We Created This and We Have to Fix It
*sigh*
This is what we have done. My faith, Christianity, says that women are second class. My “programming” says that they are there to keep the home…and by extension, be mothers first and women second.
Western Culture is finally breaking out of the Puritan view that women are sexually depraved and morally weak. We allow ourselves, men, to believe that we are “owed” whatever we want from women because they are incapable of doing anything without a man. We are taught, from an early age, that some things are “women’s work”. We have created a stereotype that makes them only menials.
Kipling wrote this in “The Female of the Species” and this is what WE fear…
“When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale,
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise,,
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger,- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue, to the scandal of The Sex!But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity, must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions, not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.She is wedded to convictions, in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!,
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.Unprovoked and awful charges, even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons, even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish, like the Jesuit with the squaw!So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice, which no woman understands.And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern, shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.”
*Yes, this is a 19th Century sexist view. It is gender divided along strict biological roles.*
We know this to be true…and it terrifies us. We HAVE to exert power or we have to admit weakness. That is the perception.
That quiet girl in the corner at the party, her boyfriend raped her and no one believes it. He’s a nice guy… The one that’s very loudly drunk, her father abuses her and her mom blames her… The girl that was walking home from work because her car broke just got blamed for wearing shorts and a halter top in 105-degree heat. The cops told her she was asking for it…The college student that passed out at a frat party should have expected it…The one you just ogled, she dressed for herself and NOT you…The girl that has a string of abusive relationships, the first was her father – and now that’s all she thinks she deserves… The one you just called a b**ch, she doesn’t trust anyone because she can’t. Everyone she did trust told her he loved her and betrayed her. You were staring and the only way she feels safe is to push you away…The older lady with the bad attitude in the grocery store, her husband has been an abusive drunk for 40 years…
The random indignities, the disrespect that men don’t see, the verbal abuse we think is flattery, the casual disregard, the turning to stare, the whistles and comments – we don’t even realize we’re doing them, and women have to put up with them. We think it’s normal. We think those are compliments. We think they’re our right…yet, if we had to deal with it, we could not.
Women didn’t invite this. They for damn sure don’t deserve it. No one does.
Guys, men, we created this. We are the cause and the solution. We have made the world so that we are not trusted. We have told women that they are second class, that they are servants, property, sexual objects, stupid, and only good for bearing children. Every right they have, they had to fight for. They had to fight to be able to vote. They had to fight to be able to decide when and when not to have sex. They had to win the right to choose contraception. Now, we have the nerve to blame them for not trusting us to act in their best interests when we have proven time and again that we will not…
The answer it not to “allow” them to have rights. It is to, finally, shut up. They have well and truly earned their space and rights. If men had to put up with the s**t that women have had to, this would be long over. It is not “giving up” power – it’s sharing it with the other half of Humanity…Women shouldn’t have to fight to get what is theirs. We men have to finally get over ourselves. We, Humanity, can be greater than what we are when half of humanity doesn’t fear the other half…and, yeah, I mean both halves fearing the other…
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