And even though you don’t know any other guys who want to be nurseladies, you persist. Because quite simply, you think you’ll like nursing, as a career, a job, an endeavour. So you take your high school maths and sciences, you do quite well, and you get accepted into nursing school.
Where almost all the students are women. You feel like you don’t really belong, you feel odd, you stand out. There are a few other men in the class and at first you hang around with them, but you don’t really like them. Part of you thinks you should like them, but, well, you just don’t. You try hanging around with some of the women, and they’re pleasant enough and they talk to you, but you never get included in their group things outside of class. So you become a loner, part of nothing, sort of invisible. But you persist, you keep coming to class.
All the profs are women and they keep saying things like “Well, ladies…” as if you weren’t there. There’s one who makes a point of adding, as a cute afterthought, “and gentlemen”, but something in her tone bugs you and you’d rather she just stick to “Well, ladies”. And there’s another one who asked once why, with your build, you weren’t playing football instead. You were speechless. But you persist, you don’t drop out. (Even though you wonder sometimes at the average marks you get for work you think is above average.)
There’s only one men’s washroom in the whole building. On particularly bad days, it annoys you when you have to go to a different floor just to go to the washroom.
And it seems that some knowledge is assumed as background. Things like how to hold a baby. How are you supposed to know what they haven’t taught you yet?
And there are no nursing uniforms for you in the campus shop. Something special has to be ordered. It’s different, of course, and makes you stand out even more, as someone who doesn’t really belong with the group. This is especially bad in the training hospital – people keep thinking you’re security or something. Sometimes it seems you have to spend so much time and effort just getting accepted as a nurse, you don’t have anything left to actually do any nursing.
But you persist. Even though you probably won’t get a job when you graduate – men are thought to be not as emotionally sensitive, you’ve already been criticized for being gruff (you swear you were just speaking normally). And if you do get a job, it’ll probably be in some no-name hospital god-knows-where with no chance for advancement. None of the headnurses in any of the hospitals you’ve been in were men. But you persist.
One day it occurs to you that it would help if they stopped calling it ‘nurselady’ and just called it ‘nurse’. When you suggest that, you get weird looks as if you’re obsessed with sex or over-reacting (or both). A few agree to use just ‘nurse’, but the way they say it defeats the purpose. The same sort of thing happened when you said something about the uniforms and the washrooms. You were criticized for making a fuss. But you persist. Because damn it you want to be a nurse!
There should be regulations about what people can put on their private property that will be in view of their neighbours. Even more than in public spaces, visual material on private property is not easily avoided. If you put a swastika or a pornographic image on your garage door, and that door is right across from your neighbours’ living room window, they will have to see it every time they look out their window. Asking them not to look out their window is unreasonable. If they were there first, they have a right to ask you not to put the image on your garage door. If you were there first and had the image on your garage door when they were looking for a place, they could have chosen to not move in (and so don’t have the right to ask you to remove it) (maybe).
But it’s not even, or not only, so-called ‘offensive’ images that I’d prohibit. It’s anything the neighbour doesn’t want to see every day, anything that’s an unwanted intrusion on their consciousness. It could be a ‘Jesus Loves You’ sign (unwanted by the atheist), the Canadian flag (upsetting to someone who is well aware of Canada’s environmental record), or even an inoffensive and non-upsetting image of an infant playing with building blocks. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. The people who are forced to see your house every day are the ones who get a say in how it looks. From the outside. To them. What you put in your back yard doesn’t affect them, so they don’t have a say. What you put inside your garage, or inside your house, doesn’t affect them, so they don’t have a say. But what you put in plain view? They should have a say. A reasonable say.
Obviously the effects of such a prohibition increase the more visible you are. If you own a penthouse apartment that can be seen by thousands, guess what. If you own a house on a lake that can be seen by everyone on the lake, guess what.
To provide just one example, I live in a cabin on a lake in a forest and several people consider it appropriate to ‘decorate’ their property, lakeside, with solar lights that can never be turned off. Some are arranged in a runway fashion to mark a path from their house to their lake; some are arranged in a row along their frontage. Needless to say, the lights really ruin the beauty of the lovely moonlight glimmering on the water, the otherwise dark forest… I claim that such lights shouldn’t be allowed.
First, my right to revel in the natural beauty every night trumps their right to ‘decoration’ that isn’t even being appreciated (if they’re weekenders, they’re back in the city during the week and so don’t see their lights; if they live there, they’re typically asleep in bed after midnight and so don’t see their lights). Second, my right to revel in the natural beauty trumps the marginal utility of the lights even when they are there or awake because there are alternatives (one can use a flashlight or install motion sensor lights that go on only when one needs to see the way). People with lakeside solar lights are imposing their conception of decoration and utility on everyone else, and they are preventing others from appreciating their own conception of beauty (the dark night, the moonlight glimmering on the water). If your property is in the middle of natural beauty, you have an obligation not to ruin it. And if you don’t see that, you shouldn’t live there. Similarly, people who don’t appreciate Beethoven shouldn’t go to concerts and talk all the way through.
And if those lights are blinking, it’s even worse: given the way our brains are wired, our attention is coerced. No one has a right to force me to pay attention to something I don’t want to attend to, and blinking lights do just that.
One may counter by claiming that surely one is allowed to do what one wants on and with one’s own property. Well, no. For example, you shouldn’t be allowed to dump oil on your property because it will seep through the soil into other people’s property and into the lake. When your actions affect others, there are limits to what you can do.
In short, even though your property is ‘private’, what you put on it is not: as long as it can be seen by others, it’s public. And it should therefore be subject to restrictions: you don’t have a right to coerce other people’s attention, especially if what you’re forcing them to pay attention to is something they don’t want to pay attention to.
So I’m reading “Obviously, in an ideal world, men would not be sexual offenders … ” (“A Case for Feminist Self-Defence,” Thomas Nadelhoffer, The Philosophers’ Magazine 81) and I note the high bar: an ideal world. And well, we all know, we’ll never live in an ideal world, so, I guess that justifies, excuses, explains … men being sexual offenders.
Why didn’t Nadelhoffer say “in a civil world” or “in a world populated by mature people” or “in a world populated by psychologically health people” or “in a world without porn“? THOSE worlds we COULD attain.
That is to say, there ARE worlds, POSSIBLE worlds, in which men are NOT sexual offenders.
Why doesn’t Nadelhoffer–Thomas Nadelhoffer–want to consider those?
You can tell, when a job ad is titled that way, that they expect, or want, a woman. Women help. They don’t actually do a job, they just help someone else do a job. So the someone else gets the credit. And the big bucks and the benefits. After all, you’re just helping out, you’re just doing a favor. Because you’re nice. That’s what women are. You don’t see “Maintenance Help” or “Engineering Help” ads.
Another give-away is when the job’s for something like “10:00 to 2:00”. A man wouldn’t take a part-time job. They need a full-time job. Even if they haven’t made a couple kids they now need to support. (Do I get paid more to support my choices? Don’t think so.)
And they’ll get it too. The full-time job. Men are good at talking about their needs. Because having needs makes you important if you’re a man. (If you’re a woman, needing something makes you weak, dependent.)
(‘Course everything makes you weak if you’re a woman. Even ethics. It’s called ‘sentiment’. In a man, it’s called ‘integrity’.)
The fact that ‘you’ claim porn doesn’t harm women is proof that it does. Because such a claim indicates that you are so accustomed to seeing women sexually subordinated you think there’s nothing wrong with it. Such a claim proves that that porn has skewed your perceptions so much you actually believe the women are enjoying, asking for, whatever it is you see. (They’re pretending, asshole. They’re acting. According to some guy’s fantasy script. And they’re doing so because they’re getting paid.)
Such a claim also proves you haven’t read the research: for example, compared to those who did not watch porn, men who watched porn were more likely to have aggressive and hostile sexual fantasies, more likely to say that women enjoy forced sex, less likely to be bothered by rape and slashing, and more likely to consider women subordinate and submissive.
To those who deny this: if you can imagine the women in the porn you watch replaced with men and not be bothered by it, then okay, I’ll retract. And if you really don’t know what I’m talking about, do a search for “erotica” (heterosexual) made by women instead of “porn” and watch the difference.
Used to be women did the cooking and the baking. Then men starting getting into it. And in theory, I have no problem with that. In fact, I’m all for making everything gender-unaligned. But now that men are in the kitchen, suddenly it’s important. So important it’s being televised.
And my god, the drama! (And they call us drama queens.) The tension, the conflict… Chefs (yes, men are chefs; women were just cooks) scream with self-righteous anger at their minions, they rush around with great urgency making sure every sprinkle of cinnamon is just right, because, well, it’s so frickin’ important.
The phenomenon defies logic. Drama, therefore importance? No, because then the toddler screaming about his toy truck in the shopping mall would rank right up there with nuclear disarmament.
If anything, the reasoning goes the other way around: important, therefore drama. (Although that’s not necessarily true either. I tend to present my case calmly and rationally, without drama, but one time, the vet’s wife failed to recognize an emergency, dying or dead fawn in my arms notwithstanding, because I wasn’t screaming. Another time, the local township council didn’t put up a requested road sign until I called a councilmember shouting at her with anger and distress, since minutes earlier, I’d almost been turned into a parapalegic by a speeding vehicle — my previous half dozen requests, accompanied as they were with just sound arguments, were ignored.)
Or is it that the drama, the tension and conflict, are the consequences of the endeavor now being competitive.
And why is that? Because men are involved? Well, yes, men see everything as a competition (except for those who resist their primal brain, their testosterone, and/or their Y chromosome). Women freely share their favorite recipes.
But it’s not just the cooking shows. Song and dance, even travelogue shows, they’re all bloody competitions now. And why is that? Are we all addicts to competition? Have we been turned into competition addicts (by male producers) (seeking male sponsors)?
I’m thinking men, therefore important. Look at what happened to bank tellers: when men were bank tellers, it was important; once women started being bank tellers, it became much less important. Similarly, but in reverse, when women did the cooking and baking, it was no big deal: some were very good at it, some not; sometimes it was a chore, sometimes a joy; it was an art and a skill, yes, but women didn’t make a show — a show — of it.
Actually, food preparation was important before too; doing it the wrong way can be fatal. Literally. Which makes it even more irritating that the recognition of importance didn’t occur until men started doing it.
And the bizarre thing is they’ve made the trivial aspects of it important; people don’t die if the cinnamon sprinkle isn’t just so.
Which suggests something else: since they aren’t focusing on the legitimately important aspects, the aspects with intrinsic importance, they have to manufacture importance; and making something into a competition is a way to do just that, a way to make what they’re doing seem important.
I finally figured it out — why the men in my neighborhood react with such escalated lack of consideration whenever I ask them, politely, to limit their noise. I’ve asked snowmobilers who are out racing around the lake and having a good time going VROOM VROOM to please just turn around a few seconds before they get to the very end of the lake, which is where I live; I’ve asked dirt bikers to please ride up and down and up and down on a section of road that doesn’t have a bunch of people living there; I’ve asked men who are building new houses to please put the compressor behind the house (so the building acts as a berm) rather than on the lake side (which means, of course, that the noise not only skids across the lake with wonderful efficiency, but also that it then bounces off the hills, echoing amplified all over the place); I’ve asked men to at least close their lakeside doors and windows when they’re using their power tools inside. (And I’d like to ask them if they really, seriously, need to use a leafblower — we live in the forest, for godsake.)
And almost every single time, not only has the man not acceded to my request, he’s escalated his noise-making and/or responded with confrontational aggression.
Do I live in a neighborhood with an unrepresentative number of inconsiderate assholes?
No. Here’s what’s happening. (As I say, I’ve finally figured it out.) Partly it’s because I’m a woman asking a man to do something. Most men do not want to be seen taking orders from a woman; even to accede to a woman’s request is apparently too much for their egos. My male neighbour has made similar requests and the responses have been along the lines of ‘Sure, no problem.’
And partly, it’s because making noise is perceived to be an integral part of being a man. I’ve long known ‘My car is my penis’ but I never realized that that was partly because of the noise of the car. I didn’t know that men routinely modify the mufflers of their dirt bikes in order to make them louder. And then I happened to catch a Canadian Tire advertisement on television (I seldom watch television) and was absolutely amazed at the blatant association of masculinity with power tools, the promise that ‘You’ll be more of a man when you use this million-horsepower table saw’ or whatever.
So the resistance to my requests is because I’m essentially asking that they castrate themselves.
1. SlutWalk was reportedly initiated in response to a police officer’s comment about not dressing like a slut if you don’t want to get raped. The underlying assumption is that one’s attire — specific items or style — sends a message. And indeed it does. High heels, fishnet stockings, and a heavily made-up face are considered invitations. So if a woman is wearing ‘fuck me shoes’, she can hardly complain if someone fucks her. But is that the message the woman is sending? A message that she’s sexually available to everyone? Maybe. Maybe not. Frankly, given the ambiguity, and the nature of the outcome in the case of misunderstanding, I wonder why women take the risk.
It’s much like wearing one’s gang colours in the territory of a rival gang. Of course it’s going to be provocative. Is any consequent assault legal? No. Is it deserved? No. Should it have been anticipated? Yes. So unless the intent was to make a point about the wrongness of gangs and violence, a point best made by arranging media presence for the incursion into the other gang’s territory, well, how stupid are you?
Granted, most women who dress in a sexually attractive way don’t go that far (fishnet stockings and heavy make-up), but why go any way at all? Why does a woman dress in a sexually attractive way? Why do women put on high heels, show their legs, wear bras that push up their breasts and tops that expose cleavage, redden their lips, and so on? What does she hope to attract exactly?
My first guess is that she hasn’t thought about it. She dresses in a sexually attractive way because, well, that’s what women in our society are expected to do.(1) In which case she’s an idiot. Doesn’t deserve to be raped, but really, she should think about what she does.
My second guess is that she dresses in a sexually attractive way because she wants to invite offers of sex.(2) But then, she shouldn’t be angry when she receives such offers, either in the form of whistles and call-outs or in more direct ways. That she may respond with anger or offense suggests that she wants to attract only offers she’s likely to accept, offers only from men she’s attracted to. But, men may cry, how’s a man to know? Um, try to make eye contact. If you can’t do that, she’s not interested. If you do make eye contact, smile. If she doesn’t smile back, she’s not interested. Surely that kind of body language isn’t too subtle to grasp.
And yet, many men seem to have such an incapacity for subtlety that if you act like bait, they may simply reach out and grab you. Are they entitled to do that? No. Any unauthorized touching is a violation. Is clothing authorization? Well, sometimes. Consider uniforms.
So it would be far less ambiguous if a woman who wants sex just extended the offers herself. Why take the passive route of inviting offers from likely candidates? Why make men try to figure out whether they’re a likely candidate? Why not just let them know and go from there?
2. Many people may not have been aware of the police officer’s comment. So what are they to make of SlutWalk? What are they to understand is the point? (Prerequisite to deciding whether to support SlutWalk or not.)
a) “It’s okay to be a slut!” Given the ‘sluttish’ appearance that many women present during the walk, this understanding is understandable. But whether or not one wants to endorse that message depends on the definition of ‘slut.’ See“What’s wrong with being a slut?”
b) “We’re proud to be sluts!”
c) “No woman deserves to be raped, regardless of her attire!” This is probably closest to the intended message, but in this case, better to have called it a “Walk Against Rape”. Better, further, to advocate changes that would make rape more likely to be reported and rapists more likely to be sentenced commensurate to the injuries they’ve caused. Perhaps better still to advocate a male-only curfew.
Of course, “SlutWalk” is far more provocative, far more attention-getting, than the ho-hum “Walk Against Rape”, but I don’t think the organizers considered the difficulty of reclaiming an insulting word. And ‘slut’ is a very difficult insulting word to reclaim. Harder than ‘bitch’ and ‘nigger’ and even those reclamation efforts haven’t been very successful. Mostly, success has been limited to conversations among women in the first case and conversations among blacks in the second. SlutWalk is not conducted in the presence of women only. So, really, did the organizers expect people in general to accept (let alone understand) their implied redefinition?
The organizers also didn’t think through the male over-dependence on visual signals. The gawkers and hecklers who typically undermine the event should be expected. The inability of men to process any verbal messages (even those just a few words long) in the presence of so-called ‘fuck me’ heels should be expected.
Consider that even Gwen Jacobs’ action to make it legal for women to be shirtless wasn’t immune to sexualization, despite the clearly non-sexual nature of her action; men (BOOBS!) hooted, men (BOOBS!) called out, and the media, no doubt reflecting a decision made by a man (BOOBS!), or perhaps a thoughtless woman, continues to use the sexualized “topless” instead of “shirtless” when reporting about the issue (BOOBS!). Imagine the response had Jacobs gone shirtless while also wearing short shorts exposing half buttocks. It would have been, to understate, a mixed message.
And that is, essentially, the problem with SlutWalk. High heels, exposed legs, pushed-up breasts, and a made-up faces sends a message that one is sexually available (which is why it’s appalling to me that it has become convention for women to wear heels and make-up in public every day all day) (those who accept that convention accept the view that women should be, or at least should seem to be, sexually available every day all day).(3) And if it doesn’t send a message that you’re sexually available, what message does it send? That you’re sexually attractive? Back to the top—what are you hoping to attract? (And why are you trying to attract that when you’re at work, working?)
d) “Women have a right to tease!” That seems to be the message SlutWalk conveys, given the likelihood that women who present themselves as sexually attractive aren’t actually trying to be sexually attractive to everyone or, at least, aren’t sexually available to everyone. And that’s a message that many women would not Especially those who know about the provocation defence.
There’s nothing wrong with extending invitations to sex. Doing so in public in such a non-specific way—that’s the problem. Especially given men’s inability to pick up on subtle cues and/or their refusal to understand the difference between yes and no, let alone yes and maybe. Maybe when men can handle a sexually charged atmosphere without assaulting… Maybe when other men penalize, one way or another, those who can’t handle a sexually charged atmosphere without assaulting…
In the meantime, we’re living in an occupied country, a country occupied by morally-underdeveloped people with power who think women are just walking receptacles for their dicks. So women who make themselves generally available, or present themselves as being generally available, are, simply, putting themselves at great risk (and, yes, in a way, getting what they asked for): some STDs are fatal; others are incurable; most have painful symptoms. And pregnancy has a life-long price tag.(4)
(1) There’s a difference between attractive and sexually attractive. At least, there should be. Perhaps because men dominate art and advertising, the two have been equivocated. (No doubt because everything is sexual for them. ) (Which may be to say, everything is about dominance for them.)
(2) Maybe part of her smiles to think of herself as a slut. She’s a bad girl, she’s dangerous, she’s taking risks, she’s a wild girl for once in her life. But that’s exactly what they want. Sexual access. No-strings-attached sex. We fell for that in the 60s too. Free love, sure, we’re not prudes, we’re okay with our bodies, we’re okay with sex, we’re ‘with it’. But they never took us seriously. They never considered us part of the movement. Behind our backs, they’d snicker and say the best position for a woman is prone ( Stokely Carmichael) (read your history, learn about your past).
(3) Of course there’s the possibility that if/when women forego the heels, bared legs, accentuated breasts and butts, and make-up, men will consider a little ankle to be an open invitation. Which just means the issue isn’t attire at all. It’s being female. In a patriarchy. (Which still means SlutWalk is off-target.)
(4) I hear the objections already: ‘No, wearing high heels and make-up doesn’t mean I’m sexually available! That’s the point!’ (And around and around we go.) Then why do you wear high heels and make-up? Seriously, think about it: high heels make the leg more shapely, attracting the male gaze, which follows your legs up…; make-up makes your face younger, supposedly prettier, lipstick attracts the male gaze to your lips… If you just want to be attractive, then what you do to your body wouldn’t be sexualized: you’d wear funky gold glittered hiking boots, you’d paint an iridescent rainbow across your face, you’d do a hundred other aesthetically interesting things…
When the pilot episode of Canterbury’s Law aired, I was really annoyed. The main character was an intelligent, powerful woman (a lawyer). Good. Who is shown obsessing over her appearance, albeit grudgingly, wondering whether the color of her suit brings out her eyes. Within the first hour, we also see her going to her husband for comfort and mourning a lost child.
The main character, a man, in Law and Order? I didn’t see the pilot episode, but I’ll bet it didn’t open with him fretting over his tie, and I’ll bet he’s never shown seeking, let alone getting, comfort from his wife, and being a father is not a defining aspect of his character. He’s just a damned good lawyer. Why can’t women just be damned good lawyers?
(Because the men who write the scripts and/or the directors who direct them and/or the producers who fund them are insecure – they can’t be men unless women are women. And being a woman means being a(n aspiring) beauty queen, a wife, and a mother.)
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (short drama 15min)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…
