really universal in humans.
"We love to take the nature of men and make it ugly"
Who is we, and why? What is the nature of men? I do not get it. Maybe I am to stupid to claim knowledge about the "nature of men"?
After all this: Would you count me as an extreme feminist, the one who takes everything to extreme? My suggestion is to look at individuals and understand why they are acting the way they are acting. Not stereotyping women or men or people of different gender. By this I disagree with you and the woman in the video. This is only an oppinion by someone who calls herself female but does not even know what that really means :D Hope we are still friends. All the best :)
I know that you wrote that women are creative too. I wanted to argue that first of all I would not dare to define the origins of the motivations of my whole sex. And therefore I disagree with you stating that: "Each sex has the right to define and defend itself. Men have that right too." and correct it by saying "Each person has the right to define her- or him- or whatever pronoun the person wishes to use -self. You and me have those rights as well. If we wish to give ourself the attribute of a gender we are fee to define ourself as a person with that gender.".
Besides this I think it is dangerous to define your sex in opposition to the other one. Especially by giving the attribute of the "gift" of childbirth to women. As I said before it is nature that is doing this process. I want to quote Alan Watts in this context, eventhough it is a male talking about the way things come to life, I think he got the point quite well:
“Look, here is a tree in the garden and every summer is produces apples, and we call it an apple tree because the tree "apples." That's what it does. Alright, now here is a solar system inside a galaxy, and one of the peculiarities of this solar system is that at least on the planet earth, the thing peoples! In just the same way that an apple tree apples!”
Yet I have not given birth yet, so I am shure experience this process will make me say more profound things about it. A friend of mine used this quote when I asked her about her experience with having a child this is how it comes to my mind now. Yet I think women who give birth are free to define it as their own power of creation. But defing male gender as the absence of this power seems weird to me because it makes a statement about the gender of women who are not able to give birth as well. Does their infertility make them male then? Do we really have the right to judge about anyones sex identity or give this attributes. You see I was talking about women in the sentence and it is already a commitment to allowing gender to exist in this conversation. I was basically talking about people with two XX Chromosomes meaning biological women, eventhough there are people with different Cromosomes like XY or X0 who also define themselfes as women. In the end we should leave the choice to the people themselves, thats why I still disagree with you making a statement about men, having an creative force originating in their inability to give birth. This might be your source for being a good, helpful and creative force in the world but you can not know about the sources of power other people who define themselfes as male have. Defining your sex is about defining yourself and your own way not about making preassumptions about the people who made the same choice(or have the same biological features). They might have a very different personality. In the end I would prefere if we rather saw ourselves as living parts of the ecosystem earth then as seperated individuals that are eather male or female or of this or that race or have this or that feature. But we all have wounds to heal from our seperation. Females as well as males. Some women might only see the male aggressor but there are also female aggressors putting pressure on men. And there are female and male aggressors that attac people of different genders and even perform operations on their genitals while they are still babies. Gender is very dangerous and identification with gender is dangerous.
Yet, since we all identify with things I choose to identify myself as female. I choose that this means for me that I have biological features like an uterus that are female. If I would test my chromosomes and find out that I had a different bilogical gender I would propably reconsider this definition but so far this is it for me. I think having the "female" appearance has given me a certain set of experiences, like sexist comments at school, at work, in public transportation and experiences of people touching my body against my will with sexist intentions. I think this is experiences that a person with a male look would rather not have. Men might get accused of sexism in wrong circumstances instead or get shamed for crying or experience different ways of sexism.
This is a really difficult topic and I am happy to have this conversation with you as well. Maybe I made more clear now what I wanted to say yesterday but was to tired to express right. Now I will watch the video :D
I love Alan Watts and remember that quote.
You really opened my eyes to some new perspectives here, specifically,
However, you lost me at.
I don't see that as dangerous in the least. Unless, perhaps, you're referring to the political ramifications of expressing one's views about gender if they don't align with the current PC culture of the day. Care to elaborate why you think gender is very dangerous and identification with gender is dangerous?
Until recently, that has not been something people would call dangerous so I truly am in the dark on that whole idea.
I also call the times human beings have gone through until today dangerous. We might have overcome some dangers in some part of the world yet we have created new ones. Now we have to face them as a planet earth community. This is something totally new and I think in the process of this we have to let go of a lot of the things we identify with. Gender is dangerous for me for example because identifying with the female gender can easily get me emotionally involved because of historical and current crimes commited on females. But it does not help if we only sympatize with the group of people we can easily identify with. But I can totally understand that it seems a bit far out. I just wish for a peaceful world where people focus on healing the ecological crisis. Yet we are still to hurt about the psychological issues we caused in each others in the centuries of getting more conscious to be strong enough to overcome them yet. If we could that would make us an even more intelligent species I guess.
Humans can be wonderful and horrible. I don't think gender has that much to do with it, though the media will tell us differently.
I just posted about this in Men Don't Have A Monopoly On Violence - The Myth Of Female Innocence
The idea that only women are victims is a false one. It gets back to the idea we were discussing, that humans are humans and are capable of greatness and deviousness. I don't see it as a gender specific issue.
With this post I agree but it goes to show that 'extreme' anything is always a negative thing.
We are all equal, but thousands of years of mainly religious oppression have forced women to revolt against their perceived status which is a great thing. The problem has now arisen where extreme feminism is actually doing much more harm than good and having a negative effect on what is a worthy fight for absolute equality.
Everyone on this planet bleeds red blood, we are all equally as important
I agree 100%. There has been oppression and people should fight against it. I also agree that one could push it too far. Both of those things can be true at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive.
When I have opened a door for a man, no man has ever told me they felt disrespected because I did so. Only some women feel that way. And no woman has ever told me they felt disrespected when I picked up the tab for a meal or a cocktail, in fact, most would feel quite the opposite. They do seem to cherry pick what offends them when it's convenient for them to do so.
Men do feel the responsibility to protect and provide for people, women included, and there's nothing wrong with that natural inclination either. It doesn't mean we don't respect women, actually, quite the opposite. It's all very confusing and destructive to being a decent human being.
As in most extreme views, when you're fighting monsters there is a high likelihood that you become the monster you're fighting against. We all need to take a chill pill and appreciate kindness where it is given regardless of who it comes from or who it is offered to. Opening a door for someone is not an act of oppression by any stretch of the imagination and to think otherwise says more about that person than the one making the gesture.
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All I can say is Fuck Yeah!
This creates a real struggle for me. There is the optimal way of things where gender does not create a stigma for behavior, on all sides. Then there is a reality of probabilities. When I'm driving down the road and I see someone on the side of the road, which most likely would be car trouble, I now have a dilemma. I look at the person and try to judge if I should stop and see if they need help. If it is a man, unfairly, I usually will assume they can handle the situation and also know that if I stop to help, I might bruise their ego. I also judge based on how they act and how they dress and based on their age to also consider If I should help or not. Most the time though, as long as I don't see obvious problems, I will carry on. If they are still there while I happen to come back the other way though, I will stop.
If it is a woman, I will usually always stop and make sure they are ok and if they need any help. I understand this could also bruise her ego. I understand that in a perfect world it is unfair to assume she would need help being that she is a woman as one of the factors. There is the thing that many women would have more trouble getting their car going. Not at all saying women are less mechanically inclined then men, just culturally, most women are not fixing cars. The thing though, for me, is a safety issue. A women on the side of the road is a target. Now I'm being sexist on both sides, I know, but the reality is I see lots of asshole scumbags who would take advantage of this situation, and I know most women are physically less likely to be able to handle the situation. So I want to stop to make sure she feels safe. Again, assuming a man is needed to make a woman feel safe. I feel like a giant asshole. But again the reality, many of the women I know would feel exposed and unsafe on the side of the road and would welcome someone making sure they are ok. But then I also run the risk of being viewed as some kind of predator. Really all this drives me nuts.
Then comes the other side. If I just drive by, what kind of man am I. If I can't fix the car, I've failed as a man. If she needs a tow and doesn't have enough money, but I don't either, again I've failed as a man to not be able to provide. I hate this burden I feel to be able to do and succeed in certain things because I was born male, yet at the same time I genuinely want to be able to do all those things for people, regardless of my gender.
I just want to be able to stop and help people if they need it and not have to worry about all this shit.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say people are over thinking things. When I see someone broke down on the road, I'll pull over and help them.
Their gender has nothing to do with it. Their ego has nothing to do with it. If they need help I'll offer it. It's just that simple.