{"id":34747,"date":"2025-03-06T21:52:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T13:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/?p=34747"},"modified":"2025-03-07T10:50:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T02:50:19","slug":"the-privilege-of-guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/the-privilege-of-guilt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Privilege of Guilt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"467\" src=\"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/depressed-man-guilt.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-34748\" style=\"width:300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/depressed-man-guilt.webp 800w, https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/depressed-man-guilt-400x234.webp 400w, https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/depressed-man-guilt-768x448.webp 768w, https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/depressed-man-guilt-640x374.webp 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Guilty<\/strong> of having, in the past, used gendered language without full awareness, language that may have hurt others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Guilty<\/strong> of having long neglected to share household chores equally with my partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Proud<\/strong> to have shared with her the educational tasks, the cleaning, and the care we provided for our children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Guilty<\/strong> of still paying more attention to a male speaker than to a female one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Guilty<\/strong> and ashamed of letting my gaze too often linger on women\u2019s chests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Proud<\/strong> to have always ensured that my female employees were paid the same as my male employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Guilty<\/strong> of not having been respectful toward a girl my age when I was only about ten years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Happy<\/strong> to clean the floors and toilets of my studio myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Not guilty<\/strong> of being male, but deeply angry that our world is so cruel and unfair to those assigned female at birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Glad<\/strong> to have let go of the preconceived idea that I could never be attracted to a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Do I have a feminine side?<\/strong><br>I refuse to answer that question. Trying to answer it only fuels a socially constructed differentiation, a binary that limits our relationships with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I have been nothing but guilty. Can I repay my debts?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Awareness is necessary, but it is not enough. It is a constant effort: deconstructing prejudices, questioning habits, breaking down the barriers that prevent us from thinking freely and accessing truly free thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An intellectual labor, a daily meditation, an effort that often feels Herculean, so deeply ingrained are these reflexes.<br>This inward gaze, this step to the side, this introspection is both painful and exhilarating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Painful<\/strong>, because too often I catch myself falling back into immature thought patterns.<br><strong>Painful<\/strong>, too, because it reveals the image of an ultra-powerful conditioning, a social machinery that shapes our behaviors without our full awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Exhilarating<\/strong>, however, because it carries the hope of intellectual and spiritual emancipation, the hope of making peace with a part of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>By nature<\/strong>, we are male or female. <strong>By social construction<\/strong>, we become men or women. And it is an undeniable fact that this construction has too often disadvantaged those assigned female at birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gender equality is a highly respectable idea, but it remains somewhat reductive when we seek to build rich, authentic interpersonal relationships free from preconceptions and ambiguities.<br>Rather than speaking of gender equality, let us speak of equal treatment of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Let us think of \u201cAbolishing Gender\u201d!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"510\" height=\"339\" src=\"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/not-me-not-she-just-me.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-34751\" style=\"width:300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/not-me-not-she-just-me.jpg 510w, https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/not-me-not-she-just-me-400x266.jpg 400w, https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/not-me-not-she-just-me-391x260.jpg 391w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Will there ever be a world where we can address others simply by saying \u201cHello,\u201d without adding \u201cSir\u201d or \u201cMadam\u201d?<br>If we truly wish to actively reduce the distinctions between genders, it is essential to deconstruct the cognitive biases that lead us to see a man or a woman before seeing a person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would a world without distinctions between men and women look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To imagine it, try this experiment: close your eyes, use your inner voice, and address an imaginary person. Say once \u201cHello, Sir,\u201d once \u201cHello, Madam,\u201d and once simply \u201cHello\u201d followed by a first name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What sensory and emotional differences do you feel?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Awareness, people equality and relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":34748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1233,1408],"tags":[1371,1374,1489,1464],"class_list":["post-34747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-sociology","tag-feminism","tag-gender","tag-guilt","tag-relationship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaikibu.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}