Peaceful Protesting
— BY ROSIE FEA
boys don’t read poetry -
write like a girl
cut to the punches, man
straight to the heart
make it hurt make it last
softness can kill
a deep thought can linger
there is no harm
in holding back
but if you want to be civil
you have to attack
make it messy
nonsensical
acute
and unfurling
girls can write tough
but will tough be enough
for the man who is barraged
behind
between
beneath
an unwillingness to
come to the frontline.
Observing our current hyper-feminist climate I am being reminded that healing is a universal need, not just singular. Stirring in me these considerations:
- passivity and indifference being worse than hatred.
- the unwillingness to move / act only perpetuates suffering by adding to it’s collective destruction (‘we cannot remedy anything by condemning it, this only adds to its destruction.’)
Lately there has been an undercurrent of contempt towards men that can trap even the most undeserving and contrary male in a hurtful stereotype - cold, disrespecting, piggish. But I do like to think we have moved further away from this tendency as a culture, in comparison to previous eras. We are now more apt to open the floor and discuss vulnerabilities - be it man or woman doing the sharing, and we need to do more of it.
It’s the only way to heal things: to nurture expression, usher in the brokenness with collective space, and meet indifference with curiosity rather than defensiveness and animosity.
To see the misguided pleas and indirect longings born of a skewed concept of love.
To appeal to the spark of the divine inherent in the other that has been snuffed out somewhere along the way.
Do not justify their wrongs / wrong actions, don’t water it down…But perhaps consider the above points carefully. What would result if we positioned ourselves in such a way that we don’t need to engage in the discussion so forcefully, or meekly long for men’s affirmation either? To instead seek to give it - to heal where we’ve all gone wayward in our expression of it. To restore the male view of what it is to be a man, of women, and of the love we have to share between us.
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