A Defense. Or, I Swear I Don't Hate Men

Okay, what I'm about to discuss has been swirling around my head all day, so I have a lot, a lot of thoughts and most of them are not really organized. So, when this starts to ramble, please just hang in there. I have a point.
(deep breath.)
So, it has been brought to my attention that my "central theme" on here seems to be that I hate men. I've had the Fem-Nazi, man-hater epithets thrown my way before, but this was the first time I ever took the phrase seriously. This is because the friend who told me about it told me to brace myself before he said it, because he knew I wasn't going to like hearing it, because he knows that I don't actually hate men.
So I did a little reading on here in the wee hours of the morning and while I never say "All men are scum who should be sent to a fiery death," I say things like "Women suffer under a lot of shoulds" and "The romance genre is ridiculed because its created by and for women and promotes a healthy female sexuality," which could be read, especially by someone who's read my more virulent Facebook posts, as "This happens because all men are scum and should be sent to a fiery death." And therefore, I find myself at a weird point. I certainly don't hate Men, but I certainly don't want to be one of those male apologists who thinks Eve Ensler is the devil. So, what to do? Well, this is my best attempt to clarify my position on feminism, men, and why I write about women's issues the way that I do.
I am a feminist. I am not ashamed of the descriptor. I don't think that the word translates to "some crazy woman who doesn't shave, thinks all men are the devil, and saves her menstrual blood in a jar in the fridge." Nope. I am a feminist because, quite simply, I believe in women's rights. I believe a woman should have every right a man has. I believe that the presence or absence of a Y chromosome has nothing to do with what a person can achieve in this world. I idolized Susan B. Anthony as a second grader. When I found out who Gloria Steinem is, I idolized her. When I found out that I am extremely distantly related to Lucy Stone, another first wave feminist leader, I was ecstatic.
But look at me. I wear makeup and I love it. I'm married, and I even took my husband's name (although, to be honest, I was planning on hyphenating and then wrote "just Moore" at the last minute -- I do like it though, it sounds very literary). I am not your stereotypical "bra-burner."
Because I love men. I really do. I love all humanity (just not when I'm driving).
There have been a few men who have done some seriously shitty things to me. I've been raped, I've been hit because I wouldn't have sex, I've been treated like a whore, I've been mocked and harrassed and told that I wasn't pretty enough to date, or that I was pretty only so long as I was thought to be sexually available to them, and then I was a bitch and so have you. I have a complex about never being good enough because of how some men in my life treated me. There were a group of guys in my first high school who decided for some reason that I was a lesbian and made my life a living hell for two years, until I switched schools. And so on.
But just like I think it's wrong to judge one ethnic or religious group by the actions of a few people, I don't judge all Men and say that they're all rapists or abusers. I know that that's not right. There are a ton of men in the world who would never think of raping someone, who would never think of hitting their girlfriend, wife, or lover. I know that.
And let's face it, men don't have a monopoly on misogyny. Not by a long shot. Some of the most hateful, horrible, vitriol-spewing women-haters in the world are women. Phyllis Schafly, I'm looking at you.
In fact, god love her, my whole complex about being too fat and not pretty came from some well-intentioned but poorly executed statements from my mom. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to take ballet, and she told me I was too big for ballet. She meant tall because she thought dancers were short, but my brain took "too big" and made it into "too fat," and I've had a complicated relationship with my weight and food ever since. When I was ten, I told her I wanted to be an actress and a writer. And she asked, "Wouldn't it be better if you were a writer? Something that didn't focus on your appearance." Now, my mom loves me and my brother more than anything in the world. She never meant to imply that I wasn't pretty. What she was hoping for, was that I wouldn't caught up into caring about my looks and deriving all of my self-worth from appearance. But my brain said that she meant I wasn't pretty, and then the universe seemed to hammer that message home for years, and of course, I became obsessed with how I looked.
Women have done terrible things to women. Women have done terrible things to men. That is true. A wealthy white woman in the antebellum period definitely had it better than a black man. But a black man had it better than a black woman. And the white woman was still basically property, in a lot of instances.
Race, class, and gender all intersect and someone's experience isn't limited to just one of those factors. So, when I post things about women having a rough time, I never mean to imply that all women have it worse than all men all of the time. Not in the slightest. My world is seen through a lens of a roughly middle class, college-educated white girl. I don't always describe it in those terms, because that's a lot of descriptors to put on something, but I generalize and speak in broad strokes about the female experience, as I have seen and felt it to be.
So when I talk about all the shoulds placed on women, I don't mean to imply that there isn't a list a mile long of shoulds for men. There is. Definitely. And in a weird way, I think it's harder for men sometimes, because while the expectations of what women should be have been largely consistent through the years, the expectations for men are constantly shifting :
A man should be a "manly man" who has no feelings, drinks whiskey and eats red meat for every meal, as raw as possible because he's a Man. A man can't be a singer and dancer and not be thought "less than a man" (which does double-duty as also a horrible insult to gay men). A man can write poetry about daffodils. Real men don't write poetry. Men should be concerned about their appearance. Men should roll around in dirt all day.
And so on and so forth. It's ridiculous, really.
So, why didn't I acknowledge the shoulds placed on men? Well, for starters, I never imagined more than one guy would ever read my blog, and the one that I knew was reading it knows that I'm a feminist and that's how I see the world. Also, I'm not a man. I can comment on what I see portrayed on TV and say that men are getting the same ridiculous body-image messages women have been getting for years. I can say that all these Superman truck ads, and the Dr. Pepper 10 ad, are all serving this image that a "real man" is an action hero, and, above all Not Female, and that is a very limited view of masculinity and misogynistic at the same time. But, since I am not a man, I don't feel those pressures every day. I don't know what those standards do a man's sense of self worth. I'm a woman, so I talk about how women feel. And I don't even talk about how all women feel. Just what I've seen and experienced.
So. There. I don't hate men. How'd I do?

Don't Should All Over Yourself

I was going to write a post about guilt, feeling inspired by something Jenny Crusie wrote and posted on Reinventing Fabulous (http://reinventingfabulous.com/?p=899), and because her post got this song stuck in my head and I can't find it anywhere ("I'm unworthy. Yes, no matter what I'm doing, I should certainly be doing something else. And it's selfish to be thinking I'm unworthy, all this me, me, me, me, self, self, self, self." It's hilarious and wonderful and if you find it, please let me know.) But my first few lines sounded terrible, so I deleted it and now I've been staring at a) a blank screen or b) my best friend telling me to write about buying a vineyard and moving to Italy because that's our new "plan" for the last 10 minutes or so.
Ugh. I should have something to say. I started this whole stupid project.
Oh, look what I did there. I should-ed. Bad, bad business.
And, interestingly enough, should-ing gets us back to guilt.
Why do we feel guilt? Because we should have done something, and we didn't. Well, where the heck does this obligation came from? From whence the should? Is it from society, from our loved ones? Well, sometimes yes. There are a lot of should's that come along with being a woman. We should be pretty, but not high-maintenance. We should be sexy, but only a little bit, and only for our chosen partner (who probably should, according to some small-minded jerkwads, be male). We should be sensitive, but not whiny. We should be confident, but not cocky. We should be assertive, but not bitchy. But I think, most often, those damn shoulds that pile up so high that we want to scream, come from ourselves.
For example, my husband has never once said, "I want dinner ready when I get home." For one thing, he knows better. However, I make it this big should thing. I should have the apartment clean when he gets home. I should have dinner ready, or at least well on its way to being ready. And on the occasion when I don't feel particularly well and I lay down as soon as I get home, I feel guilty for not having accomplished that should.
And when I think of all these damn shoulds, I realize that I had shoulded myself into a pretty serious depression a few years ago. I'm not discounting the fact that I probably had something chemically wrong with me, but there was a lot of should-ing going on as well.
And I'm still bloody doing it. Look at my reason for starting this blog: I should know what I want from my life by the time I turn 30. Well, what happens if I don't? What happens if I never really know what I want? What if I'm never a real "adult"? Am I just creating another massive should that I may never accomplish, and therefore creating just one more massive occasion to feel guilty?
I don't know. Maybe.
But maybe now that I know about the dangers of should, maybe I can look at the blog as more of an exercise. Not that this process should result in my being an adult, with a clear sense of purpose and follow through, but that this space is a place for me to explore any and all possibilities that I see.
Even buying a vineyard in Italy. ;)