“Every day is men’s day!”
A Colleague at Work
Sometimes it’s difficult to write an article and try to distill just one fragment. I start with one topic and then end up with seemingly three. Like today. I tried to explain to men what feminism was actually about and then ended talking about the catholic church and our system that we live in. The article was way too long. So I offer you a compromise – this article you’re reading right now will be short and fun and then I’ll send another one today, as long as it is for those of you who like to dive in deeper. Deal? OK.
Today we are celebrating Women’s Day. It became an actual bank holiday in Berlin (just Berlin and not in all of Germany). So I joked to my colleague yesterday – I have nothing against Women’s Day but where is Men’s Day? We have Mother’s Day, we have Valentine’s Day (which again focuses on giving flowers to women) and there is Women’s Day. And then Father’s Day but that’s it. My colleague thought of her husband and two spoiled sons and scowled: ”Every day is man’s day!”
LOL.
And so the eternal debate starts of what is fair and who gets more in life. The war of sexes is well and alive.
It’s funny, people hate feminism. It feels like a war declaration against men. I get it. Only this was never the case. But what does it matter? We don’t listen to each other anyway. I do explain what it was actually about in my longer article.
I don’t want to focus on the war between sexes. I want to discuss something far more exciting. Let’s play detectives and ask ourselves – who started the war? And please don’t just say “men!”.
Did you know that in the dawn of our time matriarchy existed before patriarchy? I wonder what that looked like. Well, without a time machine, it’s impossible to tell. What we can tell for sure is how our society is structured today.
Those of you who are devout church goers, cover your ears:)
All others tell me this. Remember how Eva gave Adam the apple and ‘made’ him sin according to the Bible? True, Eva was seduced by the snake, but do we really focus on the snake or on Eva being the bad one who made Adam fall? Do we ever try to find an excuse for a woman when she’s done something “wrong”? But Adam definitely has an excuse, he can blame it on Eva, period. He can choose to stay ignorant of the snake even if he later learns the truth and stay angry at Eva forever.
It’s easy to ignore the snake. Why? Help me figure this one out. Someone whispers something in our ear say…about our husband, and we will go on a rampage against our husband and not for one second will we ask ourselves if the whisper was actually true or why the whisper was sent to our ear in the first place. Our soul loves to find fault in others. Why? Does that make us feel better of ourselves for a moment? And why is that? Do we feel bad about ourselves? Again – why? Keep going down the rabbit hole, it’s scary fun.
Going back to our biblical charming story. Who wrote it? A man, a person wrote it. Just close your eyes and try to imagine. “Once upon a time there was a man, he sat down and wondered…’How could I convince all people to behave better.’ Did he really wonder that or did he wonder…’How can I make all people obey me? I have to distract them so well that I will have time to completely exploit them.’” Perhaps it wasn’t just one man. Maybe it was a group of men, sharing one goal – how to gain absolute power over humanity now and for all times to come.
We always think we know why we started the fight. Do we?
If it’s a war between countries or between husband and wife, isn’t it an interesting question if there was a snake who whispered in their ears…? Who was that snake? We never seem to see it, never to grasp its existence.
Here is a sword to this particular Gordian knot – it doesn’t matter who the snake is, not for our purposes. What matters is to acknowledge the fact we could be manipulated by invisible players in the background, the men who wrote the Bible and many other such manuals instructing how to “guide” us.
Therein lies our problem and challenge. We humans have the need for guidance. But as soon as we need someone to guide us, we give power to the one who is prepared to take over that guidance. It’s funny how we have a hard time to trust the one we love but no problem trusting some abstract power construct.
If we turned that around, what would happen then I wonder…
