By Phoenix Calida
I’m baffled why people think saying we live in a male centric society is “silly” or “far fetched”.
Everything in our society was created to cater to men, specifically white, upper class, able-bodied, cis, hetero men.
Even when we examine layers of oppression, we still generally hear about men (often white privileged men). We discuss lgtbqia rights, but white cis gay men and fckh8 have become our spokespeople. Do white cis gay men have much insight about trans women of color? Corrective lesbian rape? Rates of homelessness among queer, teenage, people of color?
And yet…
When we discuss mental illness we focus on white soldiers with ptsd, but rarely talk about racism or rates of rape in the military. We talk about how to treat abusers that are mentally ill, but dont address how many women go undiagnosed because it’s assumed being crazy is a natural state for women. We talk about boys raped by clergy, but not girls that grow up having nightmares as a result of sexual abuse (50% of black girls sexually abused before age 18). We talk about family annihilators, but not mothers with post partum psychosis. We talk about men with survivors guilt, but not how often women can’t get taken seriously by mental health professionals.
We talk about the homeless and imagine scruffy men holding signs asking for food, but we don’t discuss single mothers trying to get from shelter to shelter with children.
We March against racism, police brutality, and we march for prison reform with the names of black men on our signs, but nobody can name 6 black women killed by police without using Google. We pass around stories of prison guards beating inmates, but not stories of male guards raping female inmates.
We talk about racial stereotypes that affect Latinos and Natives, but we ignore rates of domestic and rape among Latinas and native women.
People aren’t even allowed to own their own oppression, unless it’s cosigned by a credible male experience. Police brutality isn’t legit unless it’s black men being killed.Child sexual abuse isn’t a problem until boys are the victims. Lgtbqia discrimination isn’t a problem until it affects white men.
How much more evident can it be that society favors men when anyone who isn’t a man isn’t even allowed to own their personal life experience? How can we pretend the gender hierarchy doesn’t exist when we have a world that dismisses painful lived experiences until those experiences are validated by men who’ve also been through it?
But don’t mind me. I’m just a silly girl.