Embracement

They want to be clear about something.

Only, to me it’s not clear. It’s anything but clear; it’s downright muddy.

For instance, why is there any need to be “expansive” in anyone’s “use of the term women”? Why can’t the word “women” just mean “women” and let it go at that? Apart from anything else, it’s convenient. It saves trouble when words mean what they mean and not some “expansive” extra set of things imposed from the outside. If the word “women” is “expanded” to include dogs and hammers and lettuce and who knows what else, won’t we just need a new word that means “women”?

For another instance, why “women” in particular? Why “women” only? Why not also, for instance…oh let’s see…hmmm…”men”? Why not “men” too? Why is The Second Shelf not announcing, with a stern “We will not debate this” for emphasis, that it is intersectional, inclusive, and expansive in its use of the term men?

And that raises another question, which is: why don’t people notice this? Why don’t they feel discomfort about it? Why don’t they notice that it’s only women they’re telling to move over and share and shut up and don’t even try to debate this? Why don’t they notice that it’s only women they’re bullying, and the historic pattern that fits, and the social justice movement that has been trying to rectify that for quite a long time? Why are they so comfortable and at ease with this new arrangement where people take to Twitter to issue orders to women about what we can call ourselves and how we have to abase ourselves to men who want to use the term women for themselves?

One reason, I’m afraid, is just that they can. It’s easy to bully women because it fits the old pattern, so let’s just do that to get our daily quota of bullying in. Women have been told to be compliant in a million ways ever since infancy; even those of us who had feminist parents still lived in a culture in which telling women to be compliant is second nature. The Second Shelf is just tucking itself comfortably into that ancient pattern. (They can go fuck themselves.)

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