....

The last three posts have been deleted.
I'm officially sorry I posted anything.
I'm sorry if I somehow insulted people by trying to delve into such a contrivercial topic.
I'm sorry if I missed a point you were trying to make.
Mostly, I'm sorry that most of you missed any point I was trying to make.

From now on, I'll keep any and all my opinions to myself.
Or maybe I'll get rid of the journal. I think too many people read it.
I dunno.

I'm not fighting with anyone anymore. My opinions were not fully formed when I posted. I can't get into a long logical battle with anyone because, honestly, unless it's one of the few things I know about (and feminism is not one of them), I won't win.
I felt that I put alot of effort into something and it was, at least, never appreciated.
I've tried to be open-minded. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'll never "get it" myself.
I don't know.

On Evolution

I'm going to discuss the evolution of a man, specifically me.
This is, to some extent, an explanation and an apology.
I have disabled comments because, frankly, I'm most definately not ready to accept constructive criticism about my Self today. (Truth be told, I rarely am.)

To some extent, I've made great bounds. I've changed alot in certain ways. I finally settled down with a major and graduated and found a direction in life. I've gone from unhappy jew to more or less happy pagan (I won't define myself as any more than that because, frankly, I don't know where in that spectrum I truly belong). I've made fair strides to being able to speak to dealing with minor annoyances without blowing up.
To some extent, I've hardly changed at all.

It may surprise no one that when I was younger, I was a very angry young man.
I've always had a cause. When I was younger, I was sure that I was right and the world was wrong. The world was, somehow, black and white, right and wrong. If you did things to hurt people, you were right. If you did things to help people, you were wrong.
Somewhere along the way, I heard too many stories about how terrible the white male was and I looked around at myself and the people who I loved (my father excluded, of course) and decided that those sentiments were pure crap and anyone spouting them, even jokingly (because, and I should know, sometimes we say things jokingly that we truly mean), were full of crap.
I made the mistake of lumping all modern feminists as being like the male-bashers I'd met throughout school and college and decided the entire movement was crap.
The same basically goes true for "race equality" because our parents generation HAD won many hard-earned and necessary freedoms and managed to desegregate the schools only to see their children practicing a sort of self-segregation (at least in my school), where they all sat together, hung out together etc.
These were important issues. I was the one who, thanks to thinks like affirmative action and the growth of "Women/Gay/Black/Whatever Pride" was, somehow, being screwed.

Somewhere along the line I had to look at my life and say... when? When was I ever screwed by any of these causes? Answer: Never.
I've been screwed plenty of times in my life, but by individual people. This philosophy evolved somewhere through my middle years of college when I realized that the problem wasn't with an entire race/sex of people, but with specific people. Perhaps the feminine extremists or the Right Wing Conservatives or just stupid small-minded people.

Then, I suppose, I made the most terrifying realization of all of them. I was the small-minded one. Perhaps to some extent, I still am. Prejudices run deep within me. I was small-minded and I didn't like it and so I'm making an effort to get away from that, which is why I delved into feminism to begin with.

One of the things that deeply bothers me, though, is my history of posting things to LJ is... bad. I'll go off on something hard and when I do, most of the time, someone totally misunderstands it, others are angry by it and someone or someones force me to confront how stupid such and such a point is (which is eternally frustrating when it was not a point I was making or ready to discuss), which inevitably leads to me getting defensive. I put alot of myself in my rants and, often, wear my heart right on my sleeve. I've been known to take an academic sort of disagreement to heart because the people reading my rants don't know that.
And yet I keep writing them because... sometimes it's just what I need to talk about.
My journal is not nor has ever been only "Here's a Quiz. Let me tell you about my day." Sometimes something bugs me and itches under my skin until I deal with it. By writing about it, I deal with it. I don't know why I make these writings public. Perhaps because others do? I dunno.

The next thing that's entierly true about me is that I'm stubborn. If I get it in my head that something is true than only time itself will get it out of my head. At least for the important things. To some limited extent, I'm willing to accept new thought, but only in my own time.
I can't describe for you the mood I need to be in to have a good conversation. I know I have them. I recently had a really good conversation with bastardized, but I'm easily offput if I sense that your opinions are somehow condoning mine. For me, there's a thin line to be drawn between simple criticism and constructive criticism. It's alot like (though I can't define it exactly) the difference between saying "No, you're wrong. This is true." and "OK, I can see that point of view. What I feel is..." To some extent, if I feel you aren't listening to me or understanding what I'm saying, than I won't listen to you.
Unfair? Yeah, but no less true.

What happened yesterday/today?
For me, it comes down to the following.
For me, yesterday was the first time I ever publicly accepted feminism as legit. This was important to me. I put alot of effort into it, especially to make sure that my point would be made loud and clear without someone (and I imagined it would be a feminist), telling me how terribly sexist I am.
I'm not sure what I expected. Not trumpets and bells and such. For most of you, that fact was not even known, which was fine by me. I think, when I opened up comments, what I had not expected was such controversy.
What I expected was something alike to "Yes, by and large I agree with your assessment of what feminism is today." or "You're correct here, but the point you missed was..."
I'm not convinced that many or any of you really saw my post for what it was, an acceptance of feminism, so long as we were referring to constructive feminism and not male-bashing.
What I think you guys read it as was an excuse to get into the controversies surrounding new feminism: genderless pronouns, female culture and such.

If I was shown one thing it was that, at least to some of you, I'm still fairly conservative.
Actually, I'm OK with being fairly conservative. I doubt I'll ever agree with everything feminism (or any other movement, for that matter) believes in, which is fine by me. I'm not the type of person to accept something simply because someone feels I should.
I doubt I'll ever feel that a genderless pronoun is truly a necessity.
I doubt I'll ever look at pornography as being a terrible evil of the world.
I know I'll never look upon women as anything more than people who are just as fucked up as men-people.
To me, that's good enough. Maybe, to you, it never will be.
For me, you see, it's evolution. I know where I started. I know where I am now. Maybe it's taken some near-interminable period, but that doesn't matter.
I'm trying very hard to be open-minded. In general, that's not an easy thing for someone who seems to be continuously angry or grumpy to do, but over time I've learned to accept certain things about people.
I cherish some of you, my friends, very much, despite the fact that I don't necessarily agree with your viewpoints. To me, that as it should be.
In time, I learn new things, get exposed to different thoughts and perhaps "mellow out" with age, but it's a slow process and someone telling me that I should think this or do that... it doesn't, in general, work like that. Not for me. Perhaps not for anyone.

The point of this post is... I'm evolving. Yesterday I publicly accepted that feminism isn't just a bunch of man-bashing women, but a legitimate and important movement. Who knows what I'll be willing to accept tommorow?
I think that the trip itself is just as important as where I am now.

That's really all I have to say for tonite.
Good night, LJ-land.