mad as hell
Feb. 18th, 2007 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseThis post over at I Blame the Patriarchy sent me into a full-on yelling freak=out. I'm not sure why it got to me so completely. It's about a book called "Babyproofing Your Marriage," aimed at women of course. A taste of its wisdom:
"The book is full of helpful tips - one of the most notorious being the ‘Five Minute Fix’ - how did you first come across this useful tactic?
Well, it’s not as if we invented it! We just realized that, as sex acts go, this one was totally undervalued by women. It wasn’t until we became overworked, time-starved mums that we saw the obvious benefits. You don’t have to take your clothes off, the time you spend on it is minimal, and your husband thinks you are a Goddess! When we mentioned the idea at one of our men’s focus groups and got a gob smacked, “Good God, that would transform my marriage” reaction, we knew we were on to something."
And just, the casualness of it. It made me want to scream. Because clearly, the way to save a marriage is for women to perform sex acts they don't enjoy on their husbands, cause that's the only reason why they keep you around. Love doesn't matter. And god only knows that female sexuality doesn't matter. It doesn't even seem to exist. No one is going to tell men that they need to give their wives oral sex everyday for the first year of any given offspring's life, or else their wives won't love them any more. It's socially accepted prostitution, and it's sickening.
I hate that women are the ones who have to take care of things. I hate that it's the wife's job, the girlfriend's job, to keep it all going. And I adore The Boy, but this kind of shit makes me absolutely terrified of getting married. Because how can we hp[e to make anything pure in such a toxic culture?
I'm writing a paper on the impossibility of love in George Eliot, and it's becoming scarily clear to me that things haven't changed as much as I would like to think since she was writing. The world still does everything it can to choke love off, covering it with priviledge and cruelty and subservience and ownership until it becomes so hopelessly hard to find anything good. Maggie Tulliver has to die before she can find perfect love. In a flood.
"The book is full of helpful tips - one of the most notorious being the ‘Five Minute Fix’ - how did you first come across this useful tactic?
Well, it’s not as if we invented it! We just realized that, as sex acts go, this one was totally undervalued by women. It wasn’t until we became overworked, time-starved mums that we saw the obvious benefits. You don’t have to take your clothes off, the time you spend on it is minimal, and your husband thinks you are a Goddess! When we mentioned the idea at one of our men’s focus groups and got a gob smacked, “Good God, that would transform my marriage” reaction, we knew we were on to something."
And just, the casualness of it. It made me want to scream. Because clearly, the way to save a marriage is for women to perform sex acts they don't enjoy on their husbands, cause that's the only reason why they keep you around. Love doesn't matter. And god only knows that female sexuality doesn't matter. It doesn't even seem to exist. No one is going to tell men that they need to give their wives oral sex everyday for the first year of any given offspring's life, or else their wives won't love them any more. It's socially accepted prostitution, and it's sickening.
I hate that women are the ones who have to take care of things. I hate that it's the wife's job, the girlfriend's job, to keep it all going. And I adore The Boy, but this kind of shit makes me absolutely terrified of getting married. Because how can we hp[e to make anything pure in such a toxic culture?
I'm writing a paper on the impossibility of love in George Eliot, and it's becoming scarily clear to me that things haven't changed as much as I would like to think since she was writing. The world still does everything it can to choke love off, covering it with priviledge and cruelty and subservience and ownership until it becomes so hopelessly hard to find anything good. Maggie Tulliver has to die before she can find perfect love. In a flood.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 04:24 am (UTC)you do know about the national women's history project, right? http://www.nwhp.org/
Can I link to this out in my journal? Your post, and the one you linked to? I'd really like to bounce this all over, as much as possible. It's important.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 05:17 am (UTC)I've got to think that some things do get better. I mean, I got to go to college. My grandmother didn't, because even though she had a journalism scholarship in the way-back-when, she had my mama at eighteen.
It's maybe a little bit easier, more doable. But we're such a very long way from where we ought to be, that crying sometimes feels like the only thing to do.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 05:34 am (UTC)"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
I love that further down in that post are both links to the 'problem' of female infants in India and Japan, and the 'problem' of being too pretty... there's an education right there, in that one thread. Links one couldn't have made to 'problems' not publicly acknowledged even 10 years ago, now there in front of everyone for the seeing and thinking about. If that makes any sense?
The icon is to remind us all why we love the male gender.
Date: 2007-02-19 05:12 am (UTC)I also have a Boy, and he has never demanded sex of any kind. He also has no problem with pleasuring me, whether that be by going down on me, or some other way. Sure, some men are assholes.... but if a man acts that way, don't date him. Let him masturbate, I say. Or at least have the self-assurance of knowing that that prick could never have you.
I think there are a lot of harmful, toxic things in our society, but I don't think the male gender is specifically to blame for them. If anything, I see how many of them are hurt by this world every bit as much as women are. More, if you count circumcision. Sure, some things are easier, there is a prejudice against women, but there's an even stronger prejudice against men who don't fit a very tight mold. If anything, his looks, his mannerisms, are even a bit off, he is ostracized, and his will to be different beaten down. No one talks to boys, no one comforts them, they're just told to buck up and be men, even when they're two years old. Anything gentle or beautiful or expressive is forbidden....is it any wonder that so many of them become misogynists?
I consider myself a feminist, but I think that feminism, at least the brand I practice, is ultimately beneficial to men as well as women, and has the potential to liberate both. While I think some of those women make excellent points, and am proud of them, others just seem to be mean to men for the sake of being mean to men, and it's that kind of thing that makes me afraid to tell people I'm a feminist. I have to sort of suffix it with, "Oh, but I'm not the kind that wants all men castrated or anything....ha ha ha...."
As to the book, it is disgusting and vapid and so on, and it's everything certain women want to hear. Sadly, men are pawns in this one.
Re: The icon is to remind us all why we love the male gender.
Date: 2007-02-19 05:23 am (UTC)I love my boy to heaven and to earth, and we're trying to make this egalitarian thing go right. but it's hard, because we don't really have a cultural script to fall back on. We're making it up as we go along. And he was raised in a very conservative home, and has blind spots that he can't help but that drive me crazy anyway.
We're making a real go of it--we're both undergrads, but we've been together since our teens, and marriage is in the cards. Babies are something I want desperately, and soon. I think stuff like this actually freaks me out more because of the relative traditonal-ness of the life I want. I want to be a wife and mother in a world that's got some major issues in those areas. I want that sort of love without subservience. That scares me so bad.
Re: The icon is to remind us all why we love the male gender.
Date: 2007-02-19 05:39 am (UTC)My sons are 33 and 36, and so in the middle here- raised by a card-carrying feminist in the 70's but prey to all the attendant larger influences none-the-less. But they can talk about it, they know it's to struggle with and learn about. And that makes all the difference. Their dad thought I was nuts, and his dad thought I was foolish.
Re: The icon is to remind us all why we love the male gender.
Date: 2007-02-19 05:54 am (UTC)Seriously, thank you for helping to raise a generation of more-feminist men. I and the girls of my cohort are eternally grateful to all the women like you.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 07:00 am (UTC)Love does seem impossible when it comes covered in so many restictions and so many reasons to fear the very people you lean on most, doesn't it?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 02:19 pm (UTC)I admit to worrying about what will happen when Brian and I have kids, if I'll become like this. However, I have some good models around me and really the only person who expects me to do everything is me. Brian even mentioned that since I'll be making more he's be open to being a stay at home dad. It's just odd to be the one putting pressure on yourself, seeing it for the stupidity that it is but to be illequped to stop it.
And I love George Eliot.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 03:41 pm (UTC)the stuff that really scares me is the stuff that I know will be hard anyway, twisted culture notwithstanding. Hard stuff+patriarchy=no fair.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 12:52 am (UTC)