What's up caffeine addicts,
In light of many of the political events that have happened recently, and our furthering discussion in the psychology of women class, I had a few thoughts about the way in which many different movements try to accomplish their goals. Because of the passionate way in which people believe they deserve specific rights, it has caused a disconnect in the way they treat people that don't feel the same way; we need to be more understanding and informative in the way we discuss our position.
In my opinion, our culture has heavily moved towards the idea of actively opposing any type of opinion that doesn't support equality in general to its fault. This thinking has grown to the point in which we attack people of a differing opinion instead of calmly presenting our argument with relevant facts and information.
Of course, there are many exceptions to this with a broad range of great intellectuals that are vocal in a way that has evidence to support it, but a majority of people, mostly on the internet--don't. Instead, they constantly tell someone that they are wrong, terrible, or stupid because of their differing opinions without giving them legitimate reasons as to why they are wrong. You might think that this is still okay because it will stop them from expressing these types of opinions when everyone and their mother tells them they are wrong, but this isn't the case at all. Because the person never gets to understand why they are wrong, it just builds and builds within them until they finally break when someone like Donald Trump comes around and tells them that it's okay to feel this way.
You can easily see this throughout the country before the presidential election. Just think about it; an overwhelming majority of analyst clearly stated that Hilary was definitely going to win and by a large margin. We were so busy yelling at the people who believed in Donald Trump and his misogynistic/racist views that we were blind to how many people actually wanted him. People were so afraid to say that they think Donald Trump would make a good president that they refrained from telling anyone which led to a situation in which, in the words of Stephen Prothero, they became "allergic to argument." This is far from an ideal situation because it doesn't let us explain our position and convince each other against voting for someone who doesn't really care for this country and the people in it.
I understand that this can be hard at times with a large number of ignorant people who stick to their beliefs, but it beats the alternative of forcing them into hiding and causing their pent up anger to spawn something even worse than anything we could ever imagine. At least with this method, we may be able to get more people on our side without using fear. It may also put down all of those who believe in the idiotic stereotypical view that all feminists, for example, are crazy women who are offended by anything.
Sometimes you have to realize that everyone has differing experiences and teachings that lead them to a specific viewpoint. Ideologies are incredibly complicated. It's not as simple as blaming someone for their views and criticizing them. There is a much bigger picture to it. When you've known something to be true your whole life, and when these things are inherently built into the system, it's difficult to go against that. One of my favorite examples of this idea is cursing. If you really take a moment to think about it, "curse words" are just regular harmless words that are deemed inappropriate by society. This is something that we see all around us on a consistent basis. Because of this, we always know never to curse around polite company because it's not the right thing to do. But who decides what is the right thing to do? Well, that's where societies inherent values come into play and, in the example of cursing, even after realizing this it is very difficult to change your ways. Especially when people, like let's say your close family, tell you that this is the way you should be. This shows how the things that we learn from our environment affect us and how difficult to see a way around that. So perhaps we should think about the system and teach people as a whole rather than attack an individual for their beliefs.
To sum this all up, we need to stop attacking people for their views and instead convince them with reasonable evidence to prove our position. Don't fight fire with fire by berating those who grow up with a different set of values than you, even if those values can be incredibly immoral. No one likes to be attacked. It's easy to point at someone and call them any number of names for their beliefs; we have to collectively rise above that.
Stay awesome
