What To Do About Oneself

Have you ever stoped to thinka bout what makes yourself tick? I often do, think about inner self that is. Perhaps so much so, that it is what makes me tick. Maybe I am an entity that operates entirely on the products and energy from introspection.

My mind is always racing at a pace of 100 miles an hour, and I wonder sometimes if I'll ever be able to stop. I was always taught that introspection is healthy, so I spend time each day thinking carefully about what I have said and done that day, what I think and why. Why did I have that argument with that person? Why did I feel naseaus at that thought or comment, but not at that one? Why did I say that word or those words? Why did I cry? Why do I weep?

Let's talk about an example. So tonight, Tommy showed me a website that he says he makes use of sometimes when he is boerd. I mean, it's harmless enough. It's just sort of a community switchboard website, so you can get information about garage sales, community events etc. There is of course, also the requisite dating for singles category. He told me that sometimes he goes to the dating for singles, searches for women aged 20-25 and then, and after he gets results, begins to read some of the profiles. Ok, so fine. But here's where something that was said really bothered me: he says that he clicks on the one's with photos, looks at their photos, and if he likes it, he'll read their profile.

That really bothered me. Why?

Let's talk about linear theory here for a second. So, we begin at point "A" where no woman anywhere is objectified. The ending point, point "Z" is where women are enslaved in a world of complete mysoginy. Now, as theory would predict, every point of increasing objectification moves us farther along the linear progression toward complete opression in the woman-hating world. So, what is it that makes point "B" different from point "Z" or even point "M"?

What's the difference between joking about the "Old Ball and Chain", oogling women at a bar, using their pictures to make decisions about their worthiness, and chosing girls from a catalog in Thialand? What's the difference between paying women less for their labor by 75% than men, and making them wear burqas? The simple answer? Everything. The difficult truth: nothing.

Because mysogeny and the opression of women is a linear progression there truly isn't a difference. Each one of the abuses is worth an extra point as we move towards the end of the alphabet because we are farther along in linear progression. But, each indiviudal abuse is only worth one point, one movment along the line: one unit of injustice. This is incredibly difficult for us to comprehend becuase we don't wish to excpet that severe oppression is linked to the jokes we tell at the water cooler. But if it is true that freedom and equality are both subjectively and objectively valued, then we must accept what Martin Luther King Jr. truly meant when he uttered that "and injustice committed anywhere is an an injustice against everyone"

Something as little as saying "I will only read their profiles if they are cute" may not immediately create the same scale of maifested oppression as the Taliban in Afghanistan created for its women citizens, but it is on the same scale of injustice in that it is on the same linear scale of hatred towards women.

That's true, ok. So why does it cause me to be so conflicted? So this allows me to say that Tommy is the same as a sex trafficker or patron of a child brothel? That doesn't sit well with me. But the truth of the matter is that the exact same phrase with the same mindset uttered elsewhere has HUGE ramifcations. Uttered in a room while going through a catalog of Russian mail-order bride prospects in the Ukraine, those same words sicken us because their context gives us enough of a sense of disgust that we would feel the same whether or not they had said a single word.

But then I guess I have to admit that I was wrong.