Had Hillary been Herman - The heartbreaking truth about American feminism

In response to Lauren Besser's article Had Bernie been Bernadette — The heartbreaking truth about American patriarchy and the many other articles I've seen on social media posted by my feminist friends.

I have never to my knowledge received a legitimate death threat that warranted FBI involvement. I don’t really know truly and personally what it feels like to treated as a second-class person. However, I have for my entire adult life known and supported female friends, who have struggled with body image issues, eating disorders, and wage gaps. I have seen the aftermath of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. I have on occasion called out male friends for making derogatory comments. I have made amateurish attempts to coach these female friends out of depression or in less severe cases through the anxiety induced by unnecessary social pressures at school and work.

I am, as best as I understand the word, a male feminist. I want a world where women don’t need to wake up an hour earlier in the morning get their hair and make up just right before going to work. I want a world where sexual violence is never blamed on the victim, or better yet it isn’t a default concern of half the population. I want to live in a country where a politician’s credentials, record, and character are their key to success – not their race, gender (identity), sex(-ual orientation), or other physical features.

In order to achieve this in my lifetime (or at least in the lifetime of my unborn grandchildren), we need to truly and fundamentally shift how society approaches these issues. We need not just one change agent, but many of them operating in earnest at all levels of society, business, and government.

It is with this understanding that I am growing continually frustrated with my many female/feminist friends, who are continually posting/sharing articles supporting Hillary as a true change agent, based on her credentials as a woman. (Or conversely, that Bernie is not the right choice for feminists - or any of the other many gender-related permutations of this conversation.) If Hillary had been born as Herman (and chose to remain as Herman as a gender identity), would you still admire her (or in this case his) credentials?

In one of the many articles considering where a feminist should stand on the Bernie or Hillary question, Lauren Besser poses/answers the questions:

“Are the sins of our institutions so terrible? Yes. Are those sins more terrible when committed by a woman? Seems so.”

I think she and other feminists (of any gender) would be better off asking themselves, “Do you want to change the system? Or do you want to have merely appeared to change the system?”

I would also suggest that these questions could also apply to many other issues, not the least of which being climate change, which all things being status quo means women should expect to be disproportionately impacted for generations to come.

A Call for Universal Human Dignity

Preamble

As we stand on the shoulders of giants and the progress of human innovation steadily ratchets up the ceiling on the realm of possibility, human society must vigilantly attend to the foundation on which that innovation was permitted to thrive, lest both crumble. As we continue to accrue the technological capital to allow a few in our society to approach a power that our ancestors would have considered god-like, we have the responsibility to ensure that even the lowest among us are able to live beyond the means of the kings of those same ancestors. It is with these sentiments that a call is issued for society to pursue and preserve a universal dignity for all of its members.

Tenets of Universal Human Survival

While nature abhors permanence and no individual being will live forever, the threshold of dignity cannot be bestowed upon someone who is unable to survive. Therefore, to support human dignity, these tenets of Universal Human Survival should be sought first and foremost for current and future generations.

1.          Clean Water, Air, and Food

2.         Basic Healthcare and Exercise

3.          Personal Safety and Shelter

4.         Reproductive Agency

Tenets of Universal Human Dignity

To ensure that no person is subjected to mere subsistence or servitude and that each person is able to experience as dignified an existence as nature will allow, a mutual bond between humans living in a free and modern society must concede the following tenets of human dignity to each individual member of society so long as it does not preclude the survival or dignity of another or put an undue burden on the society as a whole or the environment that supports it.

1.          Information and Education

2.         Communication and Expression

3.          Organization and Identification

4.         Mobility and Exploration

5.         Creation and Productivity

The Call

Similar to the physical laws of the universe, human society must counter entropy with work to prolong the values that we hold most dear. It is only through persistence of innovation and quality of character that human greatness can forestall the perils of time. By asking to ensure the rights of current and future generations, these Tenets do not leave room for waste, sloth, or pollution. However, where and whenever circumstances and technology permit, society should endeavor to cleave the tenuousness of human survival and dignity from unstable economic pressures, leaving only as much linkage as is necessary to perpetuate the institutions and systems that support Universal Human Dignity.

This is the first section of a longer document I wrote, originally published on the Revolutionary Peace Blog.