Lately I've been feeling like I'm coming on too strong as either an angry feminist or a sad sappy feminist who doesn't know who she is or how she feels about herself. But then I remember that we're all feminists, or at least we should be if we want women to continue to exist, and that we make up all different kinds of people and emotions and backgrounds. I'm not sure exactly what I want this post to be about, but I guess I'm just feeling sick and tired, literally, and sick and tired of feeling sick, tired, and unappreciated. My whole issue with the way the world functions is that we don't view people as, well, people. We expect them to fit into neat little boxes, or we expect them to take what we give them, because after all, aren't we feminists the ones who wanted equality? I have come across so many men with that point of view that I don't know where to begin. There are men and women who feel that when dealing with women, treat them exactly as how the men they know would want to be treated is an acceptable adage. I disagree. I think that we need to pay special attention to both the men and women in our lives and how their unique personalities and sentiments cause them to act and react, and pay heed to them accordingly. Even men and women that claim to be feminists can often be blinded by gender, albeit in a different way than you would expect. They see a woman and panic! "What do I do or say so that she'll know I'm on her side and that I'm a feminist?" one might ask oneself. But contrary to what many people do, which is to treat everyone exactly the same, they should instead be considering what they know about how that particular person operates. If you don't know the person, treat them with respect and an open mind until you discover things about them. Feminist is a tricky identifier, because it challenges us to walk a fine line and reassess what to many might seem obvious: how to deal with individuals who also have a gender. What I see as obvious: treat them as you would any other individual and take into account various factors in their environment and yours, may not be obvious to the somewhat confused, newly adapted feminist.
Today I was helping my boyfriend with his home/bus conversion project, and I realized very quickly that I'm not a carpenter, but that that is totally okay. The thing that wasn't okay was the way that we both felt about me helping with the project in conjunction with how we were communicating with each other. I felt like I needed more background information on how the task that I was supposed to be completing should be handled, and I wrongly assumed that he knew what information to provide me with. He wrongly assumed that I had all of the information I needed. I ended up neglecting to check one detail and it ended up resulting in him having to do more work. I felt deflated and useless. As with anything that is important to me in life, I like to feel that I'm really making a difference and that the person understands that I am also learning and growing. I may be a smart individual, but with little to no experience installing cabinets in a school bus. My confidence level in that regard is only as good as the constructive feedback that I receive allows it to be, for safety's sake. I like to think that I am cautious but not frightened to try new things. I need a nurturing environment with constructive feedback, as do most. However, I've been walking this fine line between wanting to help and not wanting to fuck anything up, for obvious reasons. I often choose safe activities that are helpful without having the added danger of allowing me to completely destroy something that my boyfriend has worked so hard for. I feel that he chooses the same for me as well and I'm not quite sure how to view that. Today, after recovering from my mistake, without skipping a beat, he ran off saying how good it was that his friend had just arrived, and then asked me to boil some water for pasta as they proceeded to finish the current activity we had been working on without me. I wasn't unhappy to be relieved of the burden of wondering what else I might do wrong, but after removing myself from the situation, I felt a little nonplussed by how quick he was to express his joy at being saved from my inferior job as wood-stabalizer. I don't like to make assumptions, but I think that it can be convenient for him and many other guys to treat their girlfriends as they would anyone else. I am not more special than his friend, but I do have a different personality and my feelings are hurt by different things. I have a vested interest in helping and a vested interest in both my boyfriend and his project, so it was hard for me to stomach the dismissal of my help, my subsequent relocation to the kitchen to boil water, and our interaction later when he explained that I hadn't been "communicating with him properly" and that's why things got "messed up." Be careful how you choose your words, friends.
People, significant others in particular, are sensitive to their own faults and mistakes already, even if you are not to yours. There might be a lot of conclusions to be drawn from this interaction, but I like to think that most of them are obvious if we remove our genders from the equation. What if we were both genderless individuals working together in close quarters, but with an added romantic twist? Neither of us was communicating well, neither of us did the exactly correct thing, and neither of us felt great about our interaction after the situation was over. I think there is something to be said about that, and it is that if we had just been more sensitive to who the other person was, and not what, things could have gone a lot more smoothly for both of us. I hate to use personal examples at the expense of my loved ones, but they are all I have, and after all, they are also at my expense being that I frequently make mistakes -_-
That is all I've got in me folks, have a great Monday! And if you're sick like me, feel better!
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