#metoo and male opinions and boundaries and shut up

Male Opinions GIF from Male GIFs

You know who I don't care to hear weigh in on the #metoo movement, and how far is to far, and all that it entails?

Men.

Do I know a lot of great men? A lot of feminist men even if they don't call themselves feminists? Men who believe in the equality and advancement of women? Men who are allies in general and personally, men I love?

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

I still don't want to hear men opine on #metoo or anything associated with it.

The world has been hearing from men since the dawn of fucking time. Men have gained power through violence and force and used the same to hold that power all this time until they no longer need the power and force in every day situations, but retain the space and place and entitlement and privilege. White people in general and white men in particular have rarely come upon a scenario in which they think their opinion is unnecessary. Just my two cents. I have a right to speak. We all have opinions. 

True true.

Here's an opinion: keep your two cents in your pocket, recognize that the world will continue to spin without you adding your opinion to a topic, speaking with an authority that's been ingrained in you over thousands of years but is completely unearned, especially when it comes to the lived experiences of women.

Re: Joe Biden, #metoo, etc., we women don't all agree with each other. And we never will. I don't need you swimming around in there, mansplaining and opining and pooping in the pool, obscuring us from each other as we work through how a gender is treated by the world as something to control and possess and use at will and how that stops in our time.

We grew up in different times and in different classes, with different skin color and different religions. Our experiences vary tremendously. We have different boundaries - some we were taught to have, some we fought hard to have, some we had to learn we were allowed to have because the world in which we grew up told us we were not. We can handle different things, care about different things, take offense at different things. We suffer certain known hardships to different degrees, especially when it comes to race and class. We grew up in a patriarchal system too, just like men did, and the patriarchy would not still be standing if not for women foot soldiers and women who put whiteness or economics over other women. Our experiences are not the same but our liberation is bound up in each other. Let us talk it out and fight it out and forge a world where the girls who are five right now aren't doing the same thing 25 years from now.

We don't need male overseers or guidance. You don't have to just jump in real quick to point something out. You don't need to opine. We don't need you to agree with us in order to validate what we're saying. What we think and feel is important regardless of if we're your wife or daughter or sister or mother. I'm not sure if you know you can support people silently, but you can, if that is your true intention. Otherwise, shut up.

Women have been dealing with this shit for eternity. It has been happening in varying degrees from cat calling to hair sniffing to unwanted advances to harassment/stalking/assault/murder since the dawn of time because children are not taught the same boundaries and behavior has been excused that should not be excused and boys will be boys right and here we are in a world where we're not deterred from electing a man who believes he can just grab women by the pussy and what's the big deal if someone put a hand on your ass that you didn't want there and UGH guys can't do anything anymore and by the way women do things too and lie and and and...fuck. This is a fine fucking mess. A mess through which men have held most positions of power, made most laws, shaped most media,  ruled on most court cases. Forgive me if I don’t think men are the ones who will get us out of this mess. 

There's no shoving this monster back in the box, so we're going to cut it off at the head. Not sorry if how that's going down in 2019 means you can't do and say whatever you want to women anymore and will have to learn to recognize the individual boundaries of the women in your life. Is she okay with a hand on her ass, you sniffing her hair when you don't have that type of relationship, if she's cool with sticking with traditional gender roles or if your household will have to run differently? I don't know. Ask her, not me. We're different. And do ask, friends. Consent happens all along the spectrum.

Right about now we're poised on the precipice of a major shift in social consciousness - a chance for us to collectively approach old behavior in a new way with new consequences and new lines that we draw and are in charge of - and we can do that on our fucking own. Are there women out there who want you to weigh in? Absolutely - like I've said a few times, we are not all the same and don't have the same boundaries and experiences. You go ahead and weigh in with them. Do I want to think about what you think about Bernie or Joe and anything they've done and how the #metoo movement is changing things and poor men who might be accused of something they didn't do and what about our sons and why are white men being attacked? No. I fucking don't.

If you want to do something constructive, work on your own self. Read without commenting. Listen and absorb. Examine your own attitudes and what you've been taught is okay and yours to do or say or take at will that is maybe in actuality not okay. Teach kids boundaries that extend beyond consent into misogynistic attitudes. Call your own in who take liberties they shouldn't on all levels of the spectrum.

Period, the end...and in case you missed the millions of clues, I'm not interested in hearing your opinion on this.