Cracked Pot Meditations – Safe Places

Meditation for September 11th, 2016

Safe Places

Fifteen years ago terrorists hijacked four planes and flew them into the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and one just fell into Pennsylvania with the idea that the passengers overpowered the hijackers. Nothing will ever be the same. It was so powerful, so awe inspiring that some won’t even acknowledge it happened like it did and reach out for others to blame. America was attacked.

Up to that moment, other than a few minor instances before, America has been a safe place for men. We have enjoyed our freedoms and our luxuries with no cause to worry that it could all be taken. 9/11 proved that you can never know when and how we might be attacked.

We reacted with law and military. We invaded two countries, arrested, enhanced interrogated, imprisoned for a long period of time,killed, drone strikes several other countries, assassinated our own citizens, and we made laws that restricted the rights of ours and we started to take a lot longer to get on planes. We can not accept an unsafe place.

In a lot of ways our aggressive reaction to feeling unsafe made the world less safe. We created ISIS and we have just as much of an idea if we are going to be attacked as we might have on September 11th. We don’t feel safe.

The freedom people with their Don’t Tread On Me flags demand freedom over safety with guns, but demand safety over freedom for the fight against terrorism. They won’t even change the law to help keep guns out of terrorists hands, but won’t vote for policies or those who make policies that may help make the world a safer place in the long run because of guns, fags and taxes.

Women also never feel safe. They haven’t felt safe longer than 9/11. We will not create a safe place for our sisters, mothers and daughters to find solace and be protected by men who rape, condone rape or protect others who rape. If a woman feels weird about a man, but it might get in the way of their wellbeing financially or otherwise, they have to just stand there while a man leers, says awful things or tries worse.

I know that comparing a woman’s day in a park to 3,000 people perishing from a violent religious attack seems dramatic, but I can’t help but see that any less won’t reach certain people’s minds.

We want to be safe. We want to go through our day without our wellbeing being threatened. We want to say what we want, wear what we want, worship the way we want and just be able to go from point A to point B when we want. This is freedom, but it isn’t safe for women.

A woman legally has every right a man has now. She can navigate our fine society at the same leisure and speed a man can. There is even a woman running for president. Legally, we are on the right side of history. A man on the other hand can say whatever the fuck he wants. He can say to a woman, “I’m gonna follow you home.” and it is completely his right to do so. She has to literally wait till the man makes negative contact with her for any kind of legal line to be crossed, and that doesn’t mean that he will be punished or that law enforcement will show up in time to save her life.

If a woman is raped, and she does follow legal action to find recitation for harm done, she may not be believed, nor will there be a trial or any legal action taken because there might not be enough evidence. She may have initiated contact. She may have met this man on tinder and went to meet up for drinks. She may have dated this person for years. She may have married this man. There is always something that puts the doubt in the man’s head that she didn’t at least put herself in that position.

That is not freedom: not putting oneself in a situation. 9/11 happened because of terrible foreign affair decisions made by the United States to protect it’s economic and resources interests over seas. We have spent the twentieth century uninstalling and installing leaders. These new leader might be complete human right nightmares, but at least they ain’t communists anymore! We can literally say we put ourselves in the position to be struck by terrorists.

America asked for it. America shouldn’t have worn that short skirt (have tall towers). America was all up in Saudi Arabia’s business, so I thought, you know, America wanted it.

It’s hard for me to feel any kind of patriotic feeling during this time when we aren’t treating our own citizens well. It’s hard for me to feel like waving a flag and screaming country song lyrics when a man can openly admit to sexually assaulting, perhaps numerous times, and is ok because he is going to AA for help. I can’t stand it. We openly criticize muslim women having to wear hijabs, but will also call a woman in a bikini a slut – the exact reason Islam makes women wear hijabs or more because men can’t see skin without becoming a stupid fucking animal. AAAAAOOOOOOOOO!

What is rape culture? It’s not like people are walking around saying, “Rape is fine! Do it!” I think most men find rape to be deplorable. Rape culture is just the set patriarchy that is happening right now. Men behaving aggressively, making jokes and fun of women standing up for themselves, silencing those that are strong, making fun of men who try to make a change to the patriarchy by calling them faggots and bitches, addressing people in comfortable gender, sexuality boxes and not accepting a more gray scale approach to the both.

Men need to be the strongest, the most sexed, the smartest, the best dressed (in other countries, here in America, men like to prove they can wear the shittiest clothes possible and still get laid) and they do this by having sex with women. There is no other gauge that proves any of that then sex. Do you think the Situation from Jersey Shore cares if you got a Nobel Peace prize? Nah, brah!

The achievement of sex is so pervasive in our society that those who cannot rape or reach for guns to quench that imaginary thirst.

I have freedoms. I can walk around this great nation of ours with little to no fear of being raped, cat called by disgusting people or feel at all endangered by someone stronger than me. I am like the World Trade Center on September 10th, 2001, I was just swaying in the wind with pride of all the achievements I represented in this world. Yeah, a muslim or two tried to take me down because I represent the all mighty dollar over any kind of culture or religion that happens to call oil fields their home, but hey, I am mighty and strong.

We could have saw those crashing towers as a lesson. We could have seen that there might be a way to change the way we do business with other people that didn’t exactly fuck a bunch of other people over. We could have heard what we could do, but in some cases, the hate certain people have for us is too great to change their hell bent designs on destroying western civilization.

We have a chance to change our ways to make the world, or at least America, or at least our city, or at least our small communities a safer place. Sometimes we can’t placate everyone, but there are a few things we can do to be a better ally to women.

First off, don’t rape, assault, yell, hit, kick, demand, dehumanize, sexualize, creep on, intimidate, yell over, command, possess, or anything else a woman doesn’t want from you. A woman is a human being, so all of these should be no-brainers in 2016, but it isn’t. The minute a woman speaks up about any of the above behaviors, men start to say they got a feminist on their hands. The men stop listening, joke about the woman’s boundaries and use the above list to make her go away.

Feminism is complicated. There are even a few contradictory groups. Some women hate men, and why not. Leave them alone. Some women feel that being sex positive is what they want in their lives, and that is fine because sex is natural and isn’t about dominance unless that is what spanks the butt.

The best way to deal with confusion on what women want is listen. You don’t know shit about what a woman wants without hearing what a woman wants from a woman who knows what a woman wants. There is nothing you’ve ever been through that will be more helpful than to listen. Hear what is wanted. Be uncomfortable being called out. I am a man who was raised in this society, so it sometimes takes time to make those changes and I have to be uncomfortable knowing that what I say or do is hurtful and scary. I get to learn from being uncomfortable.

Don’t be satisfied with what one woman is saying and be sure that is how all women are and what they want. You’ll have to listen all the time. This is where our, as men, struggle begins. We are privileged, so we don’t have to change if we don’t want to. We could go with the status quo. We could be fine with women being treated poorly, but we get to keep our jokes and our “freedom of speech”. We don’t have to worry about trigger warnings, PC culture, feminist killjoys and being viewed as femmy by our more masculine counterparts.

While men have similar issues, they are no where near the numbers women face. Yes, men can be raped, and by a woman too. Yes, men can be in violent relationships, with women too! Men will bear very little of the insane conditions women put up with everyday. It isn’t just sexual, but being taken seriously in a managerial position or in a labor career.

We, as men, can work on our issues too, but there is never an excuse for putting that as being more important than the very fundamental culture of patriarchy.

Here is where it gets fun, challenge other men. It’s fine to say something is wrong. Don’t let men run around thinking that they get to act like bigot monkeys just because they have all that freedom afforded to them. You will be called a hero, a knight on a white horse. You will have your masculinity challenged. A real man stands up for what’s right, and letting a person know that what they are saying is hurtful and scary is what’s right.

I might get some shit for this blog post, I don’t know. I wrote a piece on how Nazis were the ones who popularized yoga and even used a famous Hindu text for inspiration for the holocaust and nobody reacted, but making fun of Californians moving to Oregon had me receive a bunch of hate mail, but maybe this will get some reactions.

I sometimes fear being not liked because I stand up for something instead of accepting the behavior. I think that those people I am correcting will never be my friends again, so I sometimes choose to let the behavior go on. Sometimes I think that I am not free because now I “need to watch what I say” around certain people: women. I do laugh at terrible sexist/misogynist jokes. I do sometimes fall in the part of patriarchy with natural ease, but I don’t want to. I really do want a better place.

I want freedom for women and that means I will have to be the one that change. Freedom isn’t telling women to go somewhere else, or watch what they drink at bars, or not go out at all, or don’t park so far away from work, or how to say no to that persistent guy from marketing, or the millions of other things a woman goes through everyday that a man doesn’t.

The closest that the whole country could feel that unsafe feeling was on September 11th, 2001. That is a day that has altered the entire direction of the world. Our globe looks different because of it. Millions of people have been killed and displaced because of that day. The entire Middle East region is basically on fire right now. We didn’t change one thing, but strike out.

That is what it’s like to feel scared and uncertain. We even had our freedoms choked by airline travel being harder and the Patriot Acts. We were told to be scared. We wrapped plastic all over our windows in case the attacks were chemical. We killed Sikh men because we have no idea what Muslims look like. We even want to throw out all the Muslims out of America or make it really hard to get in here. We are so scared it’s not even funny because Donald Trump is using that fear as a presidential platform.

We are that scared. This is a woman’s life everyday.

Men flew airplanes into those buildings, spurred by men who worship a religion that men invented, and men reacted to this by fighting back and the world is more dangerous – and more dangerous to women.

Women’s lives haven’t mattered and I wonder why I would feel like my freedom and safety means anything if my mother, sister, girlfriend, and nieces don’t feel safe, nor have freedom.