Why any slightest discomfort of woman is a municipal-to-national-level tragedy and requires immediate action, but a death of a man, such as me, will be business as usual, no eye blinked. How is this just and fair. How how how how how.

the-real-seebs:

theunitofcaring:

Everybody matters. You matter. It would matter if you died, and it matters that you’re hurting, and it sounds like right now you’re hurting a lot. 

I assume, since you’re on tumblr, which has many deficiencies but not a shortage of different perspectives on gender relations, that you’ve already seen analysis to the effect that our society denies women agency and denies men inherent worth – we treat women like they can’t accomplish anything and are fragile and need protecting and can’t really hurt people and will not produce anything of value, and we treat men like they are only as valuable as the things they produce, and matter only if they earn it through hard work, and earn value by providing it to other people. Both of these things suck. 

I am assuming that you have seen posts saying that, because there are lots of them, and that they have not made you feel any better, for the same reason that “some people get too much attention, and some get ignored, and it makes sense for many people to focus on the first problem” is not very reassuring to someone who is desperately lonely, and “some people are drowning, but some don’t have enough access to water, and it makes sense for many people to focus on the second problem” is not very reassuring to drowning people. Sometimes you need someone to care about your problem – not to contextualize it, not to explain how it is the offspring of another problem which lots of people care about, not to describe how the opposite of your problem is also a source of suffering, just to care about your problem and go “holy shit how awful”.

So, yeah. Holy shit, that’s awful. Our world did not tell you “you have likes and dislikes, and they matter. You have feelings, and they matter. You deserve to be happy, and you deserve to be valued, not for the things you accomplish but for the person you are.” Our world did not tell you “people ought to treat you well, whether you have “earned” it by being successful or not.” Our world did not tell you that ‘successful’ is a ugly contrived complicated painful thing that many people cannot reach no matter how they try, and that you are just as valuable if you never reach it. Our world did try to convince you that it was heroic to kill people and heroic to die for people; it did try to convince you that if you were successful then you would be loved; it did try to convince you that the people who were hated for being ‘losers’ deserved it. It did present all kinds of variously fucked up ideals of men who were valuable, and promise that if you contorted yourself into them then you’d be valuable too. 

Holy shit. That’s awful.

I’m so sorry, man. I’m so sorry. You deserved better. You deserve better. You matter, and have always mattered, and will always matter, and there is an entire universe that did its best to convince you otherwise and that is awful and I hate it and I wish it hadn’t been that way and I wish that it would stop.

I don’t know what it would have helped you to hear. But if you know – maybe tell it to someone. Maybe find a guy – not just a kid, I don’t think this only hurts boys in their formative stage, I think it hurts men every minute of their lives – and tell him whatever you needed to hear while the universe was yelling the exact opposite – and then it’ll be a little bit better.  

TUOC continues to be a pretty excellent example of why I think humanity is actually sorta cool.