First up, one of my friends shared a link:
Really hit the nail on the head with this short film: http://www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/this-powerful-video-shows-men-what-it-feels-like-to-be-subjeThe name of the short my friend linked to is "Oppressed Majority." It's an attempt at portraying gender role-reversal. While I won't impute motives to whoever wrote this, the impression that my friend got (and that was conveyed on the site that was linked to) was that this shows men what women face, that it's an eye-opener or whatever. And yeah, in that case, since women are a majority of the adult population, the title would indicate that it's actually the women that are oppressed in this story, but let's not get hung up on technicalities. Majority, minority: they both start with the same letter.
If the idea is to provide insight for clueless men on the plight of women everywhere, I'm not sure how this short is supposed to work toward that goal, on account of how any man that watches it will hate the main character and probably call him names or something. And while I can't support it with evidence, I'm convinced that is doubly true for women who aren't either feminists or who miss the not-so-subtle cues that this is what the short is about. If I actually thought that this was representative of the lives women lead (and by a long shot, I do not), I'd conclude that women are a bunch of big, stupid crybabies. I was going to cover all the details, but I should go to sleep instead, and I think the stupidity here is obvious enough that anyone who isn't already brainwashed to like this sort of crap would know what I'm going to say anyway.
And then there's this other thing. Tyler, I am going to kill you. Actually, I don't think Tyler reads this blog. In that case, I'm not really sure what to threaten him with. Well, I'm not going to comment on something that someone else, not one of my friends, posted on Facebook, even though it showed up when I went to Facebook after Tyler commented on it. I had started an overly polite comment, but I decided against it. Anyway, someone I don't know linked to this: http://thefeministwire.com/2013/06/why-do-white-guys-hate-my-hijab/
Tyler commented:
"Why do white guys..." The answer is because they're white guys.I was initially going to try to be diplomatic about this. I had started typing something about how with all the myriad social and cultural factors in some setting that he's only hearing about third-hand, through the internet, the conclusion is a flippant "white guys." Whities gonna white, you know?
I'm coming up with all these ways, some tactful and some scathing, to address this. And I'm at a loss. All I can say right now is that I guess I expected better from my friend in this case, and apparently I was wrong to do that. Oh well. I sleep now.
