The grave danger of current “human rights” trends
I know there has never been more divide in the west than right now when people are crazy about so many social reforms. This is on its own a good thing and should be encouraged. People should care about social justice and peace above all else since without these two, society succumbs to tyranny and chaos.
The problem is that so many of the new issues in question are either coming from a perilous place or fueled by monetary interests. Or the methods used to pursue those changes only seem to be good in the short term but give room for grave future concerns.
The value of absolutes:
When we talk about fundamental human rights, we usually mention rights to life, freedom of speech, etc. What we mean by those is any rules or laws, or movements that infringe on those rights are morally wrong because they infringe on those rights. And any rules that do not infringe on those rights but use a method that infringes on those rights are a cause for concern too.
Moral dogmas of the western youth:
Recently people have been exercising said freedom of speech in coming out to speak up about the evils they observe in society. Those are usually based on individual experiences or stories heard from close friends. So the more the world is becoming smaller by means of social media networks, the more those experiences are shared and communicated. Therefore, people are ignited to act, hold onto something, and believe in the need for social reforms. This has good and dangerous sides, but the current dogmatic trend abhors ANY opposition to these ideas, making it dangerous and worrisome.
Some of the “truths” taught are worrisome, too, don’t get me wrong. But anything that limits honest conversation is worse, especially when it threatens violence or other severe punishments on anywho who even questions the veracity of any or all of those claims. In a way, it is like those truths are so sacred that even asking “is ALL of that right”, will get you canceled, fired or physically assaulted. Asking questions is not an invalid response to any new idea. It is, in fact, is a natural response to new ideas.
Consider, for instance, the firing of the Google employee James Damore for “perpetuating gender stereotypes .”When you hear this, you’d think he said, “men are good, women bad,” or “men are strong, and women are weak .”He didn’t, though, he said that the underrepresentation of women in tech isn’t simply based on misogyny, but there are fundamental differences in genders that can account for the lower female interests. Read his words.
Now, this could be true, or it could be wrong; that isn’t even my point at all. My point is: why can’t he say this and be fine? This isn’t a hateful statement. It is not discriminatory. It is not discrimination if someone says, “men are more interested in football than women”, even if the number is 51%, 49%, it means the statement is still correct. Now, this does not mean that the ultimate test of intelligence is in tech or football. It just means, for some reason, women tend to be more into this and men that. This is a fact that many people observe in their day-to-day lives.
This does not mean that people do not stretch this to misogynistic proportions to mean “men are better”. This happens too, but what if there’s a middle ground where we actually listen to what a person says and judge him based on what he talks about rather than punishing him for breaking a social commandment of the western youth?
The west says “tolerance is necessary,” but in reality, there’s a subtle connotation that says “unless you disagree with us, then we destroy you.”
Oversimplification of problems:
It would take painstaking efforts to discover, discuss and tackle every factor underlying the underrepresentation of women in many sectors, especially in leadership. But wouldn’t it be easier to pin it on only one thing and move on to the next? If we just say “Oppressive patriarchy,” this is a flashy enough statement to generate enough buzz and catch on.
This, however, does not provide actual strategies for individual women to help themselves but lay EVERYTHING down at the feet of the government as though that’s the ONLY problem holding women down. In other words, there is no personal responsibility: everything wrong is other people’s fault, men’s fault. But IF this isn’t the only problem every woman faces, this won’t provide anyone with any help. So, what’s the alternative? An actual conversation, for starters as to everything wrong with society and how to tackle each and everyone to help both men and women equally. In very practical terms, waging war against men will not help anyone.
It will not help women who need men as allies, it will not help men who also need women, and it won’t help men’s mental health either. You can say, “Oh, who cares.” Meaning you believe your life is not positively affected by men’s bravery, which would be a very naive statement since most of the dangerous security jobs are occupied by men. Both genders need each other, and we need each other whole. When a man is president, I do not benefit IN ANY WAY because i am a man. This oversimplification seeks more vengeance than any actual progressive solutions to issues.
What about your children? Shaming your boys into thinking they are toxic; and any expression of their genders is necessarily oppressive and hostile towards women. This is a horribly abusive notion and won’t help women in any real way. You will have more unfulfilled boys who will lash out more often and in the worst ways for such horrible teaching. It is like saying, “women have been oppressed, and the solution is to oppress men in return,” and I have been fighting for young women all my life, and I wonder, “What did I do wrong?”
I have used my anger and aggression to rescue a little girl being molested by her uncle years ago. If it were possible to remove every anger from me, I probably could never scare the man enough for him to let go of the young girl. But I have never fought anyone since then or had the urge to hit a woman. Not even a few years ago, when I was verbally abused. Or when in Miami, a woman I didn’t know sexually assaulted me in public by grabbing my crotch.
The point is: that taking the easiest interpretation of things is shameful, lazy, and dangerous. It will not create nearly the outcome you expect. The better solution is to encourage young men to express themselves freely but positively rather than shame and force them to repress the positive sides to their masculinity. This isn’t something you can coin into a dogma that will scratch upon people’s biases and hate, like “Toxic masculinity”.
There are so many other “dogmas” no one is allowed to challenge, but I challenge you to look for the middle in everything.
Do not be on the far left or on the far right. They’re usually more shinny with simple slogans that seem to make perfect sense. But they harbor more hate than good. See people’s honesty when they ask questions or challenge your views; that is tolerance! That is the bedrock of democracy. This hostility towards any opposition should worry you, it should not give you pleasure because you agree with those views forced upon the world. It should concern you that they are forced. Since it will give the idea of forcing a belief on people a good name. So if freedom of speech isn’t free unless everyone agrees with one particular thing, that is the opposite of freedom.
In other words: tyranny. Ironic right?
