When I write a text, even on FB, and some catchy word, using which I want to describe this or that person, occurs to me I stop for a moment and replace the word with euphemistic synonym. After that when I reread that text, before publishing or sending, I reconsider such words again and make them milder. Because my goal is not to pan, blast, or “morally destroy” someone, I don’t enjoy that, I don’t assert myself by that. Nor do I want to “fly a flag” or make people share my opinions. I want to understand what is going on around us, what people surrounding us think and offer to think with me about all that. Certainly, I myself am a far cry from the even-temperedness I dream of, and I sometimes am angry when inadequate people try to impose their truth on me, but that moment of frustration doesn’t last for long, and I quickly realize that one shouldn’t poison oneself with negative emotions, one shouldn’t absolutize one’s own vexation. Certainly, being restrained and polite is not a political category, and it is quite possible that a political struggle presupposes “morally destroying” each other. However, who said that everyone had to participate in that struggle and contribute to that nation-rescuing business of “nailing to the pillory”?
A question arises; what connection is there between all this and March 8? The most direct one. The words that occur to us to pan someone should be made twice milder in any event. However, those should be made four times milder, as far as women are concerned. I have been making the same appeal for roughly 20 years, and in response to that appeal, politicized people, strange though it may seem, women, in particular, have been claiming for 20 years that the women whom they curse and personally insult don’t have the right to be called women. So women (or men) assume the role of a judge and think that they can decide who can be called a woman and who cannot.
Sometimes the thesis of “gender equality” is brought up as if since one can curse men, why can’t one curse women too? However, that thesis is false, it cannot withstand any criticism. It would have been right, if we, the men, had contributed to childbirth as much as women, if we had been in as much pain and had suffered as much. However, let’s agree that our “suffering” is much less here. In a nutshell, I stick to my opinion. Simply put, women cannot be insulted, because all of us have been delivered by a Woman and a Mother.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
