Punishing Women: A Woman’s Job?
By: RHRealityCheck Tuesday August 24, 2010 7:21 am
Women are also roped into judging each other’s sexual behavior because we’re led to believe it’s our only realistic source of control. Being lower status than men, and especially when you’re dependent on a man, means you often have a lot of desire to keep male promiscuity to a minimum, but men are expected not to listen to women or care much what women think about these issues. Thus, women start putting demands on each other, because we can’t appeal to men. Which is why you see a culture where the “other woman” is blamed more than the cheating man for infidelity. Or you see women like Susan Walsh arguing that other women have a responsibility not to have sex when we want with who we want, because that means that fewer men will have to pony up wedding rings in order to get laid.
Of course, if women don’t have to rely on men for social status and economic survival, then the power balance shifts, and women can start making demands directly of men. It’s a lot easier, for instance, to demand monogamy directly from your husband if you can leave him without being destitute. Creating a world where women have equality and men have to share responsibilities for sex and family life is the goal of feminism, and more sexual liberation is the result. Indeed, I would say that the reason that only half of women polled take should an old-fashioned view on abortion (which is a symbolic stand-in for female immodesty) shows how far we’ve come already.
The numbers of women who feel that their only form of control over their lives is to exert control over other women is declining. Now that we have ways of attaining economic independence and social status that don’t involve getting and staying married, we have less of a need to create a protectionist racket over female sexuality where women who break the rules are treated like scabs breaking a strike. Now that we have powers outside of the power to say no to sex and to force other women to say no to sex, there’s simply less need to deprive ourselves or judge others. And the less that men have complete dominance over our lives, the less reason we have to try like mad to control the one thing we’ve been given to control, which is female sexuality.
Oh, you want my thoughts. I think women are taught to be subservient to men from birth and that this is wrong penis headed behavior.
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To expand briefly as is my chromosomed defective nature.
Women are superior to men, that’s why we beat them down.
was not just my father, he was my mentor. He taught me to swim, fish, play ball and found a SCUBA instructor when no one else would teach a girl let alone one who was only 12. He taught me about mathematics, geometry, astronomy and science. Most important, Pop always told me that I could be and do anything I wanted and never to let anyone tell me I couldn’t because I was a girl. Any other concept to me is alien.
I did the same for my daughter.