I was raised to be man-hater. I grew up in a home with a single mom (who happened to be both mentally and emotionally unstable, but I’ll delve deeper into that some other time), and three sisters. Five females under one roof and no males…at least not ones that stuck around for long. My mother gave me the impression that all boys were evil. According to her, they were all smelly, cruel, disgusting, and stupid. Women were by far the superior sex. I had to remind myself of this important information when, starting at about age 11, I thought some boys were cute. I wanted to play with the cute ones at recess and sit next to them at lunch. But they were boys, which meant they were evil. Even though I was young, I knew that eventually I was going to have a boyfriend. It looked fun and exciting to have a boyfriend, and almost all girls had them when they got older. I saw my older sisters having boyfriends, and I knew at some point in the past my mom had boyfriends and even a husband. But how does that work? If all boys are evil, why did girls want to kiss them, hold hands, and go to the movies with them?
Third-wave feminism was a prevalent theme in our home throughout the 90s, presenting itself in the form of films such as The First Wives Club, Boys On The Side, If These Walls Could Talk, and anything on the Lifetime channel. The message that all men were terrible human beings was clear and deeply ingrained. Unfortunately, this message did me no good at all. I didn’t grow into an empowered young woman who wasn’t going to take any crap from the lesser sex. Instead, I resembled one of the sad, wounded characters from a man-eating episode of Ricki Lake.
At age 17, I started dating my first real boyfriend. (I know what you’re thinking. I was a late bloomer.) I thought it was amazing that a boy actually liked me and wanted to be with me. Nevermind the fact that he was controlling and short-tempered, I mean, he was a boy after all; what did I expect? I figured there probably wasn’t another boy out there that was much better, and if there was, they probably wouldn’t want to date a weirdo like me. I was an insecure 17-year-old, and I excused everything my boyfriend did that I disapproved of because I thought being alone was the worse alternative. So at age 18 I married my boyfriend. I stayed with him in a nightmare of a marriage for the next eight years, and after leaving him last fall, my life has finally begun.
The strong feminist message that was instilled in me growing up gave me the idea that all men were bastards, and the ones that acted nice just wanted to have sex, or were in a good mood because they were having sex. This skewed and harmful message about men is not what led me into the arms of a guy that wasn’t nice, but it certainly didn’t help. If I had been taught that respect goes both ways, and that boys deserve it just as much as girls do, I would have known that a healthy relationship was possible.
I don’t necessarily have anything against feminists. Certainly through history, they have helped bring about much needed change and have made tremendous strides toward gender equality in this country. Sadly, our nation has an ugly history of treating women like second-class citizens, but that doesn’t make it okay to bash men now. I hate double standards, and for me, it’s unacceptable for pre-teens to wear shirts that say “Boys are smelly, throw rocks at them!” and for the bumbling, idiot father to be the butt of every joke in commercials, sitcoms, and even major studio films. We wouldn’t stand for women to be portrayed in such a degrading and disrespectful way, so why is it okay to portray men like this? You may be thinking I’m just being uptight, overreacting, and need to “learn to take a joke”, but I disagree. I’m not a feminist, I’m an equalist. Girls and boys deserve mutual respect. As a society, how can we ladies expect to be treated like princesses when we are constantly breaking men down, and expecting them to fail before giving them a fair chance? Luckily, I found out that there are good guys out there. And I’d venture to guess they’re not too keen on man-haters.
No comments:
Post a Comment