It is a movement if you haven’t heard. Women are deciding to remove men from the center of their lives. Thus the whole “Decenter men” title. I don’t like it from the title. First of all, if we really were going to reorient our lives removing men from the center of them, shouldn’t our movement be called something else?
ReCenter Women
Center Women
Taking Back Our Lives
I mean anything other than creating a movement designed to place women at the very center of their lives being titled with men as the central focus (they are in the fucking title - women are not) seems to me to be off to a fucked up start.
I get the concept. Men have been a very centralized and focal point for women for well, ever. Even if we go back 40 years, we women were so very limited in what we could do: we could not rent our own apartment, we could not get a loan easily, our work options were very limited and if we did not want or could not “land” a husband then we were fucked and unwanted and thrown on the scrap heap of discarded female waste. We pretty much had to want children and the women’s liberation movement, while doing a fuck ton of good things for women (reproductive rights, cracking the glass ceiling, getting us a share margin in the workforce, equality in ways that had never been accomplished prior, political platforms that actually had depth and weight) they also inadvertently created more work for us. Because now we had the right to have a career AND a family. But it kind of became this “well do all the things the 1950s housewife did, while running a Fortune 500 company and oh by the way, make it look easy and fun and not stressful, and don't fucking complain about how hard it actually is."
Yeah, thanks for that.
But I think as a gender we have always had men at the very center of our lives. Certainly not all women, some women have worked very hard to avoid men at all costs. But most of those women are doing so because men were so horrifically abusive to them or inflicted so much pain that there was no other choice for them. And I think every woman I know can say that more than one man in her life has caused her a great deal of pain, pain that was inflicted solely due to the still existing power imbalance between men and women.
So if we are going to start a movement where we remove men from the center of our lives, let’s start with not giving them top billing. I mean, seriously, call it any fucking other thing but that. And I would honestly prefer something more gender neutral - something that encourages human beings to become the center of their own lives in order for them to become more awake, of service and better at doing this whole living thing.
For me, at least where I am today, is that I too could give you at 100 reasons as to why men should be eradicated from my life. And I would be well within my rights to take that stance. However, that would also eliminate a great many men who have been nothing but lovely to me. That have been true friends, family and confidants. For me, it isn’t about removing men, it is about loving and caring for myself enough to allow no one entrance to my life that is going to engage in shitty, abusive, fucked up behavior. Men do not have a corner on that market as it turns out. I have been fucked over by women in ways that almost felt worse than the shit men have done. Female betrayal of other women is some kind of next level pain. And mostly, women do that to other women over a fucking man.
Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that we don’t need to push away an entire gender to take back what has always been ours. What we need to do is stop outsourcing our lives and happiness to people who have proven repeatedly that they are not capable or really interested. It is OUR life. And WE are responsible for who we allow in, and how far.
I like the title, “Life centering” better. Makes me feel like this is a more global and inclusive way to live. In this paradigm, there can be women and men and trans and every one else who is granted the possibility of entrance to my life. But I am in charge of the gate keeping. I am in charge of who I let in and why. And I am responsible to myself for dealing with all the broken parts of me that allow these other people in that should have never been granted any access at all. For me, and this is just my inventory, not a gross generalized judgment of others, I have to deal with the parts of me that allow people to come in who do not like me, mistreat me and hurt me. I mean sometimes those people have inserted themselves and I had no power to stop them. But other than a few of those instances, it was me that flung wide the door and gave them a full access pass to me and my life. When I should have never opened the fucking door in the first place.
So today, for me, I don’t need to decenter men. And I am not really sure recentering women gets me there either. To me, it goes above gender to personal accountability. I have to see that it is me that is in charge of my life, my happiness, my friendships, my relationships. Me. I get to decide thanks to all the women, and a few men, that fought for me to own this house on my own, to have a career of my own, to raise my children on my own, to have financial independence on my own. I stand where I am today on the shoulders of the many generations of women who suffered, were abused, curtailed and blocked from having any agency and control over their minds, their bodies or their lives.
Today I remind myself as often as I can that I am only where I am because of the efforts of all those that came before me. And my debt and duty to them is to continue to work, endeavoring to reach higher and farther, extending the legacy of all that it means to be female to some new, previously unexamined and unbelieved place of existence. I do not want to be male. I do not want to take on all the characteristics of men in order to feel I am their equal. I already know that I am. Because I am different and in that difference I own power that has only just begun to be explored, tapped and utilized.
So I will not join the decenter men movement. They can have it. I am going to stay right where I am living this life of mine. That is fully, 100% mine. And I am standing in the bright spotlight of my own life, relishing all that I get to do, be and have. Which on some occasions, includes the men that I decide are worthy enough to be here.
And that feels like a movement. A thunderous applause of rebellion...which is something I have always wanted to be a part of...and now I am.
Comments