I love The Pastry Box Project. It’s the best addition I’ve made to my reading list this year. Catching up on it, I read Jeff Eaton’s piece Listen or GTFO. He writes,

Sure, some white men. But not all, obviously. As I prepared to jump into the conversation — to help clarify that not all of us were determined to hog the spotlight, that we were excited to help — I did something uncharacteristic.

I shut the fuck up.

I shut the fuck up, and I tried to listen.

…

Defending ourselves is always easier than listening to difficult truths.

…

Perhaps, just maybe, it’s time for us to quiet down and listen to the people who have to live it.

We may not know all the answers, but we can stop pretending it’s someone else’s problem. We can listen.

I am a straight, white male. I’m also 6’5″ and 350 lbs. I’m a mountain of a man and about as alpha a male as I can get without being in proper shape with rippling muscles.

I see how my wife is treated. I see how my friends are treated. I see how women around me are treated. I don’t try to defend men. We are the problem. We are the cause of the pain and anger and hurt. We are the cause and we are the solution. Period. It’s not someone else’s problem. It’s our problem to solve.

What is the solution? I don’t know. This is where we all need to shut up and listen. Listen to women. Listen to our wives and girlfriends. Listen to our friends. Our mothers. Our sisters. Our grandmothers and if they’re still with us, great-grandmothers. This isn’t a new problem. This is a long-held, deeply rooted problem.

It’s not one we’re going to fix in a week or a month or even a generation. It’s bigger than all of us. We can start taking small steps. And the first step is to listen.

Talk to the women in your life. Ask them, what is it like going through your day? What is riding a bus or driving a car with the windows down like? What about walking down the street on a hot day?

How does it make you feel? Start there. And Yes, all women have a story to share. Listen to their stories. If you’re a women, share your story. We can seek solutions when we start to listen.

I have heard too much and I can’t remain silent any longer. I am not a political person. I do not protest. I do not demonstrate. I am not occupying anything but a chair at my work place and a bed in my apartment. When a friend shared her thoughts this morning, I decided it was time for this good man to stop doing nothing.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Women’s Rights

We made so many positive strides in this country towards equality. Women have struggled for equality, the right to vote, and the right to make equal wages. Now there is a War on Women in this country.

There have been repeated attacks on Planned Parenthood. Rush Limbaugh’s slut comment fanned the flames.

This comic puts it very succinctly. Women want to have the same rights as men. They are not second class citizens which exist solely to serve the men of the world.

African-American Rights

African-Americans have been on the same road towards equality. Their long road started many years ago.

Rosa Parks began was a lightening rod for a bus boycott that changed minds and changes lives. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech that forever changed the world.

For all the good done and legislation from the 1960s, there is still a very long road ahead. When Rodney King was attacked and beaten in 1991, to the Cincinnati Riots in 2001 are just instances in a long history or racial violence in the United States.

Events like the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin proves there is still a very long way to go on their road to freedom.

Gay Rights

This brings us to homosexuality. I don’t understand why this is such a problem. We have not come very far at all.

It took people like Matthew Shepherd, and Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project to bring attention to the issue of inequality and start the wheels in motion for support and legislation to make things right.

Same-sex marriage is an ongoing struggle with states slowly coming around in support of something that never should have been unsupported.

The military repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell earlier this year. But legislation doesn’t change people. President Obama has declared a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month in addition to ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but has stopped short of fully supporting gay marriage.

Ever since the beginning of the struggle for same-sex marriage to be legalized, marriage between a man and a woman been said to be under attack. I don’t even understand how that makes sense. How does people of the same gender being married have anything to do with the marriage of other men to women? It goes so far as the newly formed National Organization for Marriage is trying to drive a wedge between blacks and gays. This is the same group behind the Dump Starbucks campaign because, according to the site,

On January 24th, 2012, Starbucks issued a memorandum declaring that same-sex marriage ‘is core to who we are and what we value as a company.

Will they go after Ben & Jerry’s next for their relaunch HUBBY HUBBY as Apple-y Ever After in support of marriage equality.

It is not all bad news. Recently, more than half of Americans support marriage for everyone. There is still a long road ahead for equality for everyone.

Rights are not a finite resource.

There is not a finite amount of human rights to go around. Granting equality to everyone is not going to diminish the rights of anyone else.

White men are not going to be any less free if Black men have rights. Men won’t be any less free is women have rights. Straight people won’t be any less free is gay people have rights.

There is plenty to go around. We are not going to run out if we allow everyone the same rights under the law and in our country.

Those who oppose equal rights for everyone tries to frame the conversation to their advantage. You know what the difference between same-sex marriage and different-sex marriage is? Absolutely nothing?

You know what the difference between gay marriage and… what, ungay marriage? Is that why nearly 50% of ungay marriages fail?

Marriage is just marriage. There is no difference.

What do straight people lose in their marriage by allowing gay people to marry? Absolutely nothing.

If you’re so afraid for your own marriage that other people getting the ability to marry, then your marriage is in trouble and that is no one’s fault but your own.

The only people who should be concerned about a marriage are the two people in the marriage. Marriage is between two people. marriage is also a lot of hard work, communication and acceptance. There are also legal benefits that come with marriage being denied to hard working citizens.

I don’t understand what is so wrong with preventing other people from being married? Can’t they have the same chance to ruin half of their marriages as well? Can’t they be with loved ones in hospitals or dictate what happens in the wake of their spouse’s death? What is so wrong with extending these rights to everyone?

Biology & Equality

Gender is not a binary, yes/no system.
Biology doesn’t support gay marriage bans. Humans are not the only animals that exhibit homosexuality. The opposition is coming mainly from religion and the religious abandoning the Christian tenet of love thy brother and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

When did it become in fashion to hate people who are different from us, just because they are different? It seems many of the people who lead the homophobic charge lead a very different life.

Equality for everyone

All people should have the same rights. The rights won’t run out if we pass them around. The rights won’t diminish or dilute when they’re extended to everyone.

In the end, we all just want what’s best for ourselves in our life. Why should the iconic kissing sailor from V-J Day in 1945 be any different from this kiss in 2011? Sailor and soldiers away at sea excited to embrace and kiss their loved one.

Equality does not start with national speeches or legislation. Equality starts with small, simple acts.

Patrick Rhone says it best,

It is about being able to have a seat on a bus.
It is about being able eat a sandwich at a counter.
It is about being able to enter a raffle so you can be the first one to kiss your girl…

Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Tag: women’s rights

Listen

We are moving backwards