4/12/11
I would like to not besmirch my new blog with tales of woe relating to my legal troubles, but suffice it to say I decided today that perhaps I need to let it go. For my mental health. It was 5 weeks pay robbed of me by an employer, and I have since then spent as much time trying to get it back from him through the proper legal channels to no avail, and the court fees ended up costing me over $500. Even as I type this I feel my blood pressure starting to rise, so…
Anyway, in discussing my decision to let it go with the girlfriend this morning, my dander was raised and I began to vent about my anger and my desire for some kind of justice. I lamented that the same legal system that was so inept at protecting me from fraud and theft would swiftly come to his aid if I were to act out my aggression physically upon his person. This made her very upset as she is very opposed to violence in any real form. She expressed in no uncertain terms that she would not appreciate dating a man who thought physical violence was ever a recourse for monetary loss.
I tried to explain that violence is part of being a man, and I felt like here was a point where maybe we could have a discussion on masculinity in the same vein as our frequent discussions on femininity. I told her to think of two of her close guy friends, both married, both passive, easy-going dudes. I know that were they or their wives threatened, either of these mild-mannered guys are capable of extreme amounts of violence. Rare is the man who can truly ignore his emotions and instincts and remain completely passive in a threatening situation.
She responded that there is a difference: I was not threatened. But I feel worse than threatened here. I feel violated. I was taken-advantage-of. I was used, abused, demeaned, degraded, insulted. I was robbed and humiliated, and am now left with no option but either to give up on my right or to continue to suffer the abuses of this awful man.
I felt like it might be worthy to voice my thoughts on violence as a means to an end and to ask any reader or friend for thoughts on it as well. So this will be the beginning of a recurring segment on violence and its part in the human condition and what function I feel it still plays in my life and such.
The problem here is you only recognize two courses of action: Violence or "Completely Passive" behavior. Just because you don't exact rage, or physical manifestations of such doesn't make yo less of a man. And that's the problem with masculinity and why its only extremes. If you don't fit into the exact parameters of this masculinity, you have to "be a girl". Which is silly. So to help with this, stop thinking that you can only be violent, or completely passive. In a threatening situation, why is using your head and aggressively deflating a situation without violence not an option?
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