Men are pigs
Jul. 14th, 2006 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI like to think of myself as a feminist.
There are feminists who disagree. I also tend to think of myself as middle of the road, there are liberals, and conservatives who disagree.
My take on this is simple, women are people, as such they are entitled to the same treatement, rights, privileges and hassles that I am.
I understand the game, at present, is fucked up and that sometimes a stink must be made. This is also my feelings on (insert minority group here).
Right now I am in Kiev. A lovely city, with a lot of wonderful people, good food, pleasant weather (at present... we'll not discuss what it's like in the sleet, the snow, nor the slush) and a different culture of dress. It's also, for all that it's miles apart from most of Ukraine, economically depressed in comparison to lots of Europe, and North America.
I like to look at women. In some ways I look at them as objects. I also look at men, horses, cats, statues, books, poems, etc. as objects. A pretty girl (by my lights) gets looked at. This, so far as I can see, in no way invalidates my views on her as a person. I am not any more likely to talk to her for being stunning, nor am I the less likely to talk to her if she isn't (the visual record of my lovers is about the only way I can prove this, and for that to work one would have to know what I think makes a woman visually attractive, which ain't possible, you will have to accept my self-delusion [because I know that looks do affect some of how I choose whom to flirt with, though that isn't the usual way I end up with a lover... I'm not that aggressive, but I digress).
Kiev, is a great place to look at women. The style of summer dress is not easy to describe. It isn't skimpy, but it is revealing. It isn't purely skin-tight, but it can be. Some forms of translucent, and see through, are completely acceptable (there is a lass in the mess who doesn't seem to mind that anyone who looks at her can tell the lace, pattern, and cut, of her underwear, since she is one, tall, and two, wearing heels, her underwear is at eye level when I am sitting down. She is serving three removes to twenty five people. It's hard for me to not notice).
Tonight, in the hotel, is a some sort of "marriage club" meeting. Women are mingling with a few men, and making video tapes and phorotgraphs to show to other men, looking for brides. It feels cheap. I know why they are doing it. They are hoping for a better life, and (though they know it's not as likely as all that, a decent husband. Like their grandmothers they hope love will come later. Unlike their grandfathers, the men who are looking to marry them aren't under the expectation that they have to work at making that love reciprocal).
And I hear the men, some of them in the crowd I am here with, talking about the women as though they weren't really people. As if the fact of being able to look at them as objects entitles the men to interact with them as objects. It appalls me.
Hearing men say they wish they could get a Ukrainian wife, saying they'd never want her to learn English, in the belief that would prevent her from learning the nasty things American women know, and come to the terrible expectations Western women have. In short they want a cross between a maid and a sex-toy.
For some I know it's just atavistic fantasy, because when I point out that keeping them in an aritifical cage will only lead to intellectual atrophy and frustration and them deciding the lifestyle, and the chance at citizenship aren't worth the candle they will leave (and that could get ugly, because they can only stay if they get married, which means in a state like California, the divorce can get ugly. I don't know for certain, but I'll bet it could get uglier if they knew how to show the marriage was entered into in bad faith on the husband's part).
But it still appalls me. I'm strange, I just can't understand how people can think like that. How they can see someone, in the abstract, as less than human.
There are feminists who disagree. I also tend to think of myself as middle of the road, there are liberals, and conservatives who disagree.
My take on this is simple, women are people, as such they are entitled to the same treatement, rights, privileges and hassles that I am.
I understand the game, at present, is fucked up and that sometimes a stink must be made. This is also my feelings on (insert minority group here).
Right now I am in Kiev. A lovely city, with a lot of wonderful people, good food, pleasant weather (at present... we'll not discuss what it's like in the sleet, the snow, nor the slush) and a different culture of dress. It's also, for all that it's miles apart from most of Ukraine, economically depressed in comparison to lots of Europe, and North America.
I like to look at women. In some ways I look at them as objects. I also look at men, horses, cats, statues, books, poems, etc. as objects. A pretty girl (by my lights) gets looked at. This, so far as I can see, in no way invalidates my views on her as a person. I am not any more likely to talk to her for being stunning, nor am I the less likely to talk to her if she isn't (the visual record of my lovers is about the only way I can prove this, and for that to work one would have to know what I think makes a woman visually attractive, which ain't possible, you will have to accept my self-delusion [because I know that looks do affect some of how I choose whom to flirt with, though that isn't the usual way I end up with a lover... I'm not that aggressive, but I digress).
Kiev, is a great place to look at women. The style of summer dress is not easy to describe. It isn't skimpy, but it is revealing. It isn't purely skin-tight, but it can be. Some forms of translucent, and see through, are completely acceptable (there is a lass in the mess who doesn't seem to mind that anyone who looks at her can tell the lace, pattern, and cut, of her underwear, since she is one, tall, and two, wearing heels, her underwear is at eye level when I am sitting down. She is serving three removes to twenty five people. It's hard for me to not notice).
Tonight, in the hotel, is a some sort of "marriage club" meeting. Women are mingling with a few men, and making video tapes and phorotgraphs to show to other men, looking for brides. It feels cheap. I know why they are doing it. They are hoping for a better life, and (though they know it's not as likely as all that, a decent husband. Like their grandmothers they hope love will come later. Unlike their grandfathers, the men who are looking to marry them aren't under the expectation that they have to work at making that love reciprocal).
And I hear the men, some of them in the crowd I am here with, talking about the women as though they weren't really people. As if the fact of being able to look at them as objects entitles the men to interact with them as objects. It appalls me.
Hearing men say they wish they could get a Ukrainian wife, saying they'd never want her to learn English, in the belief that would prevent her from learning the nasty things American women know, and come to the terrible expectations Western women have. In short they want a cross between a maid and a sex-toy.
For some I know it's just atavistic fantasy, because when I point out that keeping them in an aritifical cage will only lead to intellectual atrophy and frustration and them deciding the lifestyle, and the chance at citizenship aren't worth the candle they will leave (and that could get ugly, because they can only stay if they get married, which means in a state like California, the divorce can get ugly. I don't know for certain, but I'll bet it could get uglier if they knew how to show the marriage was entered into in bad faith on the husband's part).
But it still appalls me. I'm strange, I just can't understand how people can think like that. How they can see someone, in the abstract, as less than human.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-15 10:12 pm (UTC)one especially bad aspect of this sort of situation is that hardly anyone ever speaks up. of course not all men are like this, and no, not even all those who go abroad to find a wife. but when the objectifying talk gathers speed, few men ever point out the idiocies of that particular fantasy, or say "that's not what i want in a wife. i want [insert actually thoughtful criteria].". that'd be what, a violation of male bonding protocol? and the scariest alternative to objectifying strangers, talking about what one actually feels, what one dreams about, what worries one -- oh no, that's right out. nonono. one doesn't want to bring one's true feelings into this, that'd mark one as a wimp right there. *sigh*.
and so it perpetuates itself usually unchallenged, that type of talk, that type of thought. and it is impoverishing -- not only for the women talked about, but the men doing the talking, and other men through guilt-by-association. and how sad is that? there is so very much more to a good relationship than dinner, sex, and somebody who washes the wet spot out the next day, and anyone who doesn't know that will fail miserably at it, every time.
really, a cross between a cook, a maid and a sex-toy would be great -- i'd like to have one too. hey, could it come with a pony? but i don't want that fantasy creature (make it a robot, since i don't actually want a slave, *shudder*) to also be my life partner. because partnership is certainly not about chores, and not even about sex. people really do need to learn to not conflate all those roles.
(hi. i don't think i've commented before. i'm here because you popped up on my friendsfriends list now and then and i find your writing thoughtful.)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-16 06:09 pm (UTC)In some ways that describes my life, though I am the cook, maid and sex-toy, she brought her own pony to the equation.
I make light of it, but in fact, I am just this side of a kept man (her income makes up the greater part of the whole), where the equation the guys looking for a maid with benefits fails to match is that she sees me as a person. When we have problems she doesn't say, "I'm paying the bills, do it my way or I'll toss you on the street," but rather goes to a lot of effort to see to it that we find ways to work things out, and sees that our histories, rearings and methods of solving problems are different; which has, of course, made some things worse.
Me, I break the bonding rituals you describe all to pieces. I've been venting, to other guys here, about how the idiots here make me want to wring their necks. The shit I was hearing at the next table over during breafast... Ghod!
TK