I’m not trying to “institute” anything. I hardly have the power to do so. I’m simply making people aware that other ways of doing things and other ways of relating to people is possible. It’s an invitation to begin co-creating a different kind of world.
“You evaluate a society with a narrow focus on whether or not it can be classified as a patriarchy. I regard that particular classification as a trivial matter.” How is it unimportant to be able to identify and understand the components of the social system that we live in? It’s trivial to you because you haven’t suffered under it or aren’t conscious of how you have suffered under it, because I’m going to guess you aren’t at the top of the pyramid, so therefore you have been stepped on by others higher up the rungs. You just have never had the context to understand that this too was a part of patriarchy. It’s the ocean that we all swim in.
Meanwhile, nearly all women and most men have suffered under this social system, including me and I’ve tried to talk to you about that in detail, demonstrating to you how this is not some abstract ideology, but rather deeply personal to me. What you’ve essentially told me time and again is that you don’t care about others in your society as long as you are OK. By extension, you’ve told me that you don’t care about me and the things that I’ve suffered and continue to suffer. That’s your prerogative for sure, but if after all of the conversations we’ve had and all of the things that I’ve linked you to read, including my own accountings of personal experiences, none of that moves you in any way, I can’t really do anything about that. But it also means there is no reason to attempt to continue this discussion. There’s a limit to how much I want to continue to put my guts on the table to be told that it’s calculated, whining and irrelevant to do so.
It takes vulnerability to be able to show empathy, and for whatever reason (which I won’t speculate on) you are unable to go there. Nothing gets through your armor. I’m just sorry that you feel the need to be that armored.
