Start the lovist conversation
If you read the book and empathize, make your voice heard. Give people around you a name for what we all feel – that not accepting the extremism of feminism does not mean in any way opposing equality, because there is a more humanist and humane meaning for equality than feminism’s – one which is not premised on sameness of the sexes, but on mutuality and reciprocity; one not founded on dictating sameness but on respecting free choices when they are different between men and women; and one of an understanding that only listening in return for listening, in a mutual and open conversation where both sexes can express themselves freely and equally, can accomplish what both want of each other.
Let this common understanding about equality become explicit by simply giving it a name – we may call this advancement beyond feminism, lovism, which is nothing more than equality as mutuality and reciprocity based on listening, as opposed to forceful dictations based on fear.
If you want to find love and give love, but all you find around you is anger, blaming and fear, and you wish that men and women could simply talk, then you are a lovist, and you are not alone.
“I grew up inside my head. Within my head the world looked differently, women were the strong ones, men were the idiots. I don’t know, this is what I concluded from TV and reality. A man woos the woman, the woman is the lioness who chooses. I didn’t understand the term Patriarchy. I regarded the feminist struggle as something I admire and I felt I have to do anything for women, they are goddesses. They are the most important thing, the smartest thing, I as a man was the stupid and there’s no way I will reach their level. I hated the position “a man.” And most of all, I was afraid, afraid of women… Fear of women was one of the first causes that started in me the depression… I was willing to hurt myself just so that a lady won’t be offended, I was willing to do for them anything… My question, and not as a man who tries to mansplain… is how this whole abandoned area is transformed, to something more organized, from which it is possible to learn a little more about the relations, feelings, consideration, and sex too” (A Facebook post published by a young man on August, 2019)
“My mother used to sing to me, ‘My little girl, don’t walk by yourself’, and it was such fun walking by myself. The injury was in a much closer place… Most of all, I feel sorry for us women, for finding nothing else to say or do other than shouting all day long that this is not the right way to approach us and how the world would be better off without men (who are beloved and sweeter than sweet in my eyes). By do I mean, to pass laws, to educate (children and adults alike, but without self-victimization), to go back a little to a more restraint approach on the news, to learn what intimacy is, to respect a person – any person – and especially opening up the conversation and not closing it down by saying we don’t need men in the world… I’m sorry but this is my opinion, with love” (A comment by an anonymous woman under the name “Only love can prevail,” August 2020)
Lovism is conversation as a paradigm. The conversation can and should take place on social media, in online forums, in public places such as universities or your local library or coffee shop or pub. Groups of men and women sitting together and opening up, not in order to blame, overpower or hurt as done in feminism, but to tell each other openly about their side of sexuality in order to find empathy and to gain and create understanding. So that a broader culture of norms and codes, founded on consideration in both directions, could form, not by spreading fear, but based on love. Only love can create understanding and consideration. Fear and blaming can never achieve that, as this only turns a wheel of perpetual pain.
The stage is yours. Please start talking.
Start the lovist conversation:
- Create groups on social media, present the principles of lovism, invite women and men to have the lovist conversation – to tell each other openly about their side of sexuality to create understanding and reciprocity.
- Initiate meetings in your area about lovism and help the audience form groups where they can have the conversation.
- Write about what you feel about lovism or learn through the lovist conversation.
You can use the hashtag #Lovism or write, “I am not a feminist, I am a lovist!” to express your endorsement of equality as mutuality and reciprocity based on listening.
You are always welcome to share your thoughts and activities here by using the Contact link above, and it will be added to lovists.com as a post and shared further.
Let people know that there is a name for a true, shared, and mutual human equality between men and women!
- A note to the reader: Some marginal religious groups seem to have previously adopted the term Lovism to represent agendas unknown to this writer. None of those agendas are related to the term Lovism as used here. Lovism as described here is not a religious or a mystical term but a humanist term. The term is pronounced with the emphasis being on the letter O in the word Love: Love(ism), Love(ist).
Lovism 