David Foster Wallace once gave a commencement speech where he told a story about a couple of young fish swimming along. They pass an older fish who says “Morning boys, how’s the water?” After they pass on for a bit one young fish turns to the other and says “What the hell is water?” The point of the story is to illustrate that there are things surrounding and us shaping our lives that we take as ordinary to the point we don’t even notice them. We also don’t question them. Treating people differently based on their gender or sexuality used to be one of those things, but hopefully that’s starting to change.
Josh Weed is a gay man with an important point to make about how we treat women:
Kinda throws a monkey wrench in the whole “women are emotional ones who can’t control their feelings.”
Even worse than that, many men and women point to a woman’s attire when she claims to be a victim of sexual assault. Just recently, a Yale student was found not guilty after a trial where his attorneys slut-shamed the victim for her Halloween costume.
PREACH.
Hallelujah!