A few months back some DK members suggested that the major difference between the subjugation of people of color and the subjugation of women is that women have always had “the protection of men.”
In mulling that since, it struck me recently that it is precisely the protection of women by men—this seemingly benign or even beneficial gender relationship—that is the social construct that has so grossly deformed the female half of the race, as badly as foot bindings deformed the feet of Chinese girls in centuries past. And in deforming women, it has also deformed men.
This structure of female dependency on the testosterone-enhanced male—is it innate? Do female primates across the spectrum draw back from threats to the pack, passively waiting for the male primates to save them? Did nomadic bands of humans, equally reliant on hunting and foraging, send their women to the rear when danger approached? Or is this something that arose over the last four millennia, when warfare and pillaging became the human interactive mode and women were no longer equal contributors to the social weal—when women started to need the protection of men from the predations of men?
Consider the logical implications of dependency.
1. If your safety and life depend on attracting the patronage of a protective male, you must be attractive. Being attractive becomes a primary survival characteristic that will be inculcated into female children by anyone who cares about those female children. The need to be attractive will seem so obvious, so fundamental, that it will become an assigned part of the psyche, a part of the definition of being a human female (unlike virtually any other species in the animal kingdom). It will be an assumption of every work of literature and art. The culture’s very mythologies and archetypes will incorporate this artificial concept of female vanity until Aphrodite is ascendant.
The male corollary: Men are entitled to judge women on their looks as well as everything else. Men, not so much.
2. If you must maintain the patronage of a protective male, you must practice empathy and diplomacy. You must be able to read expression and body language well because errors can lead to loss of protection or the failure to obtain protection. You must be able to flatter and apologize (even when you’re right) and maintain connection so as to encourage the continuation of protection. You must understand, at a near-atomic level, that insufficient regard for the mental and emotional condition of the being who offers protection can be fatal.
The male corollary: Men are entitled to be territorial and disregarding, and being male means never having to say you are sorry.
3. If you must maintain the patronage of a protective male, you must be willing to pay for it. Payment would include, first and foremost, sexual activity, the care of the children that this produced (over whom males historically claimed ownership through the extension of protection), the creation and maintenance of the comfort of the (man’s) home, in addition to the assignment of all female wealth to the (man’s) home. Corollaries of this payment-is-expected mindset include spousal rape (and rape generally, along with the attendant belief that sex is a right), work-related sexual harassment (indeed all benefits-related sexual harassment—“No water for you unless . . . “), incest, ownership interests in children born and unborn, and a complete masculine disregard of any homemaking tasks.
The male corollary: Men are entitled to expect sexual favors any time they confer any benefit on a woman.
4. If you must maintain the patronage of a protective male, you will be subject to consequences for your failures and your uppity successes. The wide range of barbarities perpetrated against women are also natural incidents to the protection racket. Femicide, honor killings, mutilations, intra-family abuse, spousal abuse, the burning of witches—these are all part of the paternal privilege of sanctioning errant females who do not adequately keep the bargain of fealty for protection.
Male corollary: Women with the wrong attitude are bitches and men are entitled to call them out, knock them or put a match to them.
The protection of women by men is a mindset in which woman shifts from fully capable, autonomous adult human being to something like a child who also pleasures. Indeed, women will often project child-like qualities to elicit the protective response, much the way a dog will project puppy behavior to encourage his human’s affection.
There are, of course, many other incidental effects and affects of the male patronage of women. A significant one is the projection of underhanded intentions upon women by men who recognize on some uneasy level that the patronage contract is inherently unjust: women, like people of color, will be presumed to be dishonest, passive-aggressive, sneaky, and untrustworthy because direct avenues to personal power have been systematically denied them. Another effect is the petrifaction of the binary concept of sexuality and gender. Another, the reduction of women’s capabilities to “lesser”—emotionally, pyschologically, intellectually and (in most belief systems) spiritually. Another, that women are nearly invisible participants in the events of the world.
Social revolutions of the last thousand years that replaced the Rule of Law for the Rule of Might should have liberated women from the consequences of the need for protection by men from men, but the customs of several millennia die hard. All of these consequences of male protection still linger. Even worse, the hard-to-kill mindset of patronage blocks the full protection of law for women—the travesty of rape prosecutions are an obvious example, and the abortion debacle another.
I suggest that each of the contributions to this week’s War on Women (every week’s War on Women) reflects some lingering aspect of this defunct, malignant social contract.
Many thanks to the amazing contributors to today’s WOW diary, including Angmar, SandraLLAP, officebss, Besame, Tara the Antisocial Social Worker, Ramara and Tamar.
Being Attractive:
One of the hazards of modern life for women is the humiliating risk of “up skirting” photos, which a truly amazing number of US jurisdictions do NOT ban, on the notion that dumb, flirtatious women are wandering around in public in skirts that are, you know, seductively open on the bottom, so they therefore do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to anything visible from any angle due to the open-ness of the skirt.
The Guardian reports that one determined and repeatedly panty-photographed young woman, Gina Martin, fought to change that legal reality in Great Britain, and the cause was headed for success, but for an elderly curmudgeon MP who cold-cocked its progress.
Furious women MPs pushed harder, prompting Downing Street to promise that the government would take on the legislation, which would create a new criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison.
Now, if we can make sure the (at last count) 16 hold-out states in the US would follow suit . . .
The topic of sex trafficking falls into the “be attractive” commodification of women. Love Sonia is a new film release that lifts the lid on sex trafficking between India and LA: “The shocking tale of a young woman caught up in the global sex trade.”
The film’s director and stars, including Demi Moore and Freida Pinto, talk to the Guardian about the true stories that inspired the writing and production.
And on the subject of the commodification of women, Angmar calls attention to the Don’t Buy It Project—an organization pushing a movement that has as a primary message: People Are Not Products; Men Are More Than Consumers.
DBIP offers a wide array of resources to combat commercial sexual exploitation. Backed by the group Men As Peacemakers, DBIP contends that sexual exploitation is not morally or culturally neutral, urging men in particular to start seeing:
- The hidden impact Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE) has on the community. CSE disproportionately impacts people marginalized by race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, age, and other forms of oppression. Don't let it be invisible.
- The way commercial sexual exploitation is normalized and even supported in our everyday lives through social norms—like going to the strip club or viewing online porn.
- The way women and children are objectified, degraded, and exploited in commercials, TV shows, movies, and music.
- The way men are disproportionately valued compared to women and girls.
- The way men's use of dominance, control, and violence is justified in your community.
- The ways your community suggests that men have a right to purchase people used in commercial sexual exploitation.
The site suggests we should not buy into the oft-repeated notion that people used in commercial sexual exploitation are making "liberated" choices, arguing that for the vast majority of people being bought and sold for sex, exploitation is a result of a lack of safe choices.
Don’t Buy It seems like an idea worth exploring and pursuing.
Paying for Patronage:
Sexual harassment feeds on the notion that whenever a man has leverage—controls some resource that a woman needs—he is at liberty to make her pay for it. The latest entrant in the #MeToo contest is Sylvester Stallone.
Sly’s spokesperson says the actor ‘categorically denies’ allegations of historical sexual misconduct being reviewed by Los Angeles prosecutors. He is outraged that “the DA’s office and PD would announce this information because it makes the public think that there’s something there.” And (of course) Stallone maintains his relationship with the complaining party was “entirely consensual.” Because who wouldn’t want to tap that?
Um. Regarding “consensual”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
More news on the #MeToo movement—StudyBreaks reports that Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) have introduced the Ending the Monopoly of Power Over Workplace harassment through Education and Reporting Act (a.k.a. the EMPOWER Act). Harris stated:
The culture of fear and silence created by perpetrators of sexual harassment in the workplace has existed for far too long and must come to an end. It’s time to address the gaps in our laws that allow this misconduct to go unpunished and keep it in the shadows.
An added bonus action opportunity for readers—here's a petition from the National Partnership for Women & Families, in support of this bill. Please go and sign.
Abortion issues dwell in the territory between “Paying for Patronage” and “Punishment for Failures”. The body is owned by someone else; punishment is assigned for the abuse (unfettered sexual use) of that body.
Since it is very clear that live babies are of little concern to the Christian Right (as in, “Don’t ask us to pay for that child’s food, clothing, education or health care, and certainly don’t ask us to give a damn when brown babies are separated from their brown mothers”), it becomes equally clear that abortion is not about the baby so much as the lying whorish woman carrying it. Because if you really wanted to put an end to abortion you’d punish the lying whorish men too, and you’d come out strong for birth control, amirite?
Two good news items in the fight to make women’s bodies their own:
a. Sinn Féin, the pro-Nationalism party in Northern Ireland, is taking up the cause to liberalize abortion law in the North as it was recently in the Irish Republic.
“The North is next.”
Meanwhile,
b. Besame asks whodathunkit—it seems there is no evidence that abortion is dangerous.
As reported by Rewire.News, a new study published on June 14 (just in time for the Trumpster’s birthday) in the journal BMC Medicine, concluded that regulation of abortion care is unlikely to have any impact on pregnant people’s health outcomes, and that “perceptions that abortion is unsafe are not based on evidence.”
The study is the latest piece of mounting evidence that demonstrates that abortion is a safe and well-regulated procedure. This flies in the face of evidence-free claims from abortion rights foes that the common medical procedure is dangerous, requiring stringent regulations.
Does this mean we can stop pretending that all-y’all are just protecting us when you pass laws requiring rape-by-internal-ultra-sound before we can reclaim our bodily autonomy?
Suffering Punishment by our Patrons:
Starting on the lighter side, a withering review from Fiona Sturges at the Guardian, castigating a feminist favorite—the Handmaid’s Tale—for having descended into torture porn. Women are the preferred victims of ghastly punishments because it somehow empowers and titillates the enjoyer of such fare.
But the Handmaid’s Tale? Say it ain’t so, Joe.
On to the terribly grim:
Abuse is a daily reality for garment workers for the Gap and H&M in multiple countries.
More than 540 workers at Asian factories that supply the two retailers have risked their livelihoods to come forward with descriptions of threats and physical and sexual abuse, according to two separate reports published last week by Global Labour Justice on gender-based violence in Gap and H&M’s garment supply chains.
And the even grimmer:
TRIGGER WARNING
The International Criminal Court is pushing to investigate Myanmar Rohingya atrocities: the gang rapes of women and the live immolation of men.
Harrowing accounts of Rohingya women tied to trees and raped for days by Myanmar’s military and men being pushed into mass graves, doused with petrol and set alight have been sent to the international criminal court. The Hague has given Myanmar a deadline to respond to these claims.
The center of everyone’s attention last week was the Trump-ordered separation of children from asylum-seeking parents. Many of the women here seeking a new life are escaping from spousal abuse, which Trump’s administration will no longer accept as grounds for asylum.
Others are fleeing gang violence. The Atlantic reported on young women’s particular danger from gang:
While a majority of El Salvador’s homicide victims are young men from poor urban areas, the gangs’ practice of explicitly targeting girls for sexual violence or coerced relationships is well known.
Writer Jill Filipovic explores for the Guardian the misogyny in Trump’s new policies towards asylum seekers. Noting that asylum depends upon the asylum seeker being targeted because he or she is a member of a protected group, Filipovic observes:
. . . overwhelmingly it is women who are abused at the hands of men – it’s not just “domestic violence”, it’s gender-based violence, perpetrated because men believe they have a right of absolute control over women, and often ignored by law enforcement because, like Sessions, police and governments all over the world considered raping and beating your wife or girlfriend a private, personal matter.
Turning to a Couple Uppity Success Stories:
The Paris Review shares the story of America’s first female map-maker:
A recent item for sale in the rare-book trade caught my eye. Boston Rare Maps had a series of twelve maps created by America’s first female mapmaker, Emma Willard. They were to accompany a textbook she had written, first issued in 1828. The maps for sale were from the second edition.
The article includes a number of wonderful maps and illustrations by Emma Willard. Take a look at the legacy of a woman who refused to keep to her place.
Finally, Besame calls our attention to a current uppity success — fierce feminist and lesbian comedian Hannah Gadsby. Aussie Gadsby has a new Netflix comedy special out in which she explores the evolution of her humor from self-deprecating to defiant and rejoicing.
A couple a choice quotes from Nanette:
Straight white men are like the canaries in mine - if they are having a tough time, the rest of us are goners.
…. you know what fellas? You don’t have a monopoly on the human condition you arrogant fucks. But the story is as you have told it. Power belongs to you. And if you can’t handle criticism, take a joke, or deal with your own tension w/o violence, you have to wonder if you are up to the task of being in charge.
Making some popcorn now. Gonna sit down with Gadsby and have my horizons widened.