It is not the first time I’ve been called effeminate. For those of you who don’t know the definition of effeminate it is a derogatory term used to refer to a man having characteristics and behaviors traditionally associated with women and considered inappropriate for a man. Don’t ask me who decides it is inappropriate because I have no idea. Maybe The Hague has an International Court of Effeminacy.
I definitely have characteristics and behaviors traditionally associated (by who I have no idea) with women. I know this because I have been told so by any number of men. My wife uses the term girly man to describe me. I am a proud girly man.
I have, however, never used the label effeminate to describe anyone else. Though I do belong to a men’s group made up of girly men. We use our names when talking to each other though so I guess I have never used the girly man label on anyone else either. Just so you know, because otherwise I will get asked, at our last meeting we discussed and debated religious symbolism in the John Wick movies. We ate nachos and drank microbrews.
What inspired this poster to accuse me of wanting to impose my womanly masculinity on others? I hesitate to guess because the poster was responding to more than one of my comments and more than one other poster by this point and many of his posts seemed pretty angry. There were a lot of angry posts from various posters in this diary which struck both the diarist and I as surprising.
In my case I suspect my correspondent thought I was attempting to censor him and others. Apparently it came off as emasculating. I have never been accused of emasculating anyone before, never mind a large group of people. I am quite flattered somebody actually believed me capable of such a feat.
The diarist, Novapsyche, as I understood her, was trying to point out that when Democrats adopt the Republicans binary framing of Strong and Weak that it can lead to them also adopting some of the attitudes of Republicans. She got more than a little pushback and much of it consisted of people misunderstanding her point and claiming she was telling people to play nice. Given Novapsyche has never said any such thing and in fact holds a much more complex and assertive position vis a vis dealing with Republicans it seems likely Novapsyche hit a nerve. A really sensitive nerve.
For those of you who don’t know, for the few of you who don’t know, there is something of a contretemps going on here on DailyKos over how we should talk about Republicans on this site. A lot of people who post here want to write like Republicans. They want to use the same dehumanizing language, obscenities, banalities, idiocies and rhetorical brickbats that Republicans use when talking about Democrats.
These hate speech advocates have to win the rhetorical wars with the Republicans. It is essential to their mental and emotional well being and they honestly believe it is vital to the Democratic Party and the future of democracy in American that they go lower than Republicans. They hate the “when they go low we go high” meme. They want to replace it with “we are the champions of shit posting.”
This comes out of a firm and abiding belief that Democrats, Democratic politicians, and the Democratic Party aren’t tough enough.
I want to pause here and make it clear that I am a coward and a wimp. I am afraid of my own shadow. I live in fear.
However, I have lead hard men and hard women in hard missions in hard places. I have also spent part of my life patching up hard men and women and sending them out to fight again and maybe die. Over the course of many years I have trained special forces from seven countries in a range of skills. So while I may be a girly man and a cowardly wimp I do know what that sort of toughness looks like.
I have also helped over two thousand woman have babies. Now those women are tough. I know what that looks like.
I have even had the honor of helping special forces soldiers deliver their babies. Those women scare me, especially if I am the only man in the room when the labor goes on and on. I keep my hands in my pockets because untrained women have broken bones in my hands squeezing them during contractions. I have no desire to find out what an elite soldier can do when they are in that kind of pain.
I have crossed the Ice Falls on Mount Everest ferrying climbers and their gear up and down the mountain. I did that 40 times working with a young Sherpa woman. The Sherpa men we were helping did that as much as 100 times a season knowing that with each step up or down they could be killed. I have heard many climbers boast about how they crossed the Ice Falls twice or even four times like they are heroes.
For risking their lives over and over again the Sherpas were paid peanuts and treated like shit by climbers most of who would have died trying to cross that bizarre world of moving ice blocks and suddenly appearing crevasses without the Sherpas help. One day, after a number of members of their team died in an avalanche the Sherpas sat down and refused to work. The climbing community lost its collective shit. The Sherpas just went on sitting.
Today on Mount Everest you under pay or treat your Sherpas like shit they sit. Better yet they sit where there is no way past them and they start increasing their price to risk their lives to haul climbers and their gear up and down the mountain. I have seen that kind of toughness.
I could go on and on but my point is that I am pretty sure whatever hate speech shit posters in either Party are they are not tough. I am sure many people reading this will decide I am emasculating and censoring them by pointing out that none of the many astonishingly tough people I know have ever wasted a moment engaging in shit posting.
I’m not recommending playing nice, I don’t believe it gets you good outcomes. I have set fires, blown up buildings, and removed key parts from forestry equipment during my time as an environmental activist. I have a weird little speciality in lay ins. I’ve laid on logging roads, train tracks, and the Alaska Highway in pursuit of environmental and social justice. I’m an activist and playing nice is not something I indulge in, but neither is shit posting. Then again I’m an effeminate coward and a wimp. Maybe macho, macho men see things differently.
N.B. I won’t be responding to comments until tomorrow some time. I’m off to deliver babies. I will be keeping my hands in my pockets.