I write too much tendentious, long-winded prose. I want to write like Chris Clarke, the subject of my most intense boy-crush/blog-crush. This post from Sunday on editing has me thinking and reflecting on how I can do better.
You look for an ending, and it is almost always obvious where that ending should be, and though the unpracticed often feel the urge to soften it, a good ending is of necessity abrupt.
Yeah, three divorces taught me that.
Hugo, I had written to you but you didn’t respond. I am not here to judge you but ask that you be sensible and sensitive for the sake of human beings. Yes both men and women are human beings. It is time for men to start understanding what it is to be a man. You have written that you have been divorce 3 times. That must have hurt.
Feminist studies might be fun but when you damage a whole lot of men in the process you are not doing any favours to anyone. Each life is of importance. Not just women’s.
Hugo, the right thing for you to do is start listening to men. Not judging them. Men don’t complain normally. This has not change. Your choice of ideology has moved faster than the women and men can cope.
It is time to pause and look around you. 90% of youth who are in crisis are from single parents being mostly single mothers. Our male youth are afraid to walk the streets. Our young females brag about stabbing young men who are trained to not hurt females in the open. Fathers are committing suicide because they can’t cope. I personally have seen a women who hung herself cut down from a garage because she couldn’t cope moving from England as a high profile designer to my country where the farmers would not even consider her worthwhile to discuss financial matters. Her and her husband wanted a change to move to the country life from the high profile city life.
Yes, there is work to be done in some countries for women and yes women’s groups are going to find women in crisis but it is more men on the whole that are now suffering in the Western world.
Please do not upset the work that feminist women and wonderful feminised men are trying to achieve. You can have your day in countries that need to care for women but please don’t disregard the work women and men are doing in the Western world. We don’t need to have body bags. We don’t even know if there is a God. Maybe this one life a young man has is the only life he is going to get. He lays in the street at 12 years of age and sometimes a bit older with his body bleeding to death and he frets just as a woman does that he will hurt his mother.
I sincerely implore you Hugo to be more than a sheep. Please be open minded to your brothers.
‘Feminist studies might be fun but when you damage a whole lot of men in the process you are not doing any favours to anyone. Each life is of importance. Not just women’s.’
Good luck in trying to convince him of that, Julie. He’s not listening. He’s not listening to men that don’t tow the party line. I like your post a lot, but Hugo is too into the concept that women are suffering worse than men no matter what. He can accuse me of “anti feminist bromides” as much as he wants; he lost me a long time ago, and that’s why I almost never post here. Your post is just reason as well as any.
You are very welcome into my own corner of the world, perhaps I’ll invite you over some way or another. Your compassion is a rarity at this point.
Chris
Chris , I do understand what you are saying but I have looked at the way Hugo writes. He is not so silly. He has a brain. Else I wouldn’t waste my time.
I don’t need to convince anything to Hugo. He seems like a man who is smart enough to question things. Else he wouldn’t be open minded enough to feminism.
I trust that Hugo has a mind of his own. And I trust that he will care for human rights. Until he tells me otherwise.
All I am bringing forward is the movement now. It is time for feminist men to come together on the whole to care for men. This is where we are today. I would feel pretty bad if Hugo was left behind and I do work in the field high up enough to let him know where we are going.
Don’t worry Chris. Women on the whole do not HATE men. We never did. I don’t know how this got so out of hand.
What a weird thread to come to.
Julie, I work with men all the time. I mentor high school boys in a youth group. I teach a course on men and masculinity. Read through my archives. Heck, read my post on the “three-guy rule” from last week — which none of the MRAs have commented on, because it doesn’t fit with their stereotype of me as a self-hating misandrist.
And my goodness, Chris, why do you still keep coming back and posting if I’ve lost you a long time ago?
I think that the secret to being an effective writer is to not think that everything you write is some kind of profound insight that few others will be capable of truly grasping. Being objective in ones writing and having the need to express ones self without expecting any return is what makes a good writer. Have you ever noticed that when reading material written by a capable writer, you do not usually feel overwhelmed by their personal views, but rather lead into evaluating the world from a perspective that may not have originally been your own.
Indeed, Elizabeth. Hence my huge crush on Chris Clarke, whose writing I both admire and fail utterly to emulate.
Hugo, I think it is great that you work with the youth and with men. BTW, than you for caring for the youth. I am very concerned myself for them.
But why then are you conflicting with the MRA?
Actually Hugo, my question above may create a stir and I would not want to be setting men up nor playing them off. So I wish to rephrase it.
Do you attend meetings on male issues with the anti feminist men? And do you guys get along face to face?
Yes, I’m very friendly with Glenn Sacks, the noted MRA. Do a seach through my archives for more on our relationship…
Hugo,
I am glad you are friendly with Glenn Sacks. I have read some of what he writes. But I don’t think he is an actual anti feminist. He seems to me to be more of a man who is pushing for men’s rights.
So I guess my question stands whether you mix with men who are anti feminists outside of the net?
I held (the group I work for) a very important meeting recently which strangely enough was a full house almost on men’s issues. It was sort of funny but it didn’t feel like it at the time because I wasn’t aware there was a divide between men with some being anti feminists and some not.
But it turned out great and maybe the great spread of food and mingling afterward made part of the difference. We are having men sent to us because their is a lack of men’s support and we work with both the men and the women in breakups.
We had the no.1 feminised male in the country attend which we were not prepared for because we thought he was still overseas. He protested during the meeting a little but by the end he had apologised to one of the males who fought extremely hard in the family court for the right to see his children. He was in the newspapers nationally and in Sweden beucuase he was forcing the mother to bring back the children. All about the Hague Convention. (well the laws around it) We have also helped a mother stop her ex from kidnapping her child on a trip to Fiji because Fiji is not part of the Hague Convention.
It is so difficult to work with relationships and the university professors meet International to try and make a one size fits all but there are just too many outliers.
I feel so sorry for you guys working with men.
“And my goodness, Chris, why do you still keep coming back and posting if I’ve lost you a long time ago?” — Hugo
Perhaps that was a little bit too far off (I try to resist blog reactions if I’m tipsy; unfortunately I was in this situation—the So Co was pretty powerful that night, not that I’m blaming it all on that, but making a coherent argument it is not the best time in that mood). Plus, I miss when there was less control on the debates here; it was still in the latter part of that phrase. I know what your intentions are for stricter rules, so you don’t have to re-hash them if you don’t want to.
Hugo, I do frequent blogs I rarely post on even if could. The reasons are several, but as much as you and I don’t share the same viewpoints, obviously, sticking with the same areas where members have common ground is a relief and a haven, but examination of other issues and different reflections on those issues can generate my own fiery prose when I decide to write. Sometimes you have ruminate about topics you basically have truck with; it’s easy to dismiss them with a convenient label or brand, it’s another to investigate them further than that. It’s always nice to rise up to that challenge.
Carry on.