Given the relative vulnerability of men to sexual assault (all it takes to disable them is a swift forceful kick, or, at closer quarters, a good grab, pull, twist – almost anything, really) (whereas women have to be partially undressed and then immobilized), it’s surprising that we hear far more often about rape than – well, we don’t even have a special name for it. Testicular battery?
Since most women are physically capable of such an assault, the reason must be some psychological social inhibition. And, of course, this is so. Girls are not permitted, encouraged, or taught to fight; boys are. All three. Women are socialized to see men as their protectors, not their enemies. Men are – well, this is the interesting bit: men used to be socialized to see women as in need of protection, and so would never dream of raping them (well, okay, they’d dream of it – perhaps often and in technicolor – but there was a strong social stigma against assaulting the fair sex: boys were shamed if they ever hit a girl, and if you ever hit your wife, let alone another woman, well what kind of man are you?), but feminism got rid of such patronizing chivalry.
And rightly so. Unfortunately, it has yet to make its replacement, self-defence, as commonplace.
There’s another problem. We’re afraid that if we hurt them, they’ll come back (when they can walk again) and kill us. Which is why women’s self-defence should include a small tranquilizer gun.
(‘Course they might still come back and kill us. After all, to be decommissioned by a woman! It would be a new kind of honor killing…)
Which means the best solution may be to just kill him first.
(And given the very real possibility that your rapist is HIV+, since he’s apparently not monogamous and/or in the habit of using a condom, it may not just be rape, but murder—in which case you’re justified in doing just that.)
Sometimes I wonder whether men have a defective chromosome: the Y was supposed to be an X, but somehow it ended up missing something – a case of stunted growth, or arrested development. This defective chromosome, uniquely characteristic of the human male, causes them to be a little lower on the evolutionary scale, a little less evolved.
Consider their fascination with movement. They always have to be doing something, moving around, busy at this or that. They can’t sit still. This importance of movement is characteristic of many lower animals; something doesn’t even register in the frog’s visual field unless it moves. Certainly movement is required for flight and fight. (And no other options occur to lower animals.) And for many, movement is a form of posturing – which explains the way men walk, and stand, and sit. On the other hand, such excessive physical activity may simply suggest that the organism’s mental activity does not provide enough stimulation.
Not only must they be doing something, they must be doing it loudly. They even speak more loudly than women. And when they’re not speaking, they must be making noise. They derive endless delight from engines, jackhammers, chainsaws… This propensity is suggestive of the lion’s roar – the louder the noise, the greater the threat.
Because, usually, the larger the animal. And of course size is another male obsession. Girth which in a woman would be considered obese and disgusting is carried by men as if it increases their legitimacy, their authority: they thrust out their gut just as they thrust out their chest. It brings to mind animals that inflate themselves to achieve greater size (the balloonfish can actually double its size). Men are concerned not only with physical size, in general and in particular, but also with the size of their paycheques, their houses, their corporations. The bigger, the better.
Closely related to the size thing is the territory thing. Men occupy a lot of space – again, look at the way they stand and sit. They take up, they occupy, more space than they need – they lean on counters, sprawl on chairs, take over small countries. They engage in turf wars, at every level.
Consider also men’s obsession with speed. Cars, trains, planes. Sex. Speed is, of course, important for flight, one of the forementioned behaviours favoured by so many lower animals.
Like their sexual response, men’s emotional response is, well, uncomplicated. They are easy to please. This lack of complexity is further indication that they are simply less evolved.
Some say that language is the mark of higher life forms. And, of course, any grade school teacher will tell you that boys lag behind girls in verbal development. They’re just not very good at communicating. I believe the word I’m looking for is ‘inarticulate.’
By way of summary, consider dick flicks. Also called action movies, there is indeed lots of action. And lots of noise. The heroes are usually big. And they have big things – big guns, usually. The central conflict of a dick flick is almost always territorial. There is little in the way of plot or character development, but there’s always at least one high-speed chase scene. And, understandably, the dialogue in a dick flick consists mostly of short and often incomplete sentences.
[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]
Wilmut’s team named the sheep cloned from a single adult cell “Dolly” because that cell had come from a mammary gland. I’m tempted, on that basis alone, to cast my vote against human cloning. I mean, if that kind of short-sightedness or immaturity is going to be running things, they’re bound to go horribly wrong.
Did they really not foresee that “Dolly” would become headline news? Or did they not even recognize how juvenile they were being? Mammaries = women = mammaries. We are not seen as people, or perhaps colleagues, certainly never as bosses. Really, need I go on? This is all so old. And yet, grown men, brilliant men, on the cutting edge of science, who become headline news, are apparently still forcing farts at the dinner table and snickering about it.
So, cloning? I don’t think so. Not until the other half of the species grows up.
(Then again, since cloning means we finally don’t need them at all, not even to maintain the species, let’s go for it.) (Could it be they never thought of that either – that cloning makes males totally redundant?)
First, there’s the ageism you’re perpetuating: make-up is intended, to a large degree, to make one look younger. In many respects, younger is better, but in many respects, it isn’t (and anyway, make-up merely gives one the appearance of being younger). True, at some point in time, being old is completely the pits, but hey, that’s life, deal with it – without delusion or deception (or implied insult).
Second, if make-up were merely intended to (attempt to) make one beautiful, well, I suppose there’s no harm in that – the world can always use a little more beauty. However, I despair at the pathetically low aesthetic standards in use if a blue eyelid is considered beautiful – let’s at least see a glittering rainbow under that eyebrow arch! Further, I despair at the attention to beauty of skin if at the expense of beauty of character.
However, make-up is intended as much, if not more, to (attempt to) make one sexually attractive. (To some extent, I suppose physical beauty is sexually attractive, but that suggests a very narrow definition of beauty: a dog running full-out is beautiful but not, at least to me, sexually attractive.) (It also suggests a very narrow definition of sexual attractiveness.) I’m thinking, for example, of reddened (and puckered) lips – what is that but an advertisement for fellatio? Consider too the perfume (especially if it’s musk rather than floral), and the earrings (earlobes as erogenous zones), and the bras that push up and pad – all are part of the woman’s morning grooming routine, her ‘getting ready’ (that phrase itself begs the question ‘Ready for what?’) (‘Sex!’).
Now there’s nothing wrong with being sexually attractive per se. But there is something wrong – something sick – about wanting to be bait (sexually attract-ive) all day long. Especially when those same women complain about the attention they receive for their sexual attractiveness – the looks, the comments, the invitations (can you say ‘sexual harassment’?) Not only is there a serious self-esteem problem here, there’s a serious consistency of thought problem here.
Third, combine the first point with the first part of the second point and we see another problem: make-up endorses the ‘(only) young is beautiful’ attitude.
Combine the first point with the second part of the second point: make-up endorses the ‘(only) young is sexually attractive’ attitude.
Add the shaved legs and armpits (and eyeliner, for that big baby doe-eyed look?), and we see we’re not just talking ‘young’ as in ‘twenty years old’ but ‘young’ as in pre-pubescent (only pre-pubescents are hairless, only pre-pubescents have such smooth skin). And that’s really disturbing – to establish/reinforce the sexual attractiveness of pre-pubescents.
Why is it (we think) men find young women, girls, sexually attractive? I doubt it’s just the ‘heathy for childbearing’ thing. Because actually, it’s not healthy for girls to bear children, and it’s not even possible for pre-pubescents to do so. (And it’s not like the men follow up in nine months to claim their progeny.) (But then I’m assuming rational behaviour here.)
I suspect it’s the power thing. Men can have power over, feel superior to, children more easily than adults. So in addition to encouraging child sexual abuse, women who shave their legs and otherwise appear/act prepubescent are reinforcing the ‘sex as power’ instead of ‘sex as pleasure’ attitude (though of course I guess for many men power is pleasure).
Last, compounding all of this is the custom that only women wear make-up. Which reinforces the whole patriarchy thing: the women are sexual objects while the men are sexual subjects. (‘Course, without make-up, and the loss of about 20 pounds, and, well, major surgery, most men couldn’t cut it as sexual objects anyway.)
Have you noticed the way the weather is being reported lately? Climate change, specifically global warming, as evidenced by the dramatic increase in severe storms and the decrease in polar ice…they’re making it entertaining. Entertaining, for gawdsake.
Commentators refer to “extreme storms” — making them sound all exciting and daring, like “extreme sports”.
Another opens with “this week’s wildest weather” as if we’re on a fun safari.
And there’s a video called “Force of Nature – Uncut”. Again, exciting entertainment.
“Will any records be broken?” the commentator asks, the phrasing suggesting that, like athletic competitions, breaking a record will be a good thing.Continue reading
Sure, women should be allowed to be surrogates. We all do work with our bodies, some of us also include our minds in the deal (some of us are allowed to include our minds in the deal), so why not? As long as they get paid for service rendered.
Being a surrogate is sort of like being an athlete. You have to be and stay physically healthy, for the duration: you have to eat and drink the right stuff, and not eat or drink the wrong stuff; you have to get the right amount of physical activity. And so on. It’s important. Use during pregnancy of illegal drugs (such as crack cocaine and heroin) as well as legal drugs (such as alcohol and nicotine) can cause, in the newborn, excruciating pain, vomiting, inability to sleep, reluctance to feed, diarrhoea leading to shock and death, severe anaemia, growth retardation, mental retardation, central nervous system abnormalities, and malformations of the kidneys, intestines, head and spinal cord (Madam Justice Proudfoot, “Judgement Respecting Female Infant ‘D.J.”; Michelle Oberman, “Sex, Drugs, Pregnancy, and the Law: Rethinking the Problems of Pregnant Women who use Drugs”). Refusal of fetal therapy techniques (such as surgery, blood infusions, and vitamin regimens) can result in respiratory distress, and various genetic disorders and defects such as spina bifida and hydrocephalus (Deborah Mathieu, Preventing Prenatal Harm: Should the State Intervene?)
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.
What if the right to life was a natural, inalienable human right to age 18, but after that it was an acquired, alienable right? So you had to deserve it somehow, you had to deserve to be alive. And you could lose it, by doing any of a number of things…
‘Outrageous!’That was the word used way back in ’85 in response to the expectation that men take a contraceptive that had a side-effect of reduced sex drive.Hello.Let me tell you about the contraceptive pill for women.Side-effects include headaches, nausea, weight gain, mood changes, yeast infections, loss of vision, high blood pressure, gall bladder disease, liver tumours, skin cancer, strokes, heart attacks, and death.Oh, and reduced sex drive. (Thing is, and get this – do not pass go until you do – taking the pill is, for many of us, preferable to getting pregnant.)
"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…
