While I am not on social media, I do try to roam over a variety of sites and listservs that help me keep my finger on the pulse of my country and its culture. One of those sites is devoted to feminism, and I love to see the wide variety of opinions there. Some of the women on the site are just brilliant. Now and again they say something just really pops my eyes open, and that's tough to do after decades of feminist scholarship.
So this past week I found two that are such keepers that I wanted to share them with you. They are related, so let's consider them together:
1) "Women who hate men just want men to stay away from them. Men who hate women want to harass them, subjugate them and have sex with them." (itzapapalotl)
2) "Until all men can accept permanent celibacy whether they choose it or not, women will not be liberated. Men’s entitlement and perceived need for access to our bodies is the root of our oppression." (proudcatlady)
Such truth! There are deep things here. There is a real asymmetry in how men and women see the ultimate "answer" to the war of the sexes. I personally know women who are political separatists--they believe the only real freedom for women will come when they finally separate themselves from men entirely. Search for the term "womyn's lands" online, and you will see what they have in mind. The dominance of men, they feel, infects every aspect of women's lives. The only way to live true and free as a woman is to live without men, not just without them in their homes, but without them in their entire community. They would substitute women's communities for mixed communities.
Even for women who choose to live in mixed communities, the only breathing space many women under duress have are spaces where men cannot enter at all, and our homes must be one in which only men who do not dominate us can enter.
The first comment helps us to understand why. The man who hates women actually doesn't walk the MGOTW walk (MGOTW=Men Going Their Own Way). The man who hates women just cannot leave women alone. They have to view them in degrading porn, they have to visit the brothel, they have to harass co-workers, they have to kill them (as Elliott Rodgers did) . . . the man who hates women must be in contact with them so he can subjugate them and hurt them.
Which brings us to the second quote. Men who hate women hate them above all because they themselves are attracted to women. Their body craves access to women, whether they want to feel that desire or not. To add insult to injury, their body is incapable of bringing forth children. There are no more men without women's cooperation. The conjunction of un-chosen desire and un-chosen lack of reproductive self-sufficiency is enough to drive men who hate women wild with outrage. The universe has cheated them on so many levels!
And that is why no civilization that sanctions men's entitlement to sexual access to women's bodies can stand. For clearly, the alternative to a war between the sexes is peace between the sexes. And such a peace can only exist where men are willing to forego sexual access to women if such access would harm women and/or be undesired by women. There need to be men who are willing to be celibate, and be all right with being celibate, to that there can be peace between men and women.
And that would mean no more porn, no more brothels, no more sexual entertainment, no more forced marriages, no more sexual slavery, no more marital rape. . . To my mind as a member of the CoJC, it would also mean abstinence from masturbation.
What would men be willing to give up to live in peace with women?
Clearly, not enough. Yet. But do men not understand that when they refuse to give up their sense of entitlement, women will increasingly flee from them?
Men believe they can win what they see as the war between the sexes because of their greater physical strength. But this is not a "war" that can be won through physical strength. Indeed, that path will only lead to the destruction of the civilizations that men have created. See how many countries in the world are dying out, and swiftly, too . . .