I’ve been fairly certain that I’m not a good man for some time now, this just confirms it.
I think I’ll just shut up and let more qualified others handle this issue.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is not a complaint that the cause is not just, but an awareness that I’m not the right person to fight for it.
I realize I am literally one of her “good men”, but she’s 100% correct, and I absolutely need to do better about that.
Brilliant speech. Whereof we bloody well shouldn’t be speaking, thereof we would do well to shut the fuck up and maybe even listen. (especially well said – her point about how in one sphere or another we all draw these lines, because this the way we allow ourselves to be good people. And the need to see ourselves as good people – and the urge to draw whatever lines make that possible – is a fundamental part of the human condition).
Spot on. I cannot think of a thing that is wiser or more important to do than to tell your allies to shut up.
@citizenjoe, I’m afraid you didn’t actually listen to the speech. There is literally nothing here about “telling your allies to shut up”, it’s just a wee bit less simplistic and reductive than that …
The part of my sentence, “let more qualified others speak on the issue”, is the important bit, you know.
My 2c before I shut up and listen to those more qualified:
I guess I try not to draw lines to define myself as a ‘good man’, but rather try to draw lines to aspire to in order to be a ‘better man’. If a line makes me seem like a ‘good man’ already, it’s not very useful.
The older I get, the more I realize how little I know about such things. I’ll sit in corner and be quiet now.
Listen, learn and try to be the best, most ethical person you can be – that is all any of us can do, whoever we are. As a cis/het White bloke, I have a further responsibility to not make a bad situation in society worse, to not take a degree of social privilege I never earned and compound the harm it causes.
I have long known I am very, very far from perfect, but I like to think I am at least attempting to head in the right direction. Part of that is listening to the people best qualified to judge if I am succeeding in trying to be a better man, and those people are women, just as the people best positioned to judge if I am being a better White person aren’t White, and the people best positioned to judge if I am being a better straight person are members of the LGBTQI community. It obviously isn’t their job to make me a better version of myself, but if they choose to give me (and unduly privileged types like me) pointers I am more than happy to listen and learn.
I love Hannah Gadsby. I cried watching her Netflix special recently. I absolutely love that she included race and other discriminators as other lines which should not be drawn. I’m glad I can recognize how important that is, but I’m not fooling myself that I couldn’t be better about those things as well. Which is why I am not spouting off about it.
As beardymcviking said, the only lines I really draw are to make myself better. Or to call out misogynistic words said by others. Like citizenjoe.
Unfortunately it appears most, if not all, the people who have commented on this (including me) are white, cis, heterosexual men. So take it all with the grains of salt you need.
I didn’t know spiders were creepy.
I don’t get to decide how other people wish to be treated? Preposterous! (See also: the laughably myopic “golden rule”)
The line that needs to be drawn is the one that circles humanity.
“Listening” does not equate with a demand for silence. A demand for silence is “muzzling” and the allowed speech becomes “lecturing.” A lecture of dictats and platformed “truths” that may not be challenged is an autocratic hierarchy, in this case, creating a new privileged class. Any novel hierarchy that utilizes privileged-caste speech while silencing out-castes will inevitably be EVERY BIT AS EVIL and for EXACTLY THE SAME REASONS as any pernicious hierarchy that it replaces.