Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Empower Yourself

Reading a number of feminist and LGBT centric blog posts over the past several years, most of them have the right idea, focusing on awareness and empowerment of groups that have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented. The spirt of the movement seems to be about empowering individuals to live life as they feel compelled to live. Certainly, we all want the freedom to experience the world and interact with others in constructive, mutually beneficial ways, and some groups have been historically, systematically excluded from flowing through society in that way. Emphasizing that fact is important, and should definitely continue to take center stage until it becomes a reality. And, that's where it could end.

Sometimes it does end there. Occasionally, though, it continues into shall we say, darker realms, where negativity creeps in and people are encouraged to feel that, simply because they are lucky, they are somehow inherently wrong or bad or evil. Recognizably, usually, the intent of these darker facets is to further the awareness of less well-know societal aspects by prompting the readers to self-examine and analyze how they personally affect and are affected by groups with whom they may otherwise have considered only briefly. This is reasonable, and it can be done in a more positive way. For example, it works to to tell stories where the reader identifies with the primary actor and in which the primary actor goes through a transformative experience in relation to the subject matter. Alternatively, direct questions and answers based on personal experience are a good way to provide perspective. Do you know anyone who is homosexual? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be physically intimate with someone in order to share a human experience, even if that person is different from you in ways of which you have little understanding? Have you ever tried or even considered being someone you just met and who compulsively repulses you because of who they are? Are you repulsed because that's who you are, or are you repulsed because you have yet to fathom who they are?

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