Category Archives: men
Raping, Shaming Girls to Impress Guys
Felicia Garcia
Young men at Piedmont High near San Francisco were caught “drafting” female schoolmates (unbeknownst to most of them) into a secret “Fantasy Slut League.” Upper classmen earned points for documenting their sexual exploits and used social pressure to manipulate the girls’ yearnings to feel attractive, included and popular. Sometimes they plied their targets with alcohol to impair judgment and control, that is, to commit rape.
Meanwhile, in the Stanton Island borough of New York, 15-year-old Felicia Garcia of Tottenville High had sex with four football players. The escapade was recorded and passed around the school as football players bragged about their conquest. Two of the ball players involved began tormenting her, and as news spread through the school, bullying spread, too.
One of Felicia’s friends told the New York Daily News,
Kids are saying she had sex with some guys from the football team at a party after the game. Later on, they wouldn’t leave her alone about it. They just kept bullying her and bullying her.
The young women of Piedmont High were left shamed and humiliated, and too many of them were sexually assaulted. Felicia killed herself on October 24 when she jumped in front of a Staten Island train as 200 students watched in horror.
You have to wonder why so many young men are willing to harm so many young women.
The answer likely revolves around guys trying to feel like men.
Michael Kimmel is an expert on men and masculinity who has studied “guys” at the cusp of manhood. He says that too often guys hurt themselves or others as they latch onto the more negative notions of manhood like aggression, violence, dominance and being tough.
Meanwhile, women are often objectified and seen as “things” that are all about sex. If they are things, and not people, you don’t have to worry about their feelings or their lives.
The young men at Piedmont High and Tottenville High were working to create a culture that painted men as aggressive and dominant, and women as silenced and humiliated victims who were made to feel lower in status… and who may even end up killing themselves.
Surely there are better ways to be a man.
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Why Men Objectify
Some men wonder why they objectify women. So Jayson Gaddis asked men on his Facebook page why they thought they did, and then he wrote about it for The Good Men Project.
What is objectification? Jayson describes it as:
Staring, gawking, or checking out women and their bodies and body parts. Seeing them as objects instead of actual people, and thinking of them in a sexual way.
Why do they do it? Most blame “nature.” As one man exclaimed,
I love looking at women. They’re just amazing. It’s part of my biological make up to think that they’re beautiful.
Jayson believes biology plays a role since men are hardwired to look for mates and procreate. But he thinks cultural conditioning is involved, too. To paraphrase:
In men’s culture, it’s acceptable to objectify women. Men bond around it. And, it’s pervasive and all around us. Notice where men buy stuff, there are often photos of women present. I can barely go on any male-focused website now without being hit at some point by a tiny, physically attractive, disproportioned airbrushed woman looking at me.
Some men objectify because the “feel good” feeling acts like a drug or pick me up. Objectification can fill an empty place inside:
I’m stuck in the belief that that feminine essence is outside of myself. I’m alienated from the larger truth of my Completeness as a human being. That sexy, juicy, radiant paradise is not inside myself, therefore it’s an object I obsess about outside myself and I treat it like entertainment. This insight leads me to believe I haven’t spent enough time balancing the relationship with My (whole) Self.
Others want gratification without any real work or risk of rejection.
I objectify women cause it’s “safer.” I receive an immediate gratification, a thrill if you will, albeit superficial, it does keep me safe at least for a time from annihilation — from a treacherous road of intimacy and vulnerability — the risk of being really seen and connected with – or actually rejected!! Yes, that’s it — it’s an avoidance of rejection… Intimacy takes a lot of work, courage and commitment. Objectifying is an “easy” road out of the potential of rejections.
Maybe some men simply enjoy the sense of being with many women, polygamous, a way of living that doesn’t appear to be a possibility in our culture. One man says he likes to play with the fantasy and the illusion like he does with porn:
The most fun and exciting and ego gratifying times in my life have been when i have embraced it and danced with it and gave myself permission to play with the illusions, projections, feelings, etc.
Like this man, many say they seek approval or self-esteem. I’m not sure what that means. Might a man’s self worth rise when he imagines the women enjoying his attention?
Or, does self-esteem rise from gaining a sense of power over women? After all, they dressed and adorned themselves to please men – and thus, “him.”
Some talk of the power women have over men – making them melt and creating unrequited desire. But by objectifying women a man can feel superior. “He” is subject while “she” is an object that exists for his pleasure and purposes.
The fear of annihilation has been cited before, but one man describes it in a way that echoes this fear of female power. He seeks “to avoid the terror of annihilation — being reabsorbed back into the feminine.”
Whatever’s going on, Jayson suggests men consider how objectification is working for them and the women in their lives. For those who feel it’s not working, here’s how some have dealt with the matter:
What I’ve found works best for me so far is being a yes to everything in my own experience and in what’s happening AND at some point in my development simply realizing that objectification is not enough for me … I love appreciating and experiencing another human being for more than just her physical traits. What I prefer physically doesn’t in itself inspire me to want to connect with a woman, and doesn’t in itself have me feel attracted. The attraction and inspiration simply are there or not independent of how she looks.
Or this:
The answer for me was to stop trying to get this woman but use that energy to make myself the best possible me I could become. A me that now has confidence because I am self assured, self respecting, and full of self accepting unconditional love. Part of becoming that man means that I must accept and own the truth of my motives and be willing to see the motives of others. That is when I was finally able to let go of the fantasy and see this woman for who she really is inside.
My biggest life breakthrough and victory came as a result of that growth.
As a result, something incredible is happening to me now. Something wonderful has started growing in the void where my fantasy used to live. It’s a genuine curiosity and appreciation for all woman. Especially for all the women who actually live and display their authentic self and freely give their love to all as an expression of their femininity.
Or this,
Once I get connected to me again, I notice how I can appreciate a beautiful woman and I’m in my body, connected to my heart. It has a totally different quality. She feels it and I feel it.
By the way, objectification and desire are two different things. And men are rarely objectified. See these two articles:
For more on all this, go to The Good Men Project.
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Porn Fantasy Mistaken for Reality
By Demon Ted
Does porn raise men’s expectations of how women should perform in bed? I believe it depends entirely on the man’s ability to distinguish between real life and fantasy.
True, you could try to recreate porn in real life. But then it’s not real. It’s acting. So you’re back to fantasy.
I think porn is great to enjoy. But men must realize what it is.
Unfortunately, a lot of men (and some women in regards to things like Twilight) get fantasy and reality mixed up. And that can harm relationships.
Take my girlfriend’s ex. He’s a nasty piece of work. Barely finished high school, can’t drive, no job. Literally sits at home all day. But because my girlfriend was young when she met him, he became a lot of “firsts.” And he made her think that things that weren’t healthy were.
She didn’t expect to ever get off on real sex, or that her significant other should even try. Early on she told me that she would be “totally down for a threesome” if I saw another girl I found attractive. She later recanted when I told her to never suggest anything that makes her uncomfortable or unhappy.
As we talked on she began blurting out a long list of things her ex did, sexually, that she asked me not to. The worst part was that after she had listed everything, she thought I was angry with her.
I was angry. Not because she had asked me not to do certain things, but because I realized what she had come to expect. I had thought she’d say something like, “I don’t feel comfortable with the lights on,” not, “Please don’t tell me I’m a dirty slut for enjoying your cock.”
I was upset that she had let someone treat her, for lack of better words, like trash. I had to explain that, even without her asking me not to do those things I would not have done them.
I saw that she had come to believe that she must do things she hated for a relationship to “work.”
Obviously we’ve talked about these things and she realizes that, yes, I do watch porn, but that porn is porn. I do not expect her to act like the girls in it, nor should anyone else.
My girlfriend is beautiful. She’s incredibly attractive just the way she is. And she’s most beautiful when she’s enjoying herself, sexually or otherwise.
This was written by one of my students who gave permission to post it under a pseudonym.
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Batterers Brag
I was out of town when Chris Brown unveiled his neck tattoo of a battered woman, possibly Rihanna, but now I’m back and I have to comment.
Strange that Brown would brand himself with a battered Rihanna for all the world to see. And if it’s not Rihanna, why sport an image that will remind everyone of the pummeling?
Publicity seeking seems likely.
Still, you have to wonder why shame doesn’t stop him.
Apparently Chris Brown is not alone in feeling no shame. Sean Connery and others feel that it is “absolutely right” to slap a woman. Televangelist, Pat Robertson, advised one man to beat his wife into submission – even if he had to move to Saudi Arabia to legally do it. To these Neanderthals, beating women is all part of being a real man (or caveman).
Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon sees it as a batterer’s brag:
There’s a myth that men who beat and rape women just “lose control” and that after they act out, they sit around stewing in shame. That is because this is what these men tell people they are trying to ingratiate themselves with, in order to gain their acceptance and forgiveness. But inside, as many victims who have seen their true face can tell you, they are defiant. They believe they are entitled to dominate women, and they feel victimized by a world that doesn’t give them what they believe is theirs. They act out, looking for little ways to assert the right to dominate [what] they believe is theirs.
Marcotte cites research from psychologist David Lisak, who found that certain men will happily tell stories about successful sexual assaults. Joanna Schroeder over at The Good Men Project feels the analysis rings true:
The batterers I’ve known have betrayed a certain pride over the pain they cause their partner. They want their partner to keep the abuse a secret, but they themselves say things like “Jodi knows better than to look twice at another guy” while making a punching motion with their hands. It’s always under the guise of being a joke, but it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you already know or suspect that the guy is abusing his wife. One man I knew who was a batterer would threaten to rape his wife, seemingly joking, in front of almost anyone. Turned out he had been raping her for almost as long as they were married.
If you see yourself as righting the scales of justice — punishing those who have “hurt you,” and returning gender to its rightful order, with men on top — I guess bragging makes sense.
Marcotte continues:
…telling others about it and watching them recoil basically means reliving the power trip… Not only did they dominate the victim, but they have provoked anger and disgust in you, and that makes them feel powerful all over again.
Growing up, Brown was tormented by watching his stepdad beat his mom. That childhood horror and helplessness seem to have deeply scared him. Too bad he hasn’t dealt with his issues in therapy and focused his power in positive ways – in real ways – because how much power does this guy really get from beating his girlfriend?
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Can A Small-Breasted Woman Be Sexiest Woman Alive?
We’re such a big-boob obsessed culture you have to wonder whether small breasted women can ever be seen as sexy.
Turns out, they can. Esquire just named sultry Mila Kunis “Sexiest Woman Alive.” This follows Maxim naming her third hottest woman in the world, while FHM put her in the top 10. Gorgeous mate, Ashton Kutcher, is good with her, too.
Other women of petite boobage have also landed on these lists, and a few years back FHM named Kiera Knightley the hottest of the hot. More recently Kate Middleton’s “Boobgate” inspired 311 million searches for “Middleton topless photos.” (The Duchess also made FHM’s “Hottest 100” this year.) Seems many men find smaller-breasted women attractive.
Now, I’m no fan of objectification and ranking women on lists. But so long as they’re doing it, I am glad to see some branching out from a narrow ideal of “skinny + big boobs = attractive.”
Without implants or obesity, B is the average cup size. Since so many women are an A or B cup it’s no wonder that by age seventeen, 78 percent of young women are unhappy with their bodies – worries about weight being another big issue.
007 Breasts – 007b.com, a website devoted to women and their breasts, gets (not surprisingly?) quite a few male readers. Based on comments they receive WOMEN do most of the fussing over breast size, not men. Men most commonly communicate these thoughts:
- Men are happy with any pair of breasts their partner has
- Men often say implants seem unnatural and hard
- A woman who appears secure and confident is attractive
Well, Mila Kunis exudes confidence.
So it looks like women don’t need to mutilate themselves and harm their health to be attractive. And moms don’t need to give their seven-year-old daughters a $10,000 voucher for a future boob job, as one did.
And if your boyfriend thinks you’re boobs are too small, it sounds like he’s a boob — get a better boyfriend!
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Feminists Have More Fun
You may have thought feminists were unattractive man-haters. Turns out that men find them attractive, and that relationships between feminist men and women are more romantic and healthier than others. In fact, having a feminist partner heightens sexual satisfaction for both women and men.
So says a study performed by Rutgers University researchers, published in the journal Sex Roles, and reported by LiveScience.
Rutgers psychologists surveyed 242 undergraduates and 289 older adults (average age 26 and in a relationship for about four years). They were asked how often they and their partners laughed together, how often they quarreled, whether they had thought of ending the relationship, and whether they thought their relationship had a good future, for instance.
The researchers aren’t entirely sure why feminism enhances relationships but they have a few ideas:
Feminist men might be more supportive of their female partner’s ambitions than are traditionalists. Men with feminist partners may enjoy the extra breadwinner to share the economic burden of maintaining a household.
I can think of a few others.
In feminist relationships each partner is more likely to have an equal say so that neither becomes habitually aggravated. In counter-example, I have a couple of friends who wanted to marry “male dominant” men. I guess they seemed sexy. Both of them did, but neither of them liked the reality of never having their way. One quickly divorced, the other had long-term emotional problems before finally divorcing.
Feminist men respect women and don’t hit them, rape them, or emotionally abuse them.
In the same vein, feminist relationships tend to be more respectful, generally. Men are more likely to help with the laundry and they are less likely to objectify either their partners or other women — which increases emotional connection and decreases conflict.
Feminist men are also more likely to express their feelings, which further heightens connection.
Emotional connection is great for sex. Not feeling guilty about sex is also great for sex – and as it happens, great sex is a big concern of third wave feminists.
Turns out, getting outside of traditional sex roles makes for better sex, too. He might like it when she asserts her desire – and she might, too.
Egalitarian women are even more likely to be in their relationships out of choice instead of financial dependency, because they are more likely to support themselves.
No wonder feminists have more fun.
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What’s Wrong With Hooking Up?
By Lisa Wade
Crossposted from Ms. and Sociological Images
Hanna Rosin, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of The End of Men, has written a piece about hook-up culture on and off college campuses for the September issue of her magazine. Given that I’ve done some research on hook-up culture, here are my two cents: Rosin isn’t wrong to argue that the culture offers women sexual opportunities and independence, but she mischaracterizes the objections to hook-up culture and draws too rosy a conclusion.
Those who wring their hands and “lament” hook-up culture, Rosin contends, do so because they think women are giving it up too easily, a practice that will inevitably leave them heartbroken. She writes:
[Critics of hook up culture pine] for an earlier time, when fathers protected ‘innocent’ girls from ‘punks’ and predators, and when girls understood it was their role to also protect themselves.
If this is the problem, the answer is less sex and more (sexless?) relationships. But, Rosin rightly argues, this wrongly stereotypes women as fragile flowers whose self-esteem lies between their legs. It also romanticizes relationships. Drawing on the fantastic research of sociologists Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong, she explains that young women often find serious relationships with men to be distracting; staying single (and hooking up for fun) is one way to protect their own educational and career paths.
All this is true and so, Rosin concludes, hook-up culture is “an engine of female progress—one being harnessed and driven by women themselves.”
Well, not exactly. Yes, women get to choose to have sex with men casually and many do. And some women truly enjoy hook-up culture, while others who like it less still learn a lot about themselves and feel grateful for the experiences. I make this argument with my colleague, Caroline Heldman, in Hooking Up and Opting Out: Negotiating Sex in the First Year of College [PDF].
But what young women don’t control is the context in which they have sex. The problem with hook-up culture is not casual sex, nor is it the fact that some women are choosing it; it’s the sexism that encourages men to treat women like pawns and requires women to be just as cunning and manipulative if they want to be in the game; it’s the relentless pressure to be hot that makes some women feel like shit all the time and the rest feel like shit some of the time; it’s the heterosexism that marginalizes and excludes true experimentation with same-sex desire; and it’s the intolerance towards people who would rather be in relationships or practice abstinence (considered boring, pathetic or weird by many advocates of hook-up culture, including, perhaps, Rosin).
Fundamentally, what’s wrong with hook-up culture is the antagonistic, competitive and malevolent attitude towards one’s sexual partners. College students largely aren’t experimenting with sexuality nicely. Hook ups aren’t, on the whole, mutually satisfying, strongly consensual, experimental affairs during which both partners express concern for the others’ pleasure. They’re repetitive, awkward and confusing sexual encounters in which men have orgasms more than twice as often as women:
The problem with hook-up culture, then, is not that people are friends with benefits. It’s that they’re not. As one of my students concluded about one of her hook-up partners: “You could have labeled it friends with benefits … without the friendship, maybe?”
Hook-up culture is an “engine of female progress” only if we take for granted that our destination is a caricature of male sexuality, one in which sex is a game with a winner and a loser. But do we really want sex to be competitive? Is “keep[ing] pace with the boys,” as Rosin puts it, really what liberation looks like? I think we can do better.
Crossposted from Ms. Magazine and Sociological Images
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How to Lose a Woman
By Raymond Bechard
Excerpted with permission from “How to Lose a Woman Forever” on The Good Men Project
Raymond Bechard summarizes Travis McGee’s views on women into 22 rules to losing the love of your life forever.
Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave. I love you can be said only two ways.
Travis McGee, The Deep Blue Good-By, 1964
1. Don’t protect her.
She’s a big girl. There’s no reason to help her feel safe in the way she needs to feel safe. There are no guarantees in life so it’s not rational to expect security in relationships. (And nothing is more rational than love.) Her emotional security is paramount to her. This means she wants to rely on you to always be there for her and count on you to be her best friend. Allow her to feel alone and abandoned, and you will experience both.
2. Don’t respect her.
Simple. Treat her like crap. If she doesn’t take it, she’ll leave and you’ll be miserable. If she does, she’ll stay and you’ll both be miserable. Treating her like the extraordinary woman she is will only increase her expectations, attitude, and hope, and courage, and affection, and love …
3. Don’t listen to her.
Every time she talks either tune her out or try to solve her problems. Do not, under any circumstances come to the realization that her feelings are the problem she needs to communicate to you. She doesn’t want you to DO anything. (After all, if she wanted your help she would ask for it. Seriously, she will.) And if you wanted her to feel closer to you than anyone else in the world you would not listen to her problems, but to her feelings. That takes paying sharp attention to her and learning how to really listen beyond her words. You would have to look at her as a person of near limitless emotional capacity. And all of that would only show her how much you truly value her. Who has that kind of time?
4. Look at her like an object.
All your life you’ve been sizing women up, judging them, taking in their physical being the same way you do with cars, boats or maybe fishing gear. Women are their words, their silence, their movement, the expressions, their work, their art, their friends, their children, their emotions, their thoughts, their hearts and their minds. They are more complex than anything else in the world. If you’re lucky, you might be smart enough to take on the challenge of understanding one someday.
5. Take her for granted.
Let her know she’s nothing special. Devalue everything she does, especially the things she does for you. If you want to make her miserable, sad, hopeless, or just lose her self-esteem make sure she knows she really doesn’t mean that much to you. You can’t be bothered with the fact that she’ll be looking for some kind of positive affirmation from you every day. And giving it to her is not something you can do once a month or week, on holidays or special occasions. She knows you appreciate her when you work at it all the time, especially those times when you don’t have to.
6. Don’t let her know she is important.
This one’s easy. If her father let her know that she is important as a person and you don’t show her the same thing, she won’t even consider a real relationship with you (because she knows you’re wrong.) However, if he didn’t teach her these things (making him a heartless jerk) then you have to go along with him. Otherwise, if you try to prove her father wrong and treat her with the love and respect she deserves, she will fight you. She may never unbelieve her father’s lie. But if you do choose to take on the job, commit to it like a man.
7. Don’t let her know she is interesting.
Don’t show any interest in her life, her passions, her story, her friends, work, hobbies, troubles, etc. Showing her she bores you is the best way to prove to her that she will never be her best with you.
8. Cheat.
No joking around on this one. Don’t cheat. Have the courage to say no or the decency to end the relationship. Stop and think of the damage you are doing to her for the rest of her life. However, if you want to permanently kill a good section her heart then go ahead. Tell yourself whatever you want. She will never recover, especially if she stays with you.
9. Don’t commit.
She’ll feel fine if you can’t commit to anything, large or small. Can’t make little plans because of work or your family or your friends or your other interests? No problem. She’ll make plans without you. Can’t make big plans like spending the rest of your life with her? She’ll make those plans without you as well.
10. Don’t kiss her.
If you don’t want her, don’t touch her. And especially don’t kiss her. However, if you want to be a man, shut up and take five completely uninterrupted minutes every day to hold her and kiss her.
11. Don’t cherish and adore her.
Don’t pay any attention to the needs she’s had since she was a child. Yes she is all grown up, but there is a part of the little girl she once was still living inside her. She needs your help in telling the little girl that everything is going to be okay because she is truly loved. Yeah, she can certainly handle that on her own, or with somebody else.
12. Don’t provide for her.
Screw Travis McGee. It’s the 21st Century and women should be able to carry their own weight. Sorry, but if you can’t provide for her financially she will never be able to completely rely on you. She needs to count on you no matter what happens. Unpredictability is her worst enemy and the world is becoming more unpredictable every day. You must be her safe harbor, her one place to go when it all goes to hell.
13. Don’t compliment her.
If you want her to find proof that she is attractive from someone else, don’t show her how attracted you are to her. If you want her to know how much you adore her, tell her how your attraction to her makes you feel. “Seeing your eyes makes me feel like I’m really home,” is better than, “You have nice eyes.” But don’t do that. You’d have to examine all the great feelings she gives you. And who needs that much self awareness?
14. Ignore Adventure.
Needing security must mean she wants routine and dullness, right? Do you realize how much a woman wants adventure? Not the adventure of being with you or the ups and downs of your relationship, but the adventures—large and small—you embark on together. She wants to be safe/secure enough in you so that you are the only one she will dare travel with on the adventures she desires so deeply.
15. Don’t surprise her.
Going to the trouble to be spontaneous or romantic without her knowing proves to her that she is precious to you. She needs to see you going to a lot of trouble for her to truly know she is loved and safe. That’s a lot of work.
16. Don’t romance her.
Your first date was a long time ago. No need to act like that idiot anymore. It’s probably best to just settle into a routine and ignore her need for unique expressions of your love for her. On the other hand, if you bring her out on a “first date” once in a while, or go out of your way for her romantically, you will reset the emotional freshness of her heart and your relationship.
17. Don’t be a hero.
She may not want you to solve all her problems, but she definitely wants a champion. Who the hell even knows what that means? It’s a fine line to walk. And it’s only attempted by the truest of men with the utmost courage and conviction.
18. Don’t take her anywhere.
She is feeling things emotionally that you will never even come close to. Imagine all emotions—good and bad—are rocks. Someone hands two identical rocks to you and to your woman. To you it feels like a rock. To her it’s a boulder. The weight of all that, all day, every day, gets to be a burden. Whether you take her to dinner, a spa, on vacation, or just sit and watch her try on dresses, you will be her hero for taking her out from under her own personal pile of boulders.
19. Don’t change your habits.
Let pride be your guide. Never improve. You’ve gone far too long becoming just as perfect as you are. Why switch up your game now? Remember, compromise and consideration has no place in relationships … unless you want them to work. Anyway, who has strength enough to be flexible?
20. Hate apologizing.
If you wanted to make this work, you would love apologizing. Point out your mistakes and apologize for them until she tells you to stop. But, that will only make her trust you and rely on your decency and trustworthiness as a man.
21. Don’t learn what emotional intimacy is.
Forget that emotional intimacy is the utterly close connection that will exist only when you are truly committed to and trust one another. It means you are both devoted to the well being and individual growth of the other, that you fully trust her and her you. It means knowing with absolute certainty that you are perfectly safe with each other. So, you would have to take the time to find a woman with whom you can build trust and be yourself. Worst of all it would mean not just accepting her for who she is, but celebrating who she is.
22. Don’t man up and deal with it.
You have issues. Everybody does. But you’re strong enough to handle them and not let them affect your life or your relationships. Certainly, you don’t need to deal with your past, your humiliations, shame, failures, addictions, etc. Getting help and staying strong only means you’re weak.
If none of these rules make sense then you need to meet my friend, Travis McGee. He is waiting for you on his boat, The Busted Flush, docked at slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale.
Let me know what you think about this list, ladies and gents.
You might also enjoy How to Lose a Guy Forever on The Good Men Project
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Women Don’t Need Men
More than ever, “mankind” is becoming a misnomer. With advanced understanding, we now know that women are both necessary and sufficient for reproduction, and men are neither.
So says Greg Hampikian, a Boise State biology professor. Expounding in the Times on how much women — and not men — are needed to propagate the species, he offers examples like this:
Your life as an egg actually started in your mother’s developing ovary, before she was born; you were wrapped in your mother’s fetal body as it developed within your grandmother.
Wow! I had never realized that.
Then after leaving our mother’s body, suckling provided our nourishment.
But there’s more: Mom sampled our diseases by holding and kissing us and then countered our infections by making antibodies that she passed on through her milk.
The in’s and out’s of our dependence on mom contrast with our short encounter with dad, when our egg-selves met “some very odd tiny cells that he had shed.” Turns out, these same cells may be transmitted to mom via turkey baster.
Prof. Hampikian wondered if there was anything irreplaceable about men. A female colleague replied, “They’re entertaining.”
Amanda Marcotte, over at Slate, feels the fear is overblown.
What do men imagine will happen if we don’t need them anymore? Will we magically stop having boy children? Go on mass murdering sprees to rid ourselves of the burden of men? Are all women just one equal paycheck away from killing all the men?
More interestingly, she points out that this is not a new concern. The fear that women won’t need men always arises when women grow more independent. One blogger feels the whole right-wing obsession with controlling women is bound up in a worry that we don’t really need men.
The oddest concern I have heard came from a friend who belongs to the church I grew up in. There, all males get priesthood at age 12. Women never do. (And I have complained about this!) But my male friend worried that,
If women get the priesthood then they won’t need men, anymore.
Really? Then why do women from other churches – and women who don’t belong to any church – bother to love men and even get married?
So yeah, women don’t need actual men to create babies, given the sperm banks at our disposal.
But who knows, maybe guys do come in handy for love, relationship and sex. As Ms. Marcotte points out:
There are lots of things we don’t need but we still want: flat screen TVs, YouTube videos of cats, expensive microbrews, fathers. Doesn’t mean we don’t want them.
And why would you rather be needed than wanted, anyway?
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Fatal Attraction: Relationship Slayed By What Sparked It
When a relationship is killed by whatever had sparked it, that’s a fatal attraction.
Living in a culture that sexualizes male dominance, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a friend of mine was once drawn to the “take charge,” male dominant qualities of one of her lovers. So attracted that she married him. A few years later she left him for the same reason. Many women romanticize male dominance only to find that it’s not so much fun to be bossed around and never get your way in real life.
Or, we might look for someone to balance us out. Another friend was attracted to the free-spirited artistic quality of his ex-wife. She seemed a nice counterweight to his ordered, mathematical mind. But after a few years her carefree ways morphed into chaos. Complimentary souls won’t necessarily complete us.
Some women are attracted to men who show a deep interest in them. A boyfriend’s obsession and jealousy makes her feel really loved. But after he starts beating her because other men looked her way, she eventually sees he has a possessive, abusive personality.
The most common fatal attraction involves friendliness. One 20-year-old found her boyfriend’s humor and sociability appealing when they first met. Now, asked about his least attractive quality, she points to his friendliness, saying “He often flirts with others.”
Physical attractiveness can also become an unexpected turn off. A forty-one year old man had initially been drawn to his girlfriend’s sexy, exotic Asian looks. He had also liked her outgoing, flirty personality. But over time that all became a problem as he came to see her as “disloyal and mercurial.”
The list goes on. A woman is attracted to a man’s sense of humor but later complains that he’s never serious. A man is drawn to his partner’s nurturing nature, but comes to see her as smothering. A woman admires her husband’s ambition, but then sees him as a workaholic.
There is a real tendency to become disillusioned with qualities that initially attract us.
I guess there can be too much of a good thing.
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