In the Image of God They Were Created

I've struggled with feminism for a long time, and have felt generally schizophrenic about the whole idea since probably junior high.  It's been hard for me mostly because if you say that you're not 100% on board with feminism you tend to get lumped in with the misogynists, and that's certainly not descriptive of me; that being said I am certainly not 100% behind feminism as I have often encountered it. What's stuck in my craw with the majority of the feminist approaches I've found is that they seemed to have sprung up as as a polemic to misogyny and as such they end up turning into righteously indignant misandry masquerading as real change.  I very much believe that gender equality is an essential component of a healthy psyche and society, but as long as the discussion is predicated on a polemic paradigm I don't foresee much progress in the future.  If it were possible, however, to move towards a more dialectic approach to gender relations ... well, then, we might could be getting somewheres.

The upshot of all this thinking about reworking the antagonistic concepts in gender relations has me thinking about the whole idea of pitching women's rights to men.  In my experience, presentations about gender relations have focused on the damage that inequality has wrought on women and I completely agree that gender inequality has visited a host of evils on the women of our culture.  I am not a woman, so I can't fully empathize with the experience, but I fully believe that cultural messages about the feminine have a profound impact on self esteem, efficacy, and perceived vocational options for the females.  This approach no doubt has moral justification, but can easily end in the polemic and antagonistic mess mentioned above.  What gets lost in the shuffle, however, and where the dialectical approach brings some wiggle room is how damaging women's inequality is to men.  Discrimination necessitates dehumanization, and dehumanizing the feminine is a profound tragedy.  Dehumanization of the feminine is devaluing the love of a mother, discounting the exhilaration of erotic connection, and denying the joy of providing nurture.  No wonder so many guys today hide their faces in microbrews and fantasy football stat sheets and interminable rounds of Halo ODST.  Men: Gender relations isn't about being guilted or intimidated into acting in a politically correct manner, it's about recognizing the incalculable value of the feminine in both the women around you as well as in your own self.

I'm still polishing my ideas on the subject, and if you're a guy or a girl or know one of either, I'd love to hear what you have to say about the topic.

Adjustments

I watched The Adjustment Bureau over the weekend; I enjoyed the film, and along the way came to a few conclusions.  1: If Emily Blunt and Matt Damon had a child, they would produce the cleftiest chin known to mankind.  2: Men in fedoras are inherently suspicious.  Yes, this includes hipsters.  3: I was somewhat disturbed by the central premise of the movie.

Talking to his guardian angel (who, 4: Anthony Makie looks a LOT like Will Smith ... long lost brother?), Matt Damon is told that he cannot be with his clefty dream girl because to do so would ruin both of their dreams.  He would never run for President o' the United States; she would never become Dancing Jesus.  The explanation proffered is that to be with one another would blunt their ambition.  To very closely paraphrase the movie, being with one another would 'be enough,' and they would no longer need to be driven to succeed.  SPOILER ALERT: SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.  So the movie goes on to have the mystical 'Chairman' rewrite the plan of the world for them to be together and it's all very lovey dovey, but it never goes on to address the question of whether or not them being written back into one another's stories precludes their destined accomplishments.

The message, however, is trouble to me.  Is it really impossible to achieve greatness AND be in a fulfilling relationship?  The picture often portrayed in cultural institutions (films, politics, etc) is that balancing family and work is an impossibility.  Even films which emphasize the importance of family over work often have the protagonist give up their professional ambition in favor of caring for their families.  My daughter is 4 1/2 months old, I have been married to my wife for 6 1/2 years, and I really feel like I am driven to succeed because of them.  Not because I need to prove anything to myself or to them, but because I want to be successful.  This is the difference between wanting to challenge myself and needing to chase a phantom to prop up a sense of self worth.  And most days I believe that.  Some days, though, some days I wonder if Hollywood don't have it right ...

Commitment

My best friend James and I have known each other for about half of our lives so far; everything from this point onwards is going to be us knowing one another longer than we haven't.  Two years ago today I had the profound pleasure to be his best man as he was married to the most amazing and inexplicably perfect woman in the world for him, and below is the text for the toast that I gave that night.

The night before he got engaged, James told me, "I think I could handle not being married," waited a beat while I looked at him with a cocked eyebrow, and finished, " ... but I'd probably end up pretty weird."  And that's part of the genius of language, the flexibility of definitions.  A mutual friend of ours, James Lyons, once showed James and me a giant brass soy bean he had sculpted for his future wife and explained to us that as a person handles brass the oils and moisture from their hands will patina the metal.  The trick being that everyone's touch results in a different patina depending on their diet and nutrition, body chemistry, etc and has its own unique impact on the way the brass ages and changes.  I'm not sure what kind of effect dozens of powdered doughnuts and gallons of mountain dew have on a brass patina, but I do know that as [James] and Patrisha begin to share one another's joys and handle one another's challenges, that you will uniquely impact one another.  In effect, you will be weird.  Not the pale, long goatee wearing, wood-shaving sprinkled weird you would be left to your own devices for the next 80 years, but weird in a glorious way you never could have achieved on your own.  I'm proud to have done my part in making you as weird as you are today, and pleased to have the honor of watching that processes continue to unfold between you and your wife. So here's to growing old and weird with the ones we love.

I have been very happy to be not only a part of their wedding, but a part of their lives for the past two years.  I look forward to the day that they can both look back to Dec 5, 2009 and realize that from this point on they will have been married longer than it took them to find each other.