Devils of Truth.

"The devils of truth steal the souls of the free." - Trent Reznor

I find that women, on average, respect the guys who simply tell them what they want to hear yet vilify the guys who are honest with them - whether to their own, personal, benefit or not. I fall into the latter category, so much so, that it's often to a counter-productive fault for myself.

Take a conversation that I had at work yesterday with a female co-worker/wrestling enthusiast about CM Punk for example: When it came down to the topic of Punk's twitter beef with Chris Brown, we both fell on opposite sides of the paradigm. As expected, she found Punk's attacks 'honorable' and all that, while I found them to be opportunistic and hypocritical considering that Punk was, and still is, conveniently silent about his very own heroes and peers who are people like Jimmy Snuka, who killed a girl in a hotel room in the early 1980s, or "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who beat his wife Debra in the early 2000s to the point of a divorce.

"You don't like his [feminist] views," she asked me.

'I think it's easy for him to take those positions when he has women like Lita jumping his bones,' I replied.

"But I thought you're his fan?"

'Hell yeah, I am! I don't think that means I have to hang off of his every word or action though, do I?'

That topic didn't continue much longer, as you can imagine. But sparring sessions like such seem to occur regularly in my life, whether with people who I admire and respect or not. More importantly, though, it's become more apparent to me lately that whenever I find myself in debate with people - on any range of topics - that they've either not done their homework or, more often than not, only look at the issues from an obvious surface level. Which is dangerous. Call me conceited, but I feel that my record of digging deeper than average into the issues that I'm engaged in, speaks all on it's own by now. No, I'm not always correct about everything, but I will say that I do have a pretty good batting average. My scorecard holds it's own merit by the right of general consensus.

I get called lots of things, some fair and others not, for the arguments that I make or the observations that I point out but I figure that that all comes with the territory of being vocal (to an extent anyway). What I will admit does bother me though, is when people who I love and care for throw me under the bus or label me things like "misogynistic" when I'm not that at all; If anything, I'm for TRUE equality across the board, unlike men who barbarically believe that women should not have careers or should idealistically be at the mercy of men. All I've ever said or implied is that I don't like or support special treatment for females, which unfortunately has been embraced to a large degree. Is that disrespectful? No. Quite the contrary, if anything. 

What is wrong, however, is the fact that we have juries in America who find it okay to side with women when they claim that men are OBLIGATED by law to allow females seats in bars that they did not have any prior claim to whatsoever. But I digress.

My attitude is that if you want equality then you should fight for equal rights like equal pay for equal work or the right for female soldiers to fight on the frontlines, but not for special privileges or provisions from the government on the backs of other groups of people the way that message-hijackers like Gloria Allred or Gloria Steinem would have you do. Those same women who stand on podiums and tell other females things like not to get married, for example, are the same ones who have husbands, kids, homes, and white-picket fences themselves. All I've ever done is point that out. But that brings us full-circle, doesn't it? The guys like myself who don't sugar-coat things out of true respect for women are attacked, while the guys who are suspiciously in agreement with women on everything receive all the love in the world. True friends tell you the truth, even when it's the hard thing to do.