Margaret Atwood wrote: “Men are afraid of women laughing at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And Sister Unity commented on Facebook: “As a gay man, I have held the latter fear all my life as well. Homophobia is rooted in the same misogyny.\u00a0Maybe mine is: \u00a0‘Homophobic men are afraid gay men will turn them on. Gay men are afraid homophobic men will kill them.'”<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed. I’ve been consciously and unconsciously thinking and translating ideas like this one from Margaret Atwood all my life.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Sister Unity, for your timely reminder. So much is about policing sex and gender. Many queer people — especially those who are transgender — challenge gender norms by their very being, which in turn undermines male privilege. And that really really really pisses some people off.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a person who identifies as non-gender-conforming but who spends a lot of time passing for something-like-male, I’ve had a lifetime to reflect on the ways that male privilege has benefited me and the ways I remain attached to it — as well as the ways that it sickens the deepest roots of my soul. And that process never ends.<\/p>\n

We’ve got to work on this, people! All of us, with all the consciousness, openness, and non-defensiveness we can muster. And it won’t happen without the majority of male-identified folks taking part, listening, and growing.<\/p>\n

I feel blessed to know many guys who are doing this, and who taught me, at a time when every fiber of me believed otherwise, that men can be a good, loving, and necessary part of my life, and that I can love and make positive the parts of me that are masculine as well. May it be so one day for all of us, whatever gender we may be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margaret Atwood wrote: “Men are afraid of women laughing at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” And Sister Unity commented on Facebook: “As a gay man, I have held the latter fear all my life as well. Homophobia is rooted in the same misogyny.\u00a0Maybe mine is: \u00a0‘Homophobic men are afraid gay men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paaBIi-7r","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markbaum.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}