Equal?

Recently a feminist friend, whom I admired as a person, posted the picture on her facebook profile.  I've seen it before and feel I had a pretty good grasp on the message.  It's a fun turn of play to imagine a female-centric, matriarchal society.  It's empowering and gratifying to women, to not only be shown as equals, but actually turning the table on the message of where real power and authority takes place. Of course, I'm interpreting this from a male centric POV, for which I make no apologies, whatsoever.  I love strong and powerful women.  My mother was one.  A real dynamo... and yet I realize all the ways that a woman, especially one growing up in a very patriarichal society could feel very disempowered, and second seat... but, gladly my mother never felt that way. She, and I knew this instictively as a young child - SHE was the center, and the core of my world. So yes, I know it is meant to portray women's place in the a male-centric religion.  I'm all for representing women in powerful and capable depictions.  I celebrate this full out depiction of ALL women when speaking one of the most central stories of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic patriarchy.

However, this particular depiction hasn't sat quite straight with me. As an egalitarian, and one who loves symmetry and balance, my ideal is just that, the Dao, the Yin and the Yang, which together create something so much more than the separated parts. I think the omission of either sex when depicting god's interaction with humanity is wrong.  Like I said, I'm fine with images completely about women or men in every other role.  I love songs of brotherhood (Petshopboys - Fugitive) or sisterhood, that celebrate a gender.

I realize, that in the depiction of men and women, there has been a great disparity, and difference in how each role or sex is portrayed, especially when you factor the sex appeal side of things.  So the more images which are respectful, complimentary, and extolling of women the better, especially those physical features so promoted that signify reproductive fitness (scantly clad women with all the right curves).  When the topic is humanity, (not our one track reproductive brains) it becomes another thing entirely.

I then thought, how would I depict this scene, and of course I would include both sexes in as equal a framing as I could.  The depiction of god would be hard, because if there is one I believe god is asexual, and has no gender.


Anyway, I then began considering how society currently portrays the sexes, and after a visual flood of all the advertising I've seen over my years washed across my brain, I then thought of this picture which I had seen recently, which I thought pretty much summed up how men and women are portrayed by advertisers and the media.

This is how I perceive culture today encourages us to be, and markets to us.  Men are less intelligent, less evolved, lustful animals, and women are sex objects, their power in their attractiveness.  The more women a man can his get hands, on the better.  And the more men that want a woman, the better too.  Typically, women LOVE male attention paid to their beauty (but only from the RIGHT men). Women love to be attractive - this is one of their super powers. This message of objectifying women for their looks and body alone is most pervasive in the music and images of Hip Hop.

So here is what I best recall posting to her (she deleted it so fast I can't quite remember exactly what I said):  "Not a very good depiction of the current state of humanity...this one is better
<Ape w/ girls pict>

Here response was thus  "I cannot possibly tell you how offensive and disgusting your question and the photo you have posted are.

Please retract them, or I shall unfriend you. Or you can simply unfriend me."

So, like a hair-trigger, she was immediately offended and angry.  First of all, it wasn't a question. It was a statement.  I wasn't asking her opinion.  I was giving my opinion about how we are depicted today, which really had very little to do with her beloved picture.  She was an English major, so she should have not made such a simple mistake to call what I said a question.

Initially in my state of mind, and what I was trying to express, I was surprised by her reaction.  But I quickly saw that she had misread my post, and I could clearly see how she had. She thought I was trying to replace her picture with this one.

No matter how I tried to explain myself, she would not have it, and persisted in her perception and outrage. Many times when we're angry we don't really want to understand someone, we just want to justify our rage (and stay angry), and punish them.  No matter what I said she continued to paint it in the way she saw it. (and get angrier it seemed).  Pretty soon, in making her case for outrage, she had me saying all kinds of things I had not intended to communicate.  From my perspective she was twisting my words to suit her perception. But doing so strengthened her case. She didn't really want to understand me at all. I eventually realized nothing would help but just shutting up and apologizing.  I should have simply apologized and shut up from the get go.,  But I'm a bit ignorant on human behavior and interactions, (people's social-moral hangups) and like my mother, I talk too much.

Later on she began badmouthing and misrepresenting me on her page with quite a few sympathizers doing the same.  It was all quite baffling and I tried not to care as I realized it didn't matter, and my need to defend myself was simply ego and the need to be right.  I figured let her have her opinion and take on it.  Which saddened me, because I think it has destroyed what little friendship we had, and as I said I admire her.  So I simply apologized again on her disparaging post:

Again I apologize. It was inappropriate and insensitive to comment how where and when I did. Holly is a verbal force to be reckoned with and I admire her. She had me back peddling quite clumsily. I should have simply apologized without trying to explain. The more I did the worse it got. I thank you for your correction.

I was a guilty as she, probably more-so, for the misunderstanding. The following is to better explain my qualifiers for being insensitive and inappropriate. How: It was poor judgement to communicate so poorly a very nuanced idea in such a flippant manner.  Where: Bad judgement too in trying to have that discussion on an update of her profile picture, something she saw as sacred.  These (profile memes) are typically very personal and not open to critique or commentary. When: The timing (during the Kate Kelly excommunication).  I posted this at a time when the atmosphere was charged with upset, and women were angry.

I really don't consider myself sexist, as accused.  Having a strong mother and three sisters, all of whom I love, and now a daughter, I can't imagine ever diminishing or disrespecting women.  I've always been attracted to strong women as well.  Every man has a mother, every woman has a father.  I guess I can understand issues if the person has had serious negative issues with the males or females in their lives.

I'm very analytic and like to share my analysis.  Some things don't need to be analysed.  With all of this recent mental activity and my very clueless read on social propriety and interaction I've been wondering if I may have a case of mild Asperger's.

For me, the experience was a learning one, as I struggled to understand why what happened happened the way it did.  Like I said, I was cluelessly surprised at her anger.  I foolishly thought my two liner would be read as intended.  I foolishly thought that we were closer friends than we were.  I thought that feminism was more about equality - which I think it is with most women, and likely too with this one (when I'm not pissing her off).  As a man involved in the cause, I have to be much more careful about what I say and question.  In fact, with some women, Like Holly, it would be best if I just shut my fuckin mouth, at the risk of "Mansplainin". As a result I consulted a lot of articles on taking offense and anger.

One in particular was very helpful.  It led me into reading The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. This book is filled with information pertinent to this whole interchange.  One of the more salient points of his thesis was that emotions fire before logic, and that we are emotional creatures that then apply logic, like his metaphor of the Elephant (emotions) and the Rider (logic).  My post was an emotional trigger, from someone who has likely suffered abuse at the hands ans mouths of a man (or men), and my depiction was everything she hated about the interactions of men and women.

In his studies, Haidt claims to have found the 6 basic taste buds on our moral tongue:

1. Care/Harm

2. Fairness/Cheating

3. Loyalty/Betrayal

4. Authority/Subversion

5. Sanctity/Degradation

6. Liberty/Oppression

My post hit her hard, square on the head of Sanctity/Degradation, which is admittedly one of my bias blind spots.  Since leaving our shared faith, Mormonism, that she claims to have left as well, I have jettisoned the notion of Sanctity, or the sacred.  I mostly think that when someone calls something sacred, they are just scared. You can say anything to me, and I can hear and watch anything, without getting offended... it might make me sad, or hurt my heart if too violent or hurtful to another person (I score very high on Care/Harm), but I do not think there is much in this world that is truly vulgar or offensive. Being offended is a choice we make. She, on the other hand, had a great respect for that sacred, that which stands for her cause.  That is a moral taste bud she has retained, even after her leaving the LDS religion. Sanctity.

People are different, with a different mix of these tastes.  Like I told my boys recently, who were swearing and flipping each other off in front of their 8 year old sister, who had a fit of screaming and crying, "You can say anything around me, and even flip each other off, if you really feel that way, but you will respect your sister when she is near, or in the room, and not offend her tiny eyes or ears.

Unfortunately, to not offend others, you have to know and respect your audience, and spot those easily offended, and monitor your speech and behavior.

Just like male and female, people are not equal on the moral tastes scales either.  We are all different, and differences call for accommodation, as best we can ... and consideration as well.  We are not equal, men and women, and we are not equal from person to person.  Thinking other people will think and react like you is a mistake you make when you suck at the theory of mind, and then proceed to make them just like you.  Not everyone will like you, or how you think.  FILTER!!! In a successful society we all learn to filter.

That said, in the future I should try to discover beforehand how sensitive a person is to the sacred.  It's said to arise from, or be close to disgust. Maybe a good litmus test is to measure their food acceptance levels - I'll basically eat anything, even raw oysters on the half shell. So the diversity or sensitivity of their pallet, could be a sign on just who sensitive they are to disgust. Also, at the first recoil to an idea or a word, that could be a sign.  I'm sure there are all kind of signs, should I pay attention, to how much reverence for the sacred they have... It's just a matter of keeping my eyes and ears peeled.  I truly, like my daughter Rachel, do not want anyone to be offended by what they see or hear ... but ultimately, offense is a choice, or maybe a limited understanding.  Some people are just puritans; many children are.  As such, I should do my best to be pure around them, so as not to offend, keeping my adult mouth and my adult humor in places where it belongs.

Also, never post a picture of scantily clad sexy women being groped by an ape to an overweight, unattractive, feminist with a legitimate ax to grind from her years of feeling less than and oppressed.