Amanda writes about gender, Part 1: Empathy

Let's talk about empathy. You probably think of yourself as an empathetic person, and maybe occasionally you are one. More often than not, however, you're probably an asshole. Unfortunately, empathy is difficult, but prejudice is easy. Even more unfortunately, it's really easy to call your prejudice 'empathy', and to think that your unique experience gives you insight into someone else's life. I'm going to be writing about gender, and my experiences as a woman, over the next few blog posts, and I hope you'll keep this idea about empathy in mind if you decide to read those. Before I go any further I'd like to note that I have a very particular set of experiences, because I'm white, cishet (to avoid overly complicating things at this point), able-bodied, and in many other ways socially privileged, and I certainly don't purport to speak for all women. That all being said, I have increasingly felt a sense of profound alienation from the men in my life, and I'm hoping writing about the sources of that alienation will make it less debilitating, and possibly provide you with some insight into why I keep talking about not wanting to get married, for example.

I had a relatively benign introduction to this idea that I had a poor grasp of other peoples' experiences in society. The advertising precept "sex sells" never made sense to me. I more or less understand the appeal of sex, and I could probably have tortuously described a connection between the promise of sex and the product being advertised, but the innate appeal of that connection was totally lost on me. Then one day, Tumblr explained the asexual spectrum to me, and a lot of pieces suddenly fell into place. "Sex sells" was no longer a mystery, it was just a phenomenon that didn't apply to me. I had always assumed everyone experienced sexual attraction the same way I do -- which is to say, not very much. Realizing that I had been wrong did not and obviously could not entail trying to experience sexual attraction the same way allosexual people do. To make this analogy a little bit more explicit, understanding social phenomena that you have not experienced does not require empathy, and trying to empathize with the people who do experience these phenomena can be counterproductive, if it isn't impossible.

So what am I getting at here? If you're a man and you're reading this, some of what I'm going to be writing about will not make sense to you. You may have a hard time relating to it. However, you're going to have to trust that I really have experienced what I claim to have experienced. Please don't argue with me, and please don't assume you'll have expertise or advice that will be useful. I love talking to you about these things, and I'm happy to answer questions, but for the most part, I just want you to listen to me.