A friend of mine responded to my post about patriarchy yesterday, and he asked us to remember that men need to have their rights secured too. At first I thought, huh? Don't men already have enough rights? But then it dawned to me that he wasn't talking so much about rights that only men should have, but rights that everyone should have.
While it is undeniably true that some rights cannot be transferred, such as the right to become a prima ballerina, which depends on your physique; if you were born with a slow metabolism, you just aren't going to make it. But that a black person cannot become a ballet dancer in Brazil is just plain wrong; ballet should not be a white privilege.
The same is true of motherhood: men just can't become mothers. But parenthood is a right that cannot be denied a man just because he didn't give birth.
Instead of fighting for my rights, or your rights, we should fight for everybody's right to be recognized as human beings. Human beings have rights, just because they are human, not because they are specific kinds of human beings. Male or female, black or white, young or old, chubby or skinny, slow or witty; none of these matter when it comes to human rights. We all have them just because we are human.
When we begin to advocate for the rights of a specific group, we must always remember that if a specific right violates human rights, it should not be pursued. Hence when we advocate for women's /men's rights, or the right to marry, or the right to divorce, we must always consider the question from the perspective of human rights. For really, even if we like to talk about my rights and your rights, we must also think about everybody's rights, for if we don't, one day they may no longer exist.
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