To Emasculate = To Effeminize= To Dehumanize -- Apparently

I’ve wanted to write this post since… well maybe forever, but haven’t had the guts or the motivation.  Today I was sitting in my blessed Great American Novel class and we were reading an essay about the novel we just finished (Native Son) which was about the potentially severe repercussions of racism.   In this interpretation the author said that racism was and is a way to emasculate the men of other races.  He talked about how effeminizing the men of other races is an effective way to remove their feelings of a right to humanity.  I literally choked on my spit I was so torn between rage and shock.  The essay was written by Ph.D. of human rights in 2009.

Classy.

Then in the same day I came home and told my roommate, who then told me about a screening of a film about sex trafficking she went to in which an ex preacher was interviewed about how he became a “John” (a man who exploits women/girls for sex) and his road to seeing women as less than objects. Not less than human, less than objects.   He talked about his addiction to pornography and his cohorts with prostitutes and his lack of respect for women.  I then literally laid on the couch for a good twenty minutes rubbing my forehead trying to not think that all men are basely scum.

I know that both of those example are extreme, I’ll be the first to admit that not all men are that level of terrible.  I reiterate what I have previously stated, I love men. At the same time I find men exhausting and devastating. 

I can honestly and most sincerely say that the number one thing I’ve learned from dating is that I am not a person.

I date nice boys, boys my mom would approve of.  I don’t have the patience or the temperament for the “bad boy” or the jerk, I just don’t.  And yet I have always been treated as someone who is a convenience and little else.  I’m not a person with logical, meaningful thoughts.  I’m not a person with valid feelings, a personal schedule, thought out opinions, nothing that would separate me from any other female on earth. I am not a person with hopes, dreams and goals that I actually intend to live up to.

I don’t have an answer or an interpretation about this, I just have my experiences.  But I do believe that one day I will meet a guy who looks at me a sees a person and I will love him for it.

One day.