Citizens growl, “Make America great again.”
I stand firm and claim, “America is great.”
Answering those who shout, “What makes America great,”
I ask “What is America?”
“What had a Founding Father to say?”
“What is this great country we have today?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it,”
Benjamin Franklin stated then,
At the dawn of a nation
And ever near an end.
– Matthew Sawyer
Radical feminism undermined Occupy Wall Street in 2011 when coincidentally feminist Gloria Steinem stated the movement about economic equality was really about gender. The movement Atheism Plus was asphyxiated in 2012 when dogmatic atheists like associate professor PZ Myers dictated cutting edge feminism must constitute the foundation. And there was Gamergate in 2014, when radical feminists such as the dubious Anita Sarkeesian trespassed into video game development: saying Feminists don’t like butts or cutting the digital heads off sprites. Now, in 2016, Black Lives Matter is endangered by the same self-serving element.
Feminism itself is a good thing, well, now a good thing after coming out of the late 1860s when the Women’s Suffrage movement stood in the way of Blacks being allowed to vote (women wanted to vote, too, and would not have black people gaining the right before them). Equal rights is essential for sake of egalitarianism – hence the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The Feminist movement itself is not evil, individual feminists are not bad, but its study is complicated. Novices gain what little knowledge is available to them in undergraduate courses and they, themselves, become dangerous. They sling words as if they were weapons.
As I have written about previously, and even wrote a poem about, the language now passed from barely educated protesters to the unsophisticated American masses is counter-productive, even hostile. I’ve heard statements like these come from the mouths of vernal radical feminists…
“All white people are racist”
“Only white people are racist”
“All men are sexist”
“All men rape”
“All cis-gender people (those happy with their sexual identity indicated by the genitals) suffer trans phobia (fear of people who have mangled the boy or girl parts to resemble the opposite sex)”
I believe each are misinterpretations that have arisen from Peggy McIntosh’s article, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies,” 1988. In the article, the feminist and anti-racism activist defined “privilege.” She used subjectively observed models to illustrate how white men experience America, and she qualified herself by introducing “intersectionality,” otherwise her Venn diagrams were too easily redefined by substituting the word “race” with “class”, as in economic class.
Outside institutions of learning, Academia, out of the mouths of amateurs, phrases such as white-privilege and male-privilege even sexism, sound like accusations, blame for historic events beyond the control of anyone alive today. And I believe the street-level usage is intentional as in those are the stated meanings aggravated protesters intend to communicate. The hostile backlash is understandable. The surgically inflicted wounds are especially prevalent on white conservatives of all economic classes. These are people who vote in elections with hurt hearts, their now scarred feelings.
So I say with expectation, radical feminists will strangle Black Lives Matter. The movement will likely vanish as had Occupy Wall street. Radicals will be instrumental in the election of assumed Republican candidate Donald Trump in 2016. And a renewed Black Suffrage will be met with the same revolt as Senator Bernie Sander’s movement called Our Revolution. Because radicals will never think of the future nor take account of broader perspectives and shut their mouths.
Since Feminist and anti-racism activist Peggy McIntosh wrote an article in 1988, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies,” the ideas of white-privilege, male-privilege, (all hosts of privileges) have flowed into Academia and none are yet adequately defined. Hey, it’s only been thirty years and roles are changing. Academia has kept them all together in a loose bundle called sociology, then it all got out of the hallowed halls and onto the street.
The layperson terminology of “privilege” has been tossed about for decades, causing sparks. But as I was trying to tell an angry, male self-identified radical feminist, it really didn’t start blazes until 2015. That is when Black Lives Matter gained media attention and young, well-off women were learning about a modern further-Left leaning Feminism in their college classes. This green understanding of new theoretical ideas was then bled over Conservative parents, employers and even the average passerby on sidewalks. Right-wing media found yet another abomination to set spikes against. They felt threatened by aggressive young actors who apparently didn’t know what they were talking about. And neither did nor do the victims.
Poorly-educated mouth pieces arose again on both sides of a growing political bush fire. Where foul mouthed and insensitive elitist graduates spouted dynamic misunderstandings about Feminism, the Right wing propaganda machine spun horror stories about the quality of education, money, and the wrath of the Lord himself.
Hence my disbelief in “privileges,” for now. Let’s call what we have “Rights,” as had our damnable patriarchy titled the Founding Fathers. Let professors better define just what privileges exist. I think they’ll maybe be sure by the time I am dead. Until then, let us treat everyone equally, like those “men” who signed the Constitution wanted. Egalitarianism does not mean misogyny.
Matthew Sawyer
Black, white, green apples and red licorice,
We all have rights.
Only wealth buys privilege.
Well, that and sex.
So if some guy or gal gets more than you,
He or she suffers less than you,
And he and she truly offers no more worth than yourself,
You are denied rights and not so poor to be restricted privilege.
Rights are not minted and cannot be locked in vaults.
Rights are all with which everyone is born.
And all that is worth to be taken away.
– Matthew Sawyer
The other night… There’s shouting outside in the parking lot facing my apartment, so I get up to take a look. My door is open, but I can’t see anything between or beyond the luminosity of my back-lit front room and the darkness outdoors. I take a hit of medicinal marijuana, my third or fourth this evening, go the door holding my breath, squint then look outside.
I spot a full grown man, my neighbor’s son. He’s parked right outside my apartment and shouting something unintelligible at an assumable friend. I don’t know either’s names. And I’ve never met the man personally. I’m certain we’ve spied each other in the daytime, but neither of us have stopped, closed the gap between us and introduced one to the other.
The moment I’m ready to expel the therapeutic vapor from my lungs, that son sees me and he just stares, looking blindly at my shadowed shape in the doorway. He eventually says, “Hello, big man.”
“Odd,” I’m thinking. “Who shouts hello from parking lots to strangers after dark.
I reply with a muffled and stunted, “Hello.” And I wait until he turns away before I blow smoke.
Not much time has passed, but in truth, after four hits of marijuana, I’ve already transcended the temporal. In any respect, he – as in the man outside – he turns away and he speaks to his obvious friend. I am released, at least from that restraint on my lungs. I’ve still said nothing more then returned a greeting when those other two begin walking away. Everything seems normal, peaceful once again. But then that son turns his head and strains his neck and stares at me again.
“Odder still,” I quietly wonder. “Is he on drugs, drunk?”
“Probably,” I answer myself. “It is Friday night. Summer.” Yet his fixed gaze is disturbing, disquieting. The guy stares at me like I’m waving my dick at him.
While he disappears into darkness – the opposite direction of his mother’s apartment, I wonder, “Where is he going?” We all know there is a homeless guy in that direction, one who sells methamphetamine. The LA cops have busted the operation a couple times. They even fenced off the nearby dried-up streambed where derelicts would camp. All the same, even today, there are disaffected transients roaming outside peddling anything from yarn jewelry to much harder stuff.
“Carpe diem,” I mutter aloud and out of earshot of the strange passerby’s. “Caveat emptor.” And they are gone.
In modern American English, I still think, “Don’t stare at another man’s dick, son.” I will need to speak to his mother about this.
– Mr. Binger
It’s Not About Black Versus White
It’s Not About Democrats Versus Republicans
It’s Not About Men Versus Women
It’s Not About Old Versus Young
It’s Not About Me Versus You
It’s About Money
It’s About Money Spent On Power
It’s About Greed
It’s About Greed In Power
– Matthew Sawyer
I was raised by a single mother in my teenage years, with two of my sisters living at home. Most of my teachers have been women, like 66%. Half of my bosses have been women. My doctor is a woman. My dentist is a woman. My apartment managers are women. My United States senator is a woman – Senator Carol Liu. I voted for her. All my relationships have been with women who have earned more money than I have, have been equally or better educated (Hey, I got a BA in Art). And today, a radical feminist tells me I am uneducated – if I am to understand the phrase, “Get your head out of your ass.”, that I lack empathy. There is a reason it’s called radical, and it’s because the viewpoint is aggrieved by windmills.
Matthew Sawyer
