Erin
Generally I am tolerant of anything except people being wrong, and
that often gets me the 'Bitch' label. It used to bother me when I was a
teenager, but it didn't take too long for me to think about it and realize that
if being right and not backing down about it made me a Bitch, it was a
compliment. For a long time I self-identified as a misogynist, simply because
there is a lot of pathetic behavior among women; it really is that fucking
simple: if you're not happy with your life, change it. If you have a habit or a
trait that you don't like, STOP IT. None of this, "oh, I'm just this way," or "I
wish I could be more...". DO IT. CHANGE IT. No one else controls who you are.
But my disgust isn't limited just to people, male or female, who whine about
their circumstances but then take no effort to change them (although I do keep a
special category of rabid vociferous disgust for passive aggressives and
manipulators). I'll grant that society plays a large part in making women the
way they are. But we have women heroes, and if society is fucking us up, we
should fix society.
As far as changing the world goes, philosophically I think that's a red
herring. The world and everything in it exists in constant change. The world
WILL change whether we do anything about it or not. But we do shape the way it
changes, and if you have the opportunity to push the world into a better way of
being -- as all of us do at varying times in our lives -- and you don't -- if
you just sit by and let it roll on -- that's reprehensible too. When we have the
opportunity to make things better and we CHOOSE to pass, we're failing a major
responsibility. And sometimes that opportunity is as simple as calling someone
on a stupid behavior, no matter who they are. I've stood up to supervisors,
executives, and sometimes entire companies at once when they've engaged in
stupid practices (irresponsible management, gossiping, lousy communication), and
I have a list of enemies from it, but I couldn't be any other way, because the
benefit of a clear conscience and actual observable process improvement is that
obvious. To be less dramatic, though, I will say that I've made more friends
than enemies through this practice, and if I hadn't, I'd have to analyze my
behavior. My most recent escapade involves taking on a massive corporation in
the industry where I work (video games) over business practices that have driven
anyone who wants to have a family or non-work-life (and this includes a vast
majority of women) out of the industry. It's been a hard fight and it's not even
close to over yet, but we're making progress, because when you're right people
will listen to you. Being loud about it flushes out the assholes, too, but it's
part of the job, and they reap their own reward in the form of a bitter,
pathetic existence where they drift from one excuse to another to justify their
intense meaninglessness.
Being right is not easy, and there's a lot of responsibility there, too.
Most of the time, for me, it means being cautious and thinking a lot. But come
after me when I've solidified my ideas and KNOW that I'm right and I will
fucking take your head off and hand it to you. Metaphorically speaking, of
course.
The older I get, the more feminist I get, largely because I discover more
about what's going on in the world and what's gone on in the past that's STILL
happening, and I realize that the founders of the feminist movement were right,
and would still be fighting if they were around today. The problem is that
anyone who actually gets in your face and claims to be a feminist (out of
context to the conversation) is probably a belligerent asshole alongside of
whatever feminism they may actually espouse. They get all hypersensitive about
the tiniest thing, and often wildly misinterpret people who are on their side.
(My major thesis in college dealt with how Friedrich Nietzsche has been
misinterpreted as a misogynist, when the evidence is there all through his work
not only that he loved women -- their mystery, their wisdom -- but that the term
'ubermensch' could have been used deliberately as an asexual term -- superHUMAN,
not superMAN.) Being belligerent in most cases is actually a sign of weakness,
and that's not what the concept of 'Bitch' is about to me; it's about being
Alpha, taking control of your life, and, you know, if the people around you
aren't living theirs right, being magnanimous and taking charge of theirs,
too.
Country: United States of America
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