Ladies: Ask Him Out!

Back in high school, every year they would have the Sadie Hawkins dance, in which the girls asked out the guys for a change. I remember being puzzled by this. Why should that be different than any other dance, I wondered?

I am tired of hearing women complain about how men ignore them, they don't get asked out, etc.Buck up and ask him out ladies! Let's discard this old-fashioned nonsense about how men always have to make the first move, open doors, pay for the date and so forth. Why can't it be more equal? I mean, we say that we want equality and yet we still expect men to do all this stuff for us.

Now I know some of us are shy, but well, so are some men. Of course, it's O.K. , even becoming for a woman to be shy but for a man to be shy and sensitive is just, well *unmanly*. It's not just the male locker-room where this attitude persists- women buy into it too. C'mon, give the "non-macho" guys a chance!

So by women making "the first move" from dates to dances to even proposing marriage, gender roles of both women and men can become more flexible. Plus, think about it: if the man is always the one to go first- he has more power.

Dis/ableism

Many dictionaries don’t even recognize the word classism, let alone the somewhat more obscure term “ableism”. I’ve never heard the term “disablism” used before but I realized when thinking about this that a more apt term would be dis/ableism. Other “isms” that describe systems of oppression like racism and sexism- refer to a specific category that everyone is supposed to have. When filling out a form, you check boxes for race, sex, etc. but there isn’t a disability box because not everyone is considered to have one. Almost everyone has some sort of mental or physical condition- being near-sighted for example- but many of these are not considered "disabling" enough.

The interesting thing is, unlike one’s race and sex, which generally doesn’t change from birth, dis/ability status can, and often does change throughout one’s lifetime. Through accident, chance or simply the natural decline of the body with age, many people develop disabilities of some kind. Likewise, if one is born with a disability can sometimes be cured or is treated so that they are seen as less disabled. Dis/ability thus is the interplay between being what is percieved as a “normal” able bodied and minded person and a person with a body/mind that isn’t quite up to the standard.
I think part of dis/ableism stems from the fear of becoming or being disabled which people connect to fear of weakness, vulnerability, old age and death. Keeping people with disabilities out of sight means people don’t have to be confronted with their vulnerabilities. I wonder if we had a broader concept of strength, and a more positive view of the elderly and of death, that that would affect our view of disability.

People with disabilities also challenge the very perceptions of what it means to be human. Humanity is defined by the ability to walk upright, speak and think in a certain way. Because of this disabled people are defined as being outside of humanity, or only partially human. We need a broader view of humanity- we have been struggling to include people of different ethnicities, nationalities, genders etc. in our concept of humanity and we need to extend that to include the concept that people naturally have different kinds of minds and bodies that work differently. The problem is our world is designed to include only people with certain kinds of minds and bodies. Let’s envision a world where all people can live to their potential, live full lives and participate in whatever aspect of life they wish to. Then, let’s find practical ways of making that vision a reality.

This post was written for "Blog against Disablism Day" in May 2006-

There were a lot of great contributions to this, so even though it's old please check it out.

My original post can be found here, though I have edited it a little since then.

Focus of this Blog

I seemed to have developed a tendency to change the topic of a blog once I start it. I like the idea of a blog focussed on an area so as to zero in on a particular audience but I'm interested in many different topics and so now I have many blogs. I have another blog on both my spiritual path and politics and how they intersect, but I figured some would prefer just to read the political posts.

So first I'm going to move some of my old posts that are relevant over here. Even within the realm of politics there is a huge range of issues- I'm interested in the environment, the peace/anti-war movement, GLBT issues, race/ethnic relations, gender/feminism, disability, class/labor/economic issues and all of these things relate to how they are percieved by society as a whole so I will also be making some sociological observations.

Hello

Hi just started this blog so I could comment on other peoples blogs (!) but once I have time (in about a week) I will try begin posting.