I just need to write about this.
I am oftentimes know as the diplomat. I avoid conflict in light of trying to solve problems by acknowledging and incorporating the intricacies of both sides. I often will concede points in order for the other side to see my argument as a valid one, and in lieu of that conclusion agree to disagree.
But not this day.
This day I walked in and sat down. I looked at him and his ideology and picked a hill to die on. There were a million different negative elements to his point of view; it set the conceptualization of sexuality back fifty years, it was built on a knowledge base that was as narrow as it was unreal. And not unreal in the vastness of it, but in the way that this guy had built himself up to be the quintessential mind of the radius of the campus. He thinks that he can deliver men like me freedom. Freedom godamnit!
I sat down and he began to explain his philosophy and I waited for something of a concession.
- In the best of arguments the concession shines glorious as the strengthening mark, becasue it truly conceeds nothing. What it does show is that the the opposite argument can concurrently exist. It’s not ‘we agree to disagree’ or ‘both sides win’ but that both sides can be right at the same time, correct and incorrect answers do not neccesarily need to be reached but that we can exist in the middle while still remaining moral, ethical, and have a sturdy viewpoint and knowledge of its relation to a range of polemics.
But there was no concession.
There was not even the faint glimmer of thinking about the effect of his argument. He did not conceed that the view concieved of women as a lesser species, or that it was a narrow viewpoint, or even think about the way that the accumulation of his knowledge would have affected his view.
And what was worse, he was gaining a following.
I sat down and saw him talk her up, talk about how great her view was and how much we needed it in our culture. We are so full of ‘pussies’, and the world needs both sexes to be aggressive domineering boxes of sex drive and confidence. Indeed let us encourage the drunken frat boys who think that they aren’t getting any ‘play’ because they aren’t throwing girls on the bed and giving to them rough. Yes the idea of chivalry as we think of it in a medieval context is a myth, but it is a myth which has grown into a reality standard. Chivalry is what we are both talk about in the ensuing argument, only he desires to only phrase it as the encouragement of primitive desire. Being forward, confidence in yourself mentally physically emotionally sexually, what have you….is important to have. But the encouragement of a hierarchical dimension to this trait being inherently male and flaunting it as such does nothing but construct gender boundaries where we have seen a great deal of fluidity.
- Is it so wrong for there to be followers in this world? A sense of dependence, possibly a sense of community?
She (my friend, not my girlfriend) took it in, after all he knew how to defend himself, he could hide in the complexity of the argument. Yes, many guys need to learn how to be more confident in themselves and learn that confidence and a type of instinctual, primal, game was necessary. We guys don’t go up to girls as much right now, We don’t grab random girl’s ass’s in the workplace, We don’t try to charm them with an affect of the player, We are not easily angered, We are in touch with how We feel. In this variable, capitalized ‘We’ does not speak for all guys out there in the club trying to score a chick, but the We of 2009 is not the We of 1949, and while some argue we have digressed I think we have progressed. We have the tiniest flame of excitement and vision of the complex modern man. He exists in opposition to the forms of the previous years because he shows that We take many forms, and dissuade us from jokes about the complexity of women vs. the simplicity of men. Just read some gender theory, man, perhaps some Bordo or some Butler, before you come at me with your high headed notions of what is and what isn’t a ‘proper’ way to be a man.
The reason I argued as I did, scaring my girlfriend due to the vivaciousness with which I spoke and moved. I raised my voice to try to squash some of these notions, I ferverently boxed him, and he boxed me. We stayed in the ‘ring’ together for a good many minutes, and there was no victor, but I got my friend to agree with me before she was lead back to her ideas of self with those closed circut notions of mysticism and magic which he used to support himself.
- I learned in my philosophy of religion class that you cannot shake the believers, they will be cut down to their faith and go down with the ship. I have found this quality as admirable as frustrating in current years.
So we came away at a draw, which I realize solidifies a metaphor of competitiveness which only would support with claims. But I couldn’t stand by and watch him dupe anyone. I had to fight. Fight.
I was the only one there to do it. He fought using rhetorical and social tools, he fought using objectivity, evidence, pathos. My girlfriend and friend could only fight the empirical, or on the moral level, but neither truly traced reasoning back to theory and philosophy. Neith of them had the tools to take him, and I had tools that could work, but not enough.
Because simply when I came away from the argument-When I wrestled myself free from the anger of the moment. At this man who, under the guise of freedom and MY PERSONAL GOOD! mind you, wanted to blanket the minds of a close friend who I have tried time and time again to reveal complexity to, I had to step in and fight. But it did no good, he will continue, I will continue, and we will both move in elipses around different suns. And tonight we came together, and it was everything I had to keep the sense of diplomacy that I have learned to depend on.
God I hate him.
