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06.07.2007
Equal Time
It’s tough not to write from anger when you’re angry. Perhaps that’s the wrong word… frustrated may be more apropos. It doesn’t even stem from the topic I’m writing about, though I’m sure it will have an effect on what finds its way to my keyboard nonetheless. Today, it’s about equality. My little aside to every “victim’s group” that has it bad because of some system.
I suppose I should start with women. If you’re an up-in-arms feminist you might as well stop reading right now. Or keep reading actually… it may be that we agree. See, I get tired of the “have it both ways” philosophy a lot of women seem to have adopted. And if this doesn’t apply to you, don’t argue it, just skip down a few paragraphs, okay? For the rest of you though, all that bitching and hell raising you or your parents or your grandparents did throughout the 20th Century worked. You wanted to vote, you wanted equal pay, you wanted to be considered equal with men… and you won! Congratulations.
But here’s the thing… If you’re gonna be equal, be equal. Not occasionally, not when its convenient, but always. You get half the bills. You get to lift heavy shit. As a matter of fact, this whole wedding thing isn’t gonna be about just you anymore either. Maybe I don’t want flowers and piano music. Maybe I want to skydive to the altar while AC/DC plays on a concert stack of 36 JBL speakers. You can stand there next to the piano and wait for me to land. And let’s do away with any law that guarantees a woman anything in the workplace too. Compete with the rest of us on the same playing field.
And some women seem to think it’s okay to hit a guy, yet have to make a Lifetime movie about when a guy pops you back. Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never hit a woman, nor would I ever do it. But if a woman wants to hit a guy simply because society says he’s not supposed to hit her back? I kinda hope he beats her like a pinata.
See, chivalry stops dead in an equal world. No more doors opened for you, no more chairs pulled out, no more guys paying for dates… Pick up the tab Princess. It’s your turn. Some of you are saying, “That’s not what we wanted… That’s those other women”. Cool. Then get your attitudinally inferior ass in the kitchen and make some brownies. Bake a pie, make the bed, raise a baby… and quit your bitching.
There is a very prevalent state of hypocrisy amongst a lot of people today. People who say they want one thing, yet actually hold themselves accountable to a completely different set of standards. Do as I say, not as I do. There was an article in Time recently by Nancy Gibbs that contained the following quote: “If there is an antidote to hypocrisy, it's humility: just admitting the possibility of weakness can be a source of strength.”
The same goes for those in the poverty bracket. Nobody owes you anything. Stop acting like they do. If you’re poor, there’s a better way to get out of that.. But if you wanna live on welfare? You’d better look for a job 24/7 then. Don’t try to get paid “off the record” so you can stay on food stamps. We shouldn’t need an entire government department to determine if someone’s bilking the system. True starving people are easy to spot. They look like those little African skeleton kids. They’re starving. There are Ethiopian women that will fuck you like a cheetah for a bottle of Gatorade. That’s starving. Call for welfare when you get that desperate. You can’t weigh 410 pounds and be starving. How can you be on welfare and have an Xbox? Get a job you lazy fuck.
But I digress… this is about “equality” more than “accountability”. I won’t go down the ethnic road - the argument is the same. Equality is normally a conflict between minorities and the majority. The bottom line? You can’t force equality. I think it’s earned. All men are created equal, but where they go from there is up to them. Every time someone takes a job because the employer had to give it to a minority, we’re all set back. Every time the right way to do something is altered to conform to some affirmative action law, we lessen as a people. There’s no need to take away from one to make another stronger.
I’ve been blessed with some amazing mentors in my life. There is a lesson I was taught a long time ago by one of them - one I remember well even today. I was simply asked to make a line shorter, and then was handed the pencil:
________________
The obvious answer was to erase part of it, to draw a line through it, to break it down. The better answer? How does the top line look compared to the one below it?
________________
___________________________________
It looks shorter. I guess what I’m getting at is that we need to stop trying to break each other’s lines down. We need to start trying to lengthen our own lines. The way to stop relying on charity is to start refusing to take it. We should be past these antiquated ideas dressed up as 21st Century equality. Be consistent in your beliefs. If you want success, get it. These barriers and hurdles only exist as long as we acknowledge them…
-S
Equal Time
It’s tough not to write from anger when you’re angry. Perhaps that’s the wrong word… frustrated may be more apropos. It doesn’t even stem from the topic I’m writing about, though I’m sure it will have an effect on what finds its way to my keyboard nonetheless. Today, it’s about equality. My little aside to every “victim’s group” that has it bad because of some system.
I suppose I should start with women. If you’re an up-in-arms feminist you might as well stop reading right now. Or keep reading actually… it may be that we agree. See, I get tired of the “have it both ways” philosophy a lot of women seem to have adopted. And if this doesn’t apply to you, don’t argue it, just skip down a few paragraphs, okay? For the rest of you though, all that bitching and hell raising you or your parents or your grandparents did throughout the 20th Century worked. You wanted to vote, you wanted equal pay, you wanted to be considered equal with men… and you won! Congratulations.
But here’s the thing… If you’re gonna be equal, be equal. Not occasionally, not when its convenient, but always. You get half the bills. You get to lift heavy shit. As a matter of fact, this whole wedding thing isn’t gonna be about just you anymore either. Maybe I don’t want flowers and piano music. Maybe I want to skydive to the altar while AC/DC plays on a concert stack of 36 JBL speakers. You can stand there next to the piano and wait for me to land. And let’s do away with any law that guarantees a woman anything in the workplace too. Compete with the rest of us on the same playing field.
And some women seem to think it’s okay to hit a guy, yet have to make a Lifetime movie about when a guy pops you back. Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never hit a woman, nor would I ever do it. But if a woman wants to hit a guy simply because society says he’s not supposed to hit her back? I kinda hope he beats her like a pinata.
See, chivalry stops dead in an equal world. No more doors opened for you, no more chairs pulled out, no more guys paying for dates… Pick up the tab Princess. It’s your turn. Some of you are saying, “That’s not what we wanted… That’s those other women”. Cool. Then get your attitudinally inferior ass in the kitchen and make some brownies. Bake a pie, make the bed, raise a baby… and quit your bitching.
There is a very prevalent state of hypocrisy amongst a lot of people today. People who say they want one thing, yet actually hold themselves accountable to a completely different set of standards. Do as I say, not as I do. There was an article in Time recently by Nancy Gibbs that contained the following quote: “If there is an antidote to hypocrisy, it's humility: just admitting the possibility of weakness can be a source of strength.”
The same goes for those in the poverty bracket. Nobody owes you anything. Stop acting like they do. If you’re poor, there’s a better way to get out of that.. But if you wanna live on welfare? You’d better look for a job 24/7 then. Don’t try to get paid “off the record” so you can stay on food stamps. We shouldn’t need an entire government department to determine if someone’s bilking the system. True starving people are easy to spot. They look like those little African skeleton kids. They’re starving. There are Ethiopian women that will fuck you like a cheetah for a bottle of Gatorade. That’s starving. Call for welfare when you get that desperate. You can’t weigh 410 pounds and be starving. How can you be on welfare and have an Xbox? Get a job you lazy fuck.
But I digress… this is about “equality” more than “accountability”. I won’t go down the ethnic road - the argument is the same. Equality is normally a conflict between minorities and the majority. The bottom line? You can’t force equality. I think it’s earned. All men are created equal, but where they go from there is up to them. Every time someone takes a job because the employer had to give it to a minority, we’re all set back. Every time the right way to do something is altered to conform to some affirmative action law, we lessen as a people. There’s no need to take away from one to make another stronger.
I’ve been blessed with some amazing mentors in my life. There is a lesson I was taught a long time ago by one of them - one I remember well even today. I was simply asked to make a line shorter, and then was handed the pencil:
________________
The obvious answer was to erase part of it, to draw a line through it, to break it down. The better answer? How does the top line look compared to the one below it?
________________
___________________________________
It looks shorter. I guess what I’m getting at is that we need to stop trying to break each other’s lines down. We need to start trying to lengthen our own lines. The way to stop relying on charity is to start refusing to take it. We should be past these antiquated ideas dressed up as 21st Century equality. Be consistent in your beliefs. If you want success, get it. These barriers and hurdles only exist as long as we acknowledge them…
-S
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