The Trump presidency has not been truly surprising for me because these were things I felt I was aware of due to my interest with media on a grander scale. What actually did surprise me the most was my lack of understanding of the power I had of being a male.
Have Your Voice Heard: Become an Odyssey Creator
I understood how the current presidency affected me culturally as a Latino but lacked how it affected my concept of masculinity in relation to the women in my life. At the end of the day, the traits that Trump expressed were that of the typical masculine guy portrayed in media. We were subtly taught to like this asshole despite knowing that the things he was doing were wrong. So when I start off by saying thank you to the media, I don't mean reporters. I mean T.V. shows, film, the Kardashians, and the Internet. The decry reflects an ignorance and lack of media literacy because the real cake-walk was always setup for Donald and not Hillary. I mean let's be honest, women are still highly sexualized with the one's being displayed in media representing semi-attractive or attractive qualities, as just a small example. The same could be said for men but it isn't as obvious as it is for women.
What put this whole topic in perspective for me was the women’s march and the taking away of abortion rights for women by an all-white-male cast. I expressed a slight annoyance with the march when I told my girlfriend to mute it for five minutes because it was stressing me out. I was doing homework and had a hard time focusing. I also had a headache. She perceived it as an attempt to silence the message when I really just wanted general silence for my head. Either way, I could have and should have endured the pain for five more minutes because it pales in comparison to the pain women have had to deal with for centuries and today.
A similar occurrence happened later in the week with the ban of support for abortion rights. When she talked to me about it the day it popped up, I said, “I don’t have time for that. I have to make sure that I graduate.” I, as a man, someone with extended, outwards genitalia, have the opportunity to not care and use the reasoning of "homework" as an excuse for both situations because of how close I am to not graduating this year. I want to be strong for when the time will come when I have to raise both my fists and my pen yes but my unfortunate privilege is that I can post-pone the fight for as long as I want to.
At the end of the day, I don’t have to care, and that hurts me the most. So educate yourself on media literacy because that is the steering force our society. The less we are aware of how and why, the more Donald Trump's that will continue to spring up later in life. Finally, I was taught to see the women in my life as both Queens and Warriors in the battlefield of life. I've seen daily and first-hand their struggles that they deal with. "Men" go with a female who trusts you to get an I.U.D. and tell me you can endure what you think they are experiencing in that moment. Again, it's just one small example, but whenever a guy complains about his discomfort or pain, I say suck it up because that is just the start of paying back the bare minimum of what we owe to the foundations of our lives.
