A lot of atheists aren’t well understood. We don’t make up a major proportion of society and there are no such thing as atheist bars and clubs. The heathens must dance with the believers. A lot of us come under the category of nerds and this often comes with the attendant issues of being considered an inferior social class during the formative years of high school. That we lack confidence, the willingness and capability to pick ourselves up after we fall down.
I understand women have it incredibly rough, but spare a thought for the men involved. Society expects us to be the instigator of relationships. We are not bombarded with the idea that we can seduce women with the mere click of our fingers. We are told that IF we cannot seduce a woman with the mere click of our fingers then there is something inherently broken about us. And you start believing it, particularly if you are single and aren’t getting any dates. You can put on a brave face and say “oh, I don’t mind” but you do mind. For the most of us, being single is okay only if you are dating on a regular basis. If you are celibate it gets irritating and you start losing the plot since you are still being bombarded with the “you are broken” message. Either you are weird, or are ugly or that there is something so repulsive about your person that you are single. A lot of us come from such a background. This is incredibly toxic and I feel it is part of the reason why men are misogynistic particularly in this supposedly enlightened period.
So you either go down the route of self pity or you decide that it’s not you who is the problem. It’s the women/men you are trying to attract. That’s the route of a lot of the issues of attacks against feminism and the choice a woman has to say yes or no.
I know what it was like because I went through the whole “single geek” phase of life. I had my first date aged 20 and considered myself ugly due to a forehead scar and losing my hair at a young age. Women probably thought so too because I didn’t have the courage to shave my head when I was younger, nor did I dress with any guiding common sense. I didn’t have the confidence to dance or to talk to girls in bars. Eventually I stopped caring and the confidence came. I still know what it’s like because it has been nearly 2 years since I went on a date (yes I have been celibate for nearly 2 years come august). I have caught myself complaining about how the issue is about the women rather than my own choices coming back to bite me.
So while not as sexist as other organisations, we do have a problem in that we were a primarily male demography with a sudden influx of women and this has suddenly caused a friction between the group of men who have a deep seated resentment to women for the faulty reasoning above spilling over into the actual topics that we have in common.
3 comments
Tera_byte
July 4, 2011 at 9:10 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
You never heard 'Love in an elevator'? ^_^
Avicenna
July 4, 2011 at 9:19 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
I have not! It sounds messy and illegal.
Avicenna
July 8, 2011 at 6:48 PM (UTC 5.5) Link to this comment
I have not! It sounds messy and illegal.