Feelin' Preachy

I'm feeling a bit preachy and strangely articulate tonight, so I thought I'd try and write a bit. The strangeness is because my friend, Eddie, is in town and I went out with him last night despite it being Monday night and didn't get home until 3:30am and then had to be at work at 8:45am AND this weekend Ali was here with her BF Alex, and I spent a lot of time with them and went out Saturday night, shopping intensively Sunday. It was a full (but fun!) weekend. I should be way more tire than I am. Instead, I'm energized. (it could be that I've begun to drink more coffee and to not shy away from caffeine...who knows).

I've been contemplating, discussing, reading; I had a lively conversation with Palmer (roommate) yesterday evening about justice (again); he feels quite similarly to Hans (maybe it's a gendered thing?? Guys are more into retribution?), and particularly is into the idea of personal responsibility and the belief that we make our own choices about life consciously (ie, the woman on the corner who is on drugs and effed up her life had just as much opportunity *NOT* to do crack when when she started as he or I did; we made different choices and therefore we should't have to pay for her unfortunate ones). Obviously, I have the same issues with Palmer's argument as I did with that of Hans. No matter what the argument is about it being right or wrong to help others who have made unfortunate life decisions for whatever reasons, the bottom line for me is essentially a pragmatic one--a person who is on crack and bumming cigarettes/subway rides all the time is not an asset to our community/country; helping this woman allows her to contribute in a way that will be quite advantageous to us all, as a whole. Our society suffers from the loss of the skills/abilities/thoughts/revelations of people who have been disadvantaged to the point of being unable to realize their potential up to this point. We look at these people as liabilities instead of seeing them for what they are--assets. We refuse to invest in them because we do not believe in them. But the real losers in that situation are us, society. We lose out on the productivity of millions because they are incarcerated, by prisons or drugs or poverty, when we absolutely need their insight into solving the problems we face. We refuse to accept them as legitimate members and contributors to our society simply because they were handed the shit end of the stick.

I think truly part of what this comes down to is whether or not you believe people are innately good or evil and whether or not you think people can be "fixed" or rehabilitated. I believe people are a product of their culture, environment, etc. While we all make our own decisions, they are highly contextualized--based upon what options we see, not necessarily what options actually exist; as well as how we see ourselves and what decisions we "should" or "would" make, given who we "are." A personal example of this is of how I see myself as someone who gets a post-graduate degree. I believe, with all my heart and soul for oh so many reasons (how I was raised, the way I think, my own skills/what I see as my skills and abilities, etc etc) that I will go to graduate school at some point. So much so that in effect, in the way that I see myself, I already have that degree. That may sound strange, but I've thought about it quite a bit in the past couple years. Ever since the end of my Freshman year in college, I knew that I would eventually go on to get at least a master's degree in something. There is no question for me, short of my life ending prematurely. It is already a part of who I am to myself, if that makes sense. I wholly believe this influences how I conduct myself with others, what books I choose to read, the image I project of myself/my confidence in who I am, etc. It requires me to believe that I am able--financially and academically--to obtain a degree. It requires that I see things in a bigger-picture sort of way. I have an idea of what it means to have a master's degree--who that person is. And while I do not particularly judge others based upon their degree(s), and I do not think that getting a higher degree will make me a better person than anyone else, I do feel (not think, but on a baser level, feel) that it is an essential part of who I am. I hope I have managed to explain this marginally well. My point is, we are a product of our environments, and that that includes not just externally what happens around us, but how we interpret others' view of us, and how that informs our own view of ourself. That view, in turn, I believe highly influences what we believe we are capable of and therefore what we are actually, in reality, capable of. I see the view that Hans and Palmer hold (which, by the way, it seems to me is more common/popular than mine) as unwilling to admit a lack of control and autonomy in our own lives--my belief requires an understanding and admittance of influence from the outside world to a degree that I do not believe Palmer nor Hans are comfortable with. It's scary to think that where you are is circumstantial, because then you could be that woman. Which is my whole point--we must have empathy with people like that, we must not distance ourselves so as to feel comfortable. That discomfort is required for us to be moral and ethical in our politics and values.

This ties interestingly into a fascinatingly wonderful book I'm reading, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, & the Politics of Anxious Masculinity by Stephen J. Ducat. I have just begun this book and yet! It is one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time. Ducat has a keen sense for the root of conservatism being hyper-masculinity and femiphobia (a word he uses a lot and I love). I very much appreciate his connecting the personal and political, specifically for men. And although he hasn't gotten much into why women might be conservative (which is a question that endlessly plagues me, although I suppose some other authors have attempted to answer that question), it is really nifty to see such a strong connection between femiphobia and some of the particular policies of the extreme right. Keeping in mind that I've read less than a chapter of the book, so far he argues that men are afraid of being female, and that their views on everything from homosexuality to welfare are influenced by the desire to be masculine and phallic. The argument ties very neatly into the research I did on domestic violence in Mexico (unfortunately I don't have access to the studies I looked at at the moment...I'll see if I can find and post them; in the meantime, you'll just have to trust me) that showed that women in less traditional/more financially egalitarian marriages/partnerships had a higher incidence of domestic violence. This is postulated to be because their husbands feel threatened by their wives power; they must regain their "place" as men and one way to assert that is through violence. When I first found this study, I was shocked. It was totally counterintuitive to me until I read the theory behind why it is and then it just clicked--I also began to think of domestic violence--and consequently rape/oppression of women--not as something men impose on women but rather a societal structure that men suffer from as well. If they are so intimidated, scared and unable to prove their masculinity that they must literally exert physical pain upon another living human, that is sad. They feel so powerless that they must take power away from someone else. Now, I'm not defending domestic violence or rape in any way--but if this is what is causing those things, I do believe it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms of violence perpetuated by men. And while there are always exceptions, I do believe that the vast majority of violence committed by men is due to this feeling of powerlessness, in some capacity or another. So there you go. We must redefine masculinity and allow men to be their authentic selves and define themselves based upon who they are as individuals as opposed to how their gender or sex as defined by society tells them to be. A good lesson, I think, for us all.