tamarjacobson

[note: my name was Tamar Meyer in 1993 – long story – for another time perhaps]     

On November 10, 1993, my letter to the Editor of the Buffalo News was published. I was ecstatic! It was my first ever official feminist reply to anything. I was 44 years old. As I re-read it this morning, I realized just how many times I used the word: Dominance. Can you tell I was awakening? Becoming aware? Declaring my own personal Aha?

This letter immediately jumped into my mind as a reply to Winston after reading his comment on my blog this morning. I dropped everything I was doing and rummaged through my papers to find it.

I would write it a little differently today. I mean, just for starters, I probably would not use the word dominance as many times in the same sentence. In addition, it comes across as having the tone of a teenager who has just realized her parents are no longer the moral Gods she imagined them to be. So I probably would tone it differently.

But, still – a lot of it rings true. Don’t you think?

I guess what I am trying to say, Winston, is that it is really easy for those of us who have grown up as the privileged gender, culture or class, to sit in judgment of others struggling for liberation or to find their voice. By the same token, it is difficult to hear those struggles or voices with compassion and understanding because we have never walked in their shoes or suffered the same types of injustice and inequalities.

At the same time, I agree with Frank‘s comment:

elimination of privilege is necessary for achievement of equality, and I think that inclusivity is necessary too,

and reiterate my own ideas:

Dominance and privilege causes everyone terrible pain. All are punished. We have to get together, young and old, men and women, girls and boys, and drive Patriarchy out! Out of our psyche, hearts, minds, societal structures, and, yes indeed, even our blogs.

Let us just agree to acknowledge that we can never possibly know what it is like to walk in any one person’s or a whole people’s shoes, but that we will listen to all our stories in the hopes of understanding one another more and more.