As i write this blog- i do so in a state of crisis-. Really, I’m serious. No, really, i’m very serious about being in a state of crisis as i write this. I had two incidents within the course of 24 hours that have completely and totally rocked my world. Really.
How many of you have ever had the experience of having a particular idea or concept that you may have read , heard or watched on tv suddenly and without warning drop down on your dome like a ton of bricks?
I mean it’s been there all along but like that mole that you finally discover one fine morning on the back of your ear-you finally actually see it. It finally reveals itself to you. I never really thought that Aha moments actually existed. They do and I’ve had one, two to be exact.
I’m not sure what to explain first- what it is that i realized OR how I came to realize it. So rather than choose between the two let me explain the paradigm that I had been operating under that is now laying before shattered into a million pieces never to be reconstructed again.
I have come to realize that for the last 39 years of my life i have been the beneficiary of a world system imbalance. I have been the unwitting recipient of male privilege. It’s rampant, it’s pervasive and it’s as entrenched in the minds of the human popluation. This idea is seen as normal as the idea that the sky is up or that God has a penis. It’s a world phenomenon truism.
How could this have happened to me? I’ve read, understood and enjoyed bell hooks and other authors of her ilk who deliver passionate eloquent expression to the ideas of male privilege and how it must be shattered for us to have real relationships. But until now I realize that I never really SAW how this actually manifests in my life on a day-to-day basis.
Perhaps my senses have been made more acute due to the fact that I now have two daughters and have been married to a woman for over 12 years. Perhaps. Or maybe I just didn’t WANT to see it. Maybe the privilege apple was just too deliciously tempting for me not to bite and enjoy so I decided to close my eyes and let my societal programmed instincts do the rest.
Haaa!!! How ironic! As a black man I was socialized in the USA to be cognizant of the reality that whites had perpetrated a great injustice against people of my “race”. However, I never have been “schooled” by any of my “conscious” mentors on the con game that’s been run on “mankind” for as far back as the garden of Eden. Now, I realize that the issue of race is merely a subscript to a much larger more pervasive and more sinister plot- sexism.
Why do I say it’s more sinister? Because, everybody- whether they are black, white, red, yellow or brown may or may not have had the opportunity to experience racism but every human being has a woman somewhere in their family and if she's lived on this planet she has tasted the bitter pill of male institutions.
An example of this lies in the Black Panther Party . Here was a group who had assembled to fight the racial and class injustices in American society, however it never was able to extricate itself from nor did they ever even articulate the oppression of women {the promiscuity within the party is well documented}. Thus, this group, while being able to preach racial and class justice was able to simultaneously run the Panther P***Y program that prostituted the female members of the party without any compunction {for a more in-depth analysis of this phenomenon read Elaine Brown’s Taste of Power which is her account of her time with the Black Panther Party}.
Now, my fellow males who think that I’ve gone off the ‘you-go-girl’ deep end consider this: Racism has been a humanitarian challenge for the past what- 600 years? That’s just a flash in the pan of history. How long has the established order or male dominance and male privilege been in existence? Anyone?
Who are we told misled Adam? Don’t get it twisted-you know the answer. This theme runs thru all of major traditions. Whether Eve existed or not is really irrelevant to this discussion- the quintessential question is -who is she to man in this story? What are the authors getting at? Who is she being edified as in these creation stories and what impact do these stories have on our relationships today? I mean, with help mates like Eve who needs enemies? And since we’re on the subject- weren’t all these stories written by men? Why is that? What is the justification for the majority of the world’s population following laws, secular or religious, that have been dictated by men? I mean, have men as a species shown a positive propensity towards administering the planet? I mean, shouldn’t this assault our democratic sensibilities?
You see how far this thing has me twisted up? I mean, my feminine/sensitive side panties are all in a bunch- and it’s going to take more than a quart of haagen-dazs and my O magazine to undue them!
Top 5 benifits of male privilege:
5. Father, Son, Holy Ghost....what's the real value of women if they can't even make it into the trinity?
4. How else can you get 86% of the images on the world wide web to be pornographic?
3. Who else could we blame the damnation of humanity on....a snake?
2. Otherwise we would actually have to actually compete with women on an intellectual basis...and lets be honest....how many of us believe that we can out argue a woman?
1. You get the big piece of chicken!
I will reveal what led to this cataclysmic shift in Part Two
No comments:
Post a Comment