As soon as Politics became infused with social justice it was game over. Truth be told I'm glad now I got out as early as I did because god knows where we'd be now.
I talk about this a lot but I worked in the Charity sector for almost 20 years. Started off as a client and worked my way up to Project Manager. There are many areas of charity, mine was in work rehabilitation and mental health. Mainly those that were down on their luck and needed some insight, or people that had come out of hospital and needed re-integration at the workplace.
We helped thousands of people.
Thankless it was, but the reward was seeing the good work we had done applied to people. We didn't need a thank you, we could already see our help working in the way they lived their lives. It was an amazing job. But, jobs like these need funding and donations, and well, it all dried out when money tightened up.
I'm not a believer in privilege in the way it's talked about now. I've seen too much stuff. Like you can't automatically apply group characteristics to a whole subset of people.
Take me as a young man. Grew up in a 99.99% white neighbourhood. Mostly dirt poor and factory and shop workers. Did we get stopped by the police just for being there? Course we did - most of our area were on drugs and a high percentage of the youth were up to no good so we were stopped and cautioned all the time. Didn't matter if we were good boys. We were also followed and eyed in the shops!
I was one of the 0.02% of my area that transcended the expectations for my social class.
All through my working life I've also always been outnumbered by women by a factor of at least 10. So every 10 women in the workplace to one me -- so this whole men have it better and women have it worse, it's something I can't agree on because of what I've witnesses. We all have our struggles. I like to think we complete each other rather than work against each other.
Men go mostly unnoticed, that's why we seem loud and annoying. By 20 we've realised if we aren't in the faces of everyone then we'll just disappear. Quite different for women, there are many eyes on them! Lots of people to talk to.
I learned this myself. Even as an attractive man in my 20's, if I wasn't going to leap in there and get talking to people I was just going to disappear - so it may seem like we are loud, but we just want to be noticed lol
That being said, for what we lack in, women sure make up for. I'm a selfish autist that can't see past my nose. My wife is a selfless empath with great skills at reading between the lines. On the other hand those skills of mine make me a great worker in bringing home the bacon, and she doesn't need to work another day in her life.
It's the circle of life really.
So I'm still a social justice warrior, just not as what it is today. Today social justice is an ideal -- the goals live in fantasy. I've heard so many people say, "if we equalise men and women, or black and white"
We can't. What will you do with the exceptionally attractive women, and the women that are unattractive? How will you equalise that? And the short and tall men? How will you equalise them? These are inherently born-with traits that you can't do anything with - and you do get treated on with appearance, that's for sure.
I'd rather work at helping people deal with their negative attributes and get them thinking about how they can use them to their advantage, which is usually something I'm quite good at!
I'm more of a work with the world than change existing paradigms and culture and biology that has existed for a millennia! lol
What a marvelous comment and most excellent thoughts.
Thanks for taking the time to share them.
I hear you. In full. And bravo. 👏🏻
You've given me much to consider. And quite a lot of relief and peace with this share!
I'm going to go over it a few times. Let it simmer. Maybe revert and ask questions or maybe just accept that some things probably can't be changed and get on with being me.
Perhaps that's how things do change best.
Hypothesis and ideals maybe aren't as relevant in the world we live in anymore.
It's time for action.
Simplest to simply walk the walk then. 👍🏼
My thought is
Equal isn't equal as in same same for everyone.
Equal is pro rata taking into account the challenges of each sector and facilitating equal treatment and opportunity accordingly
If that's even possible with how complicated this can become
But rest now. And now I've also broken my glasses. *sigh
Thanks for sharing
So... I would love to have more of a convo about this and hear more of your take on it, if you're open to that.
If not happy to leave things here as am also paddling madly and busy trying to finish off projects and now a bit of work that came in as well.
My questions would be:
Do you have a daughter
If you could drop a list of female privilege in the comments here (this is a mouthy post about male privilege so brace yourself :D I'm actually keen to learn more as I only learned about this stuff a few years ago if you can believe that. I guess that's white female privilege right there! 😆)
https://peakd.com/hive-124452/@nickydee/my-strange-addiction-loh-103#comments
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Happy Monday! 🌸 (bleugh)