A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not “Crazy” | The Current Conscience

A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not “Crazy” | The Current Conscience

"Because women bare the brunt of our neurosis. It is much easier for us to place our emotional burdens on the shoulders of our wives, our female friends, our girlfriends, our female employees, our female colleagues, than for us to impose them on the shoulders of men.

It’s a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they don’t refuse our burdens as easily. It’s the ultimate cowardice."

i can most definitely connect with this article. i know that as a man i have been socialized to perpetuate this dynamic and i'm not afraid to admit that this oppressive paradigm shows up in every facet of society. words like hysteria (or its relative hysterectomy) and lunatic (derived from luna, the latin word for "moon" and related to menstrual cycles) are gendered so its no surprise that labeling someone "crazy" is only one of the many ways to dismiss and dehumanize women and has been throughout history. anyhow, as i was saying earlier, males are socialized in this culture in such a way that what we think, say, and do is normalized. patriarchy not only grants men unearned privileges but because our behavior, our way of thinking is seen as the standard we are often oblivious to the experience of women, just as whiteness or able-bodiedness is taken for granted by white folks or able-bodied people respectively, whereas folks of color are marginalized and cannot, do not relate to the dominant culture and are also often coincidentally labeled "crazy" and likewise, differently-abled folks most definitely know what it's like to be labeled "crazy" in a culture that perpetuates their oppression when folks misuse words like "retarded" or "lame" at a constant. lastly, as a man in recovery from patriarchy, unearned male privilege, and misogyny because afterall they are the norm, the status quo, i completely relate to this SOLID statement by gloria steinem: “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”