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A few introductory pieces of information about me first; My name is Frank and I am a 32-year-old male math professor in South Carolina. I am proud to be a male in this Feminist Book Club because I feel that I have become the man and person I am today more so from the females in my life, and I am actively working to be a better person and I turn to the female friends first for that.

There were 3 quotes throughout the book that really spoke to me and this movement:

1st “If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.� As a teacher, I deal with this issue on an hourly basis in each of my math classes that I teach. I need to be effective enough to not only teach the material so my students will understand it, but as each student is sitting in my class, I need to also listen to them so I know if I need to review something. If students find that teachers are not listening to them, then their motivation for wanting to listen to the teacher doesn’t exist. Each and every one of us needs to live life as if we are a student in the classroom. We need to find those people in our lives who will teach us things, and also ones who are willing to be taught so we can work together to build our knowledge of a topic, so we can improve the world. Sitting down with someone eye-to-eye and listening to each other in order to change the world for the better is something that needs to occur more and I feel that we can do that.

2nd “When the past dies, we mourn for the dead. When the future dies, we mourn for ourselves.� Each and every day we meet and encounter 3 types of people in our world. Unfortunately, most of us encounter people who are classified as branches or leaves. This meaning that they appear when things are nice and help us form a foundation or improve the image of ourselves, but all in all, they are not there when trouble arises and are the quickest to fall off. However, the 3rd group of people in our lives is the roots. They are there to build us up from the ground, and help us throughout all forms of light and dark times in our lives. It’s with these roots that we will build a strong future, and even though we can focus on the past, we need to let it go. If we don’t look towards and build towards a strong future with our roots, we are only going to be weak. We as a group can be roots for change!

3rd “…avoiding conflict causes conflict to seek you out.� I will be the first to admit that in any situation, I do not like to be involved in face-to-face conflict and confrontation. However, I do not feel that that is the meaning behind this quote. Instead, I feel that this is a take on the phrase “actions speak louder than words.� If we are living in a world with conflict, it will take action on our parts in order for the conflict to go away. Saying all the right things is nice, but unless pen is put to the paper, it’s only a thought in our mind. Avoiding the conflict does nothing and it will seek you out and make your life worse because we are afraid to contest it. We as a group can bring a powerful force to the world with actions in order for the feminist movement to be strong and ignite change in the conflicts that we live in each day.

I thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on these quotes, and I am looking forward to being a valuable member of this book club. I appreciate any and all comments on the items that I’ve talked about above, and look forward to reading and learning some more.

Thank you Emma Watson for organizing this. You are truly an amazing woman and a proud ambassador to not just the UN, but to the world!

Frank
My Life on the Road

Hi Frank, welcome to OSS! We already have a thread going where people are sharing their favorite quotes, so you can go ahead and share these there. Given the volume of threads we are generating every day, we are trying to keep things organized. You can feel free to start threads about specific topics if there isn't already a thread for it :) We also have a thread in the Misc. folder where you can introduce yourself.