Posts Tagged ‘masculinity’
How many women and men are needed to convince you of a rape act?
Rape is not sex.
Men don’t rape women because they need to get laid.
Rape is violence. It’s power and dehumanizing of women.
Many wonder why they (this group of men) raped girls while they could have consensual sex, but that’s not the point. They don’t want vanilla: they want violence. They want to humiliate, inflict pain and violate.
They want to take what they want without permission. Because they can.
We tip the nurse at the birth of the boy double the girl.
We say “go make your brother a cup of tea” and allow him to boss his sister around.
We raise our boys to do as they please. To pee in the street because “they can’t hold it”.
To sleep in and get breakfast to his bed instead of helping at home.
We praise his “masculinity” with the amounts of hearts he has broken because “boys will be boys”.
We forgive his fling with the neighbor’s girl because he is a boy while we beat the girl in submission, all her life.
We laugh at the stolen kisses in the staircase priding our “boy has grown” while we curse the girl who gave in.
But she is not ours so we don’t care. She is collateral damage.
We teach him that the girl he touched must be a slut, a sinner and if she has done it with you she must have done it with others.
We tell “our boy” not to cry or show kindness because a real man is tough and angry. We poison him with toxic thoughts and connect his masculinity to the level of hate and control he develops towards women.
We don’t tell him about consent.
When he has an urge it must be stilled. He can’t otherwise because “all men are like that, they are hunters by nature”.
We teach him that sex is something he does to women for his own pleasure only. We call them boys whereas they should be men.
We raise girls to comply. To become the perfect victim.
We teach her that her body is sin and must be hidden.
We teach her that anything is always her fault. She is sin. Her voice is 3awra. We teach her that she is a burden and not worthy of love, not worthy of autonomy over her body and life.
We tell her “all men are like that” when she comes home disrespected and defeated. We tell her “the boy likes you” when he is mean to her.
We tell her “your honor” is a membrane and that her life is worthless without it.
We cut her her genitals so she can be “controlled”, we make her bleed to prove virtue.
We tell her to be silent and do as she is told. We tell her to shrink so she is likable. We tell her to be silent so she can please. We tell her not to laugh too loud, to keep her legs closed, to dress to undress. To be a ghost.
It takes 100 girls to convince you he is a rapist and just 1 guy to convince you she is a slut.
Patriarchy is the reason for violence against women. Patriarchy is actually safeguarded by women. Break the cycle. Step out of it.
Start at the root. Raise your children differently.
Change the laws that enable rape culture and the dehumanizing of women.
Give women equality to men by law and enforce it. We have to stop being a society that hates and fears women so much.
- In: Essays | humor | sex/ love/seduction | social articles | women
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Dude Feminism: A language? Mind your language?
posted on APRIL 24, 2014 (selected as one of the top posts)
The Language of Dude Feminism
This can be spun as noble chivalry, brutal domination, or a playful battle of the sexes, but at the root it’s the same: women are denied the freedoms that men take as a God-given right, assigned subordinate status, and coerced into performative gender roles.
In this dialectic, men’s protective abilities and ravaging urges come from the same place and are both aimed squarely at women.
Language did not create the patriarchy (not sure of that statement), but language is a powerful method of inscribing the possible, shaping how and what we think, and justifying the status quo.
Thus, perhaps it’s no surprise that feminist outreach towards the traditional opponents of women’s liberation – i.e., cis-gendered heterosexual men — utilizes the same language as that of domination.
Rather than attacking the institution of masculinity itself, several recent campaigns have attempted a sort of masculinity triage, trying to eliminate violence against women, while still flattering men with the label of protector.
These campaigns, such as “real men don’t buy girls,”“my strength isn’t for hurting,”are various incarnations of “how would you feel if someone said that to your mother /sister /girlfriend,”and have proven to be enormously popular, achieving prodigious re-blogs, conferences, and media airtime.
They are, by many metrics, successful, and have gotten institutions long silent on the rights of women to speak up. I believe we are the better for them, but I also believe that they do not go far enough, and we all must, as feminists, radicals and progressives, push against our comfort zones.
In these campaigns, the masculine mystique is still very present, albeit a kinder, gentler version.
By flattering men’s strength and asking them to use it to protect women, we once again place men in the driver’s seat of culture, asking for them to renounce violence and be less vile guardians.
Common to all these messages is that men CAN rape, hurt, buy women, catcall or what-have-you, but they SHOULDN’T.
Men, we are told, shouldn’t hurt women, not because of any intrinsic rights women may have, but because other men might do it to THEIR women, and that would be awful.
Male privilege is re-defined, but not negated, in a way that leaves masculinity unchallenged and still dominant.
The wonderful, complex, and multi-faceted language of generations of queer, trans, intersectionalist and sex-positive feminism and human-rights dialogues is thrown aside completely in favor of a request that straight, cis-gendered men join the rest of the world at the big-kids table.
Again, this isn’t to say that these campaigns haven’t done good, but rather, that they should go farther.
There is certainly something to be said about using the language of the patriarchy to subvert the patriarchy, or of using privilege to end privilege, but it’s not clear that’s what’s being done.
Rather, it looks as if men are given a privileged place in the feminist movement, one where they are praised for simply not being terrible and their much-vaunted power remains intact.
The bar for male allies has been set tremendously low.
In contrast to the sacrifices, acts of bravery and daily fights women and LGBTQ people are expected to take on to achieve equality and justice, men are asked simply not to buy people, physically abuse people, or rape.
The fact that this counts as progress is a sad indictment of how much work there is left to do, but that is all the more reason to not sugar-coat it or water down the message.
Feminism has made great strides against patriarchal oppression in much of the world, and perhaps to finish the job, to make a world of true equality, the message cannot be compromised or simplified.
Males in the movement should (and can) be challenged and encouraged to act not like a virtuous “real man,” but like (well-nurtured) humans.
Note: In human interactions and communication, it is not good enough to understand the notion: We need to have a “Feel” of the concept. Someone has to write a novel using Dude Feminism Language or provide a list of novels that come close to that language.
Creating critical new terms in Dude Feminism language is inevitable so that readers discriminate between the patriarchal implicit meaning from the explicit meaning in the Dude Feminism language. A novel is the best means to convey a feeling of the purpose.
About the author: J.A. McCarroll is a NYC-based writer, anthropologist, and baker. He works in reproductive rights and volunteers with Canimiz Sokakta and the Rules. Tweet @jamccarroll.
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