The real issues

[arachne8x]

One of the responses to my last post encouraged me to be upset about the "real issues" instead of just Eminem's lyrics.

They had a good point.

Its not easy to get people to talk about the things that really bother me. The real underlying issues. Many people avoid any issue like violence towards women with a ten foot pole. These people include my more sensitive guy friends.

I used to spend a long time trying to get them to talk to me about them, things like prostitution, pornography, sexual harrassment, sexual abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, welfare, to name a few.

I don't as often anymore. I guess part of the reason is that many people I know don't really want to talk about them. But sometimes my dialogues with other people yielded interesting results, here is one of my favorite examples.

One of my friends back home used to avoid discussions over discrimination and harrassment like the plague.

Then he started working for a defense contractor, and he was surrounded by people who were sending the kind of shit around that you get fired for at most companies. It didn't bother him much at first. Then he started to realize how much the locker room talk was a part of his environment there. He couldn't get away from it. There were no women in his group but there were women nearby. It occured to him how I would feel if I worked there, or his mom, or his grandma, etc. He finally complained to his boss about it because it started to really bother him. The complaint was given almost no attention.

During this whole thing he and I talked a lot about the environment where he worked. He became more aware of what the big deal about harrassment is all about, and started to understand where some of my feelings and complaints are coming from.

I think its really awesome that one of my male friends realized how toxic his work environment was towards women and tried to do something about it.

I wish more of my conversations with people yielded results like that. I wish I had more time to do more about the problems out there.

But if wishes were horses beggars could ride right? So I am going to try next semester to get off my ass and do something about these things, just need to get the thesis out of the way first because otherwise I will go insane. I know the world's problems don't stop because I don't have time to deal, but I need to deal with some of my own first.

(BTW about the aforementioned friend from home, He is a great guy, single and cute, and lives on the east coast)