Resist the urge to explain: The art of not giving a fuck about men and what they think
*screaming* I (We) made it to Day five of the #AfroBloggers WinterABC 2020 writing challenge and I am honestly so proud of myself for coming this far. One thing I have realized is the constant rush of creativity attracting me, and I have also decided to finish a long-overdue project. So watch out for that even beyond this challenge by keeping in touch with me.
Another thing I have also learned in the last four days is how much important content is, and even though consistency is not an easy-to-do thing, it becomes way easier to create and produce once you have a guide. So if you are a blogger and you are reading this, before we start the main issue for the day. Take this from me; use your time to create content for your blog to help you with consistency, it should not and definitely does not have to be a post a day, but you know your schedule and how often you want to put out something. I promise it will help.
The prompt for today is “we are sitting in your class, what can you teach us”. I am not a teacher but I have already started spitting gems before the actual class (RE: Paragraph Above).
So this will be most interesting to feminists or women’s rights activists who constantly find themselves in situations where they have to explain simple things like “rape is the rapist’s fault” to men who do not give a hoot about the topic. As an organizer and self-proclaimed radical feminist who does not enjoy including men in spaces, I can share a few things why I think men do not deserve your time and energy.
So here are three reasons why feminists should not explain gender equality to men or care about their opinions on the subject.
Men do not care about you, they are your oppressors
In case you are thinking it, yes, the #HeForShe’s are also part of this group. It is a great time to reference white supremacy with the #BlackLivesMatter uprisings currently happening around America and even Europe. We all know race has been an issue in the west and Europe since slavery, and even though the ending of slavery has been so much romanticized, it did not end because a white man thought that treating black people as animals was a bad thing to do. Pity or awareness does not end oppression, it is systemic and the oppressors benefit from it even more than the oppressed suffer. And this applies to all systems of oppression, including patriarchy.
Men will not happily give up their pleasure and perks that the oppression of women brings to them even if you explain all theories and lived experiences. Even when they do understand, they will not acknowledge and will switch sides the moment your freedom is a detriment to their privileges. That is to say, women are on their own, should fight their fight because men won’t.
They take up your space, they talk over you
When a man says “why are you not inviting us to your events”, to refer to spaces created by women for knowledge building for women being inaccessible to them, it means that they still do not understand the gap in knowledge, empowerment, and opportunities between men and women. Or they do and simply want to divert attention so instead of teaching women, you spend your time explaining to them things like gender pay gap, domestic burdens, etc which is available on a google page search.
It is draining, especially because most of these topics are not beneficial to them, and again, refer to point one of this lesson, they don’t care.
The notion that their involvement will help progress gender equality work is very wrong, if the change was solely dependent on men, then we would still not be where we are and enjoying the rights we do as women, or rather the ones we are yet to enjoy.
Self Care matters, men don’t deserve your energy
I have mastered the art of telling men who come to my social media posts to disagree and throw their opinions to just fuck off, and because morality and cursing are mutually exclusive in the patriarchal dictionary, they stay away.
As an organizer who has more pressing demographics to center and share knowledge with, I must say that this has been a great form of care for me.
I hope that these lessons are beneficial to you in one way or the other. I would like to know how you are resisting the urge to not interact, for your well-being. Share with me below.
For now, have a great weekend and see you back here on Monday for the second week of this writing challenge.
