Today, I saw this tweet from The Onion:

I thought immediately of something I felt very strongly about when events were unfolding in Ferguson: Most people just want to be left alone. They don’t want to think about systemic problems in society. In theory, they want freedom of speech and equality for all, but the process by which we get there from here is icky and full of unpleasant feels.

So they look the other way and let others decide for them how things will take place and whether there will ever be change. In 1972, this picture did a lot to force Americans to feel very uncomfortable, and to think very hard about what was going on in their name in Vietnam:

It’s not the only one, of course. There was the news about the massacre in My Lai, and the shootings at Kent State immortalized by CSN&Y.

Anyhow, my reaction was to snarf the picture from The Onion’s tweet:

Now let me say immediately, this tweet is absolutely about gender inequalities. But it’s also about colour, wealth, education, and other inequality problems that the vast majority of people–male, female, white, black, and everything else–would in theory want abolished, but in practice don’t want any change to involve them personally. Problems most people don’t want to think about. Or have uncomfortable feelings about. Or be asked to do something about.

The tweet is actually about this nature of ours to want to make the disturbing bad feelings go away. We’re not bad people, but gosh, that bug issue is still open, and I have to pick the kids up by 4:30, and maybe now isn’t the best time to have a long talk about the ethics of eating meat. Although the picture is of one man, the tweet is about the entire Internet.

Never mind that I’m reading Twitter on a phone manufactured by people who make less in a day than I make when someone clicks the “buy” button for one of my books. (More about that from Louis CK, below.)

my message to you

Anyhow, that’s the back story behind my tweet. And your response was to accuse me of “misandry.”

Please reconsider your position. In fact, please reconsider the mental habits that led you to your position. It’s true that there are lots of discussions about inequality between genders these days, and passions are running high. You assumed that I was talking about gender inequalities.

And you’re right-ish. But not in the sense that I was tweeting about all men, and that somehow all women are absolved of any accusations with respect to wanting to live in a comfortable bubble. Because I was also tweeting about colour and wealth and education and country and access to the Internet and everything else implied by the word “inequality.”

Furthermore, you didn’t just assume that I was criticising the behaviour of men, but that I hate men. This not only wrong, it is symptomatic of some very dangerous mental habits. Criticism is not equal to hate. Colleagues critique each other’s work. Friends critique each other’s behaviour. If anything, criticism is a sign that you are invested in somebody else’s development. It’s a kind of optimism about their ability to grow.

In fact, I am patronizingly assuming that you will grow and develop. Maybe not from this open letter. But over time, if you hear the same message a few times, and should you hear it from someone you trust, perhaps you will think about it a bit.

And maybe the next time you see something tlike this, you will respond more thoughtfully. Here’s why:

in closing

One way to avoid the difficult feels and avoid the hard work of thinking and/or acting is to look the other way. To change the channel. That’s what most people do. But the other way is to oversimplify: “Those people in Ferguson, they’re animals, look at their violent behaviour!” “That guy tweeting, he’s a feminist troll!!”

You see what I’m saying: Accusing a critic of some simple and boolean thing like “misandry” is just another way to run away from the hard work involved in seeing life as it is, of analyzing the criticism and seeing that some of it may be off-the-mark but that some of it may point to important truths.

Reality is always complicated and messy and painful and uncomfortable to embrace.

Embrace it anyway. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to make reality simple and easy. Don’t demonize people who raise subjects that you find uncomfortable to face.