The One Where Men Aren't the Devil

I'm not dead, and I haven't forgotten that I blog here sometimes.  I have a new blog, though, a food one, and I'm doing my damnedest to keep up with it even though you can see from this blog here at. . .consistency isn't my blogging strong suit.  However, I have a METHOD for my other blog, so the chances are good that I'll be keeping up with it the way I should.

The chances are good, but not definite.  I'm on week 2 and keeping up, so we'll see.

Along with this blog, and my oft-neglected but recently picked back up site She Likes to Bake, I've started a new project called Sarah Cooks the Books.  It will eventually just be SarahCookstheBooks.com, but for right now, it's still on blogspot.  So there you go.  Check 'em out, and I just ordered this book, so I promise they'll both be better-looking, and soon.

My on-topic point today is men.

Not these men.

I fully understand that sexism is alive and well.  I fully understand that women don't get paid as much as men in most jobs and that a woman's more likely than a man to be raped and that men have pretty much run things since the beginning of time.

But what I don't understand is when, exactly, feminism turned from "Let us vote, dammit!" to "Men are evil bastards who need to die a long, slow, painful death for the crime of having a penis."

The very, very feminist website I referenced wanting to quit before but haven't quite been able to bring myself to leave had this story the other day about how money tore apart this woman's marriage.  That's not really here nor there, but it was this little gem that made me take notice:

 

Truly, there are few things in life that irritate me as much as the use of "Mr. Mom." (saying that a dad is "babysitting" his kids when the mom's not there is another one.)  Why Mr. Mom?  Why not. . .I don't know. . .Dad?

 

So, knowing I was throwing myself directly into the jaws of the angry shark (does. . .that metaphor work?) I said:



To the credit of many on that site, I, at the present moment, have 35 upvotes.  But those aren't the ones I'm interested in.  (Mostly because, in this case?  I KNOW I'm right.)  It's the downvotes I'm looking at.  At least 7 people feel that Mr. Mom is an OK terminology to use.  Why?  I don't know specifically, and I can't ask, because downvoting is anonymous, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that it's because I dared suggest that a man could do a good parenting job and not be referred to as any version of "Mom."

There was another time I got into this same scuffle, regarding an article of women who've been raped.  I brought up instances of women who claim they've been raped, but have in fact, not.  (Because truthfully, those women should be punished just as hard as the men who rape.)  I said something about men who are falsely accused having to go through hellish things (wrecking of reputation, alienation of friends, loss of potential dates, sometimes court proceedings. . .) just because a woman either didn't get when she wanted and then lied about it or got what she wanted, but then decided she didn't actually want it, so she calls rape.  (Those were the examples I used.)

This was the response I got from one person:

So, to recap, it doesn't matter what I think of people who lie about being raped and ruin lives in the process.  The important takeaway from this is that MEN DON'T NEED PEOPLE TO CARE ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS.

(For those of you who don't know, "cis" is another one of those words created because we as a society have the inherent need to label EVERYTHING.  Short for "cisgender," it is "the opposite of transgender, a cisgender person’s gender identity matches their body and the gender they were assigned at birth, as well as the traditional roles and behaviors associated with that gender."

In other words, heterosexual people who don't think they should be the opposite sex.  This "word" is thrown around A LOT on this website.

So my purpose in life, since I'm a woman and all, is to be sympathetic to women and to not care about men at all costs.  If a woman lies about being raped?  That's OK, because she's more likely to be the victim of a sexual assault than a man is.  If a man is accused of rape and he didn't do it?  I shouldn't care, because he's a man, and as a man, he's more likely to be the perpetrator of a sexual assault, so it's like a pre-emptive strike, and he probably had it coming anyway.  Right?

I call bullshit.

I'd like to say it for the record here, for anyone to read, men, women, women who frequent that website, whatever.

I like men.

I like men a lot.  Most of my best friends in life have been men. 

Hell, I married a man!  I married a man that doesn't sexually assault people and who I'd never call "Mr. Mom" when his daughter is here.  I married a man that is a much better person than a lot of the women I've known in my life.

So no, I'm not going to take your side just because we have the same indoor plumbing.  If you're a jerk, I'll ignore you.  Same if you're a man.  If you're a jerk, I'll ignore you.  If you're not a jerk. . .well, apparently, you're just a figment of my imagination then.  Because men who deserve kindness and compassion and for their lives to not be ruined by false accusations of rape don't exist.

(Note: My spellcheck doesn't recognize "cis" or "cisgender" as words, so there's that.)