Thanks for responding in such an honest way.
If I had read this story a couple of weeks ago, I might have reacted in exactly the same way you just did.
When I started reading all these articles about feminism, I was mad because they felt like a condemnation of all men, which meant me. I couldn’t see that 99% of what was written was in the form of “here’s my experience,” or “here’s how I’ve been hurt” or even “now that I have this scar, it’s really hard for me to trust any man because I can’t tell what he’s like under the surface.”*
In the story, there are two key passages that address your feelings that your viewpoint doesn’t matter:
They began to argue about the elephant and each of them insisted that his perception was the only one that could possibly be right.
and:
You have all made accurate observations, but you are all wrong, because you barely scratched the surface of who I am and what I am capable of.
Maybe you didn’t read these passages carefully because you were mad about using blind men as a parable.
So man up and prove that you aren’t blind.
Did the story indicate that any man’s perception was incorrect?
No, it indicated that the blindness is in thinking that our limited perception of reality is a full and objective view of reality.
Did the elephant attack the men in any way?
No. She said that their perception of her was fractured and incomplete.
Did she reject all men?
No. She was willing to talk to the one man who had vision and help him understand more about what it is like to be an elephant.
Did she attack the men?
No. She said she would never allow herself to be insulted or attacked by men.
Did she respond to bullying and sexual harrassment with violence (after all, in this story, she is an elephant)?
No. She ran away, never to be seen again.
This last reference was for my friend Kel Campbell. Her response to bullying and plagiarism was to leave Medium. So once again, online Brown Shirts silence the voices that should be heard. We are all poorer to not hear her insight. Without her, I would still be walking around with some massive blind spots about what women experience and why some of their behavior that seems bizarre to us is actually a conscious and rational strategy of self preservation.
Yes, there are a FEW angry female responses that condemn ALL men. But that’s a small percentage of the overall female population, just like there’s only SOME men who are aggressive dick heads who bully women.
It’s not about you personally. Unless you’re one of the aggressive dick heads who bully women.
*Think about how many times reporters interview the neighbors of a serial killer and they say he seemed totally normal. There will always be people who appear nice on the surface who can be really evil — both men and women. The only difference is that if you meet someone like that and they are a foot taller and seventy-five pounds heavier, you’re f*cked. And unfortunately, that is a situation that occurs much more often for women than men.
