We are all responsible. We all have our darkness. As long as we don’t accept and examine our part; as long as we continue frame ourselves as victims vs. villains; as long as we refuse to compassionately acknowledge the human condition that we all suffer from; we will never have equity. We will never be free if we don’t admit that we all need to exercise restraint.
This video says so much that I haven’t had the courage to say. If you actually click the link and watch the whole video, please note that the use of the story of Eden at the end as a reference is valid when viewed as an early attempt to express and communicate how the human condition manifests in our behaviours as we became self-aware individuals. I would have presented this differently.
The ‘war of the sexes’ has become a full-scale global conflict. If ever there was a conspiracy to divide and rule, pitting ourselves against one another – ourselves against ourselves even – based on the body parts we are born with is the ultimate tool to achieve it.
Given my depth of experience with toxicity, I am still far more inclined to trust and feel safer with men than women. Far more than the physical traumas that I experienced, it was the actions, inactions and reactions of the females around me – both my ‘caregivers’ and my peers – that made my world truly unsafe. The risks with men are far easier to determine and guard against. Something I learned in elementary school when I arrived the morning after telling my “best friend” that I was being sexually abused by some older boys and was teased by my peers for not being a virgin. To be honest I really wasn’t sure if I was. I think I was 10. That was nowhere near the beginning or the end of my education in how horrible all humans can be.
I will also admit to many ways that toxic femininity has manifest in me. It is the biggest part of what fuels my depression. I am well aware how trauma itself can be spread like a disease. Just in ‘sharing’ my experience with people who have genuinely cared about me, I have caused trauma. Not to mention the consequences of my own dissociative episodes. Nor the behaviours that developed as I tried to find ways to survive it all. I carry the weight of the damage just my damage has caused. Primarily, to men. Moreso, to myself.
Strong women don’t cower behind their vulnerabilities, concealing their self-serving intent by blaming men for their own. They wear their vulnerability with pride, recognizing the immense courage they can possess when they allow the experience to trigger their strengths and nurture the strengths of others. In my experienced, well educated and carefully developed opinion, feminism has served more to subordinate females (naturally born and transgendered) than it has to equalize anything. We have not turned the tables. Nor have we reset them. We have flipped them over and made a big mess. We all have to take responsibility for cleaning it up.
Despite growing evidence to the contrary, I still believe that we can. I wouldn’t bother sharing this if I didn’t. There is hope for us yet.
All we need is love…