Ambigiuously Conservative

In the recent years and even long before that, I've been slowly moving away from anything that is conservative, whether religiously, morally, socially even financially to a more, well, let's call it a liberal view.

Of course everyone's backgrounds of family, education, social class, environment and in diverse countries such as the States, ethnic/racial background, religion highly molds the views an individual tends to develop and later on hold. To add on to this, the people we choose to surround ourselves in our adult lives, the socially constructed values, beliefs we tend to follow or are more prone to follow, the kinds of media we are engaged in, and the kind of news sources we tend to stay up to date with life continues to highlight our own personal preferences and continues to build a reality that is different than those who aren't like us. So, there goes the sharpening differences across the board. The liberal kind is the one I've long ago decided to follow and on certain criteria have decided to model certain behaviors of mine own.

I've come to believe that blaming women or placing all kinds of responsibility on women's shoulders in regards to the shortcomings of society, job openings and promotional rate (or lack thereof), difficulties of both being able to engage in the public and the private sphere. Women are and should always be equal to men. Women should have equal pay, same access to health care, access to things like birth control, pap smear, vaccines, abortions, mammograms, cancer screenings universally available and free.


  So when someone like me who has embraced individualism, acceptance, feminism and a more liberal, humanitarian lens at analyzing society, individuals and "women's question" it becomes more difficult to be with someone who is more socially conservative and ambiguously at that. What do I mean, when I say ambiguously? What I mean to say is the advantage men take of being privileged simply of being born of one sex over the other. It is to easily judge a woman, or women in society without knowing what it is like to be a woman in that given society and with the easiness of being a men that society grants to those carrying the Y chromosome. It is to assess values, moralize the justification of their actions and beliefs and grossly expecting women to adhere to such rules simply becomes a men has decided that's how things shall be. It's the inability to carry empathy towards women in plight, or to purely blame women for their failures, inability to see the the things that needs immediate fixing that disables women to be more successful at the public sphere. When a woman failures to associate that shortcoming to the sex of the failure rather than personal mistakes that may have been involved.

We probably fight about this topic every other day, with me fuming and steam coming out of every possible porous surface in my mind, soul and body. It quickly becomes clear that we become frustrated with each others' deeply held values. Eventually it becomes a battle to understand where each others' grounds are, what we are standing on, what are our limits (which surprises us each time we argue about these topics), the precedents, reasoning of our beliefs and the whys, hows. Eventually, as a couple it leads to a better understanding that makes me a even more radicalized feminist and him, more aware of the struggles, plights, and the hurdles unseen, unsought, or not thought of before having discussed matters at such length with such passion.

It feels like his very first awakenings into a feminist's dreams. I wonder how far we can stretch the skin we individually wear to envelope both of us.