If Not War, Then What Would You Call It?

It should come as no surprise that Reince Priebus -- Chairman of the Republican National Committee -- is fully unaware of the onslaught of attempts by Republican legislators in state legislatures and in Congress to limit and/or strip away the rights of women to make their own choices about what they do with their body. It turns out that in his eyes, the whole thing is a fabrication:

“If Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that the Republicans have a war on caterpillars then we would have problems with caterpillars.”

So... There you have it. The constant barrage of laws and policies designed to strip away already existing rights, marginalize others, and basically take women's complete liberty and freedom away from them is something the Democrats came up with.

Let's just see...

A Realistic Female 'Privilege' Checklist

I was compelled to create a post on my Tumblr account, due to an on-going brouhaha involving moderation of the 'politics' tag on that site, and the misogynistic and socially offensive rantings and ramblings of the editor in question (who was subsequently removed from his editorial post). Part of his defense of his irretrievably unconscionable behavior was rooted in his denial of the idea of male privilege and his mistaken impression that the whole root cause of feminism was to drag men down into the mud and stomp them into it. When works of false and ignorant premises, one invariably opens themselves up to attack.

One place he pointed to, was a web site called 'Feminist Critics' -- which I shall not deign to link to -- and an article there on "female privilege," which was just an outrageous collection of non-interrelated and male-centered screeds on how "good women have it" in comparison to men, and how male privilege is just a figment of feminism's imagination. It so enraged me, that I proceeded to pound out what I consider a more accurate representation of "female privilege" as it exists in the modern world, and part of which I now reproduce here:

---

As a woman, you have the privilege of...

1. Being told by men that you do not have a right to do what you like with your own body.
2. Being told by men that they only find you attractive when you dress sexy.
3. Being told by men that if you dress sexy, you're being "slutty."
4. Being told by men that they want to have sex with you.
5. Being told by men that if you have too much sex, you're being "slutty."
6. Being told by men that if you don't want to have sex with them, you're being "frigid."
7. Being drugged or manhandled by men who want to have sex with you when you don't.
8. Being raped by men, whose sexual needs override your consent.
9. Being told by men that if you were raped, you were asking for it, because of what you said, how you were dressed, what you drank, where you went, etc.
10. Being told by men that if you get pregnant by being raped, you should "make the best of it."
11. Being told by men that your position in life is to carry a fetus to term, even though you don't want it, can't afford it, and they won't lift a finger to help or support you.
12. Being told by men that marrying them and raising a family with them is what you're "meant to do."
13. Being told by men that the black eyes, bruises, and broken bones you got from them beating you is "your own fault."
14. Being told by men that if you try to leave them, they will take away your children and you will never see them again.
15. Being told by men that they've "moved on" and "found someone new" who is "more exciting," a.k.a. "slutty."
16. Being told by men that you are not smart enough.
17. Being told by men you're not good enough.
18. Being told by men that you're not strong enough.
19. Being told by men that you are too emotional.
20. Being told by men that you are too cold.
21. Being told by men to make them a sandwich.

If I were a woman, and I had to navigate that world on a daily basis, you can bet your ass I might harbor just a small amount of enmity toward men. Women have spent millennia getting the short end of the stick... ask Eve. And maybe, just maybe, women are tired of taking crap from men. BTW, I know I'm being all cis here, and I apologize to my trans friends, but the bottom line is: if you're a woman in this world, born that way, built that way, or otherwise, you can look forward to a long life of being told you are subservient to men, that that is the way "God intended it," and you should just shut up and accept it. I'm here to say that's wrong, that male privilege bullshit talking, and this is one man who doesn't buy it. You're a person, not a possession. You have rights. You have feelings. And no man has the right to tell you that you owe them anything.

---

Any man who denies his privilege is obviously so colored by it, that he cannot be rationally expected to understand it, so it is up to other men not as tinged by it, to explain. Because one cannot look at what's going on in our nation and claim that there is no male privilege at work, when the majority of anti-choice organizations are run or advocated for by men, when the bulk of the legislators who are bringing forth and supporting anti-choice and anti-woman legislation are men, when the vast majority of Congressional members are men, when there has been no woman President, when women are a scarcity in boardrooms and at the heads of corporations, and where women, on average, still earn far less than male counterparts for the same level of work.

It is easy for a man to dismiss the complaints of women; those in a position of power, for no other reason than they are of one gender -- or one race or one religion, similarly -- have exactly that which they are unwilling to share. To a man, it may seem far-fetched that a woman would want or should have power, and that man will find it easy to construct a specious and fallacious argument structure to reinforce their view. It is a facet of an on-going issue humanity has, whereby fact takes a back seat to belief. Men believe they are meant to be in control, to dominate, to rule, and would rather fight among themselves for the privilege, than allow women an equal opportunity.

As I have noted before, men wrote their dominance of humanity into society of their own accord, not because it was necessary or required. Misogyny is an extension of the primitive hunter/fighter mentality that drove primitive human society. It is a self-reinforcing construct, held in place by the male domination of society. That is privilege at its most basic -- I have the power, therefore I was meant to have it. If the heroes of The Bible are mainly men, it is because men were in the positions of power, men wrote the words, and men determined which gospels would be included, meaning the female voice was conspicuously absent by design. If most nations in the world have been run by patriarchal forces, that is because those forces already held sway. If the governments at the local, State, and Federal levels in the United States are dominated by men, that is by design, as it was men who dominated society and initiated the creation of the nation.

It is not enough that women fight for their right to join men equally in power, for to overcome thousands of generations of patriarchy through sheer will and determination means thousands more generations before it can come to pass. If women are to reach the equal footing they deserve, and is long overdue them, then it is up to we men who understand our privilege and its ill effects on society, to stand up to our brethren, and make them aware that the current state of affairs will no longer be tolerated. We must stand beside our sisters and we must take the power away from the patriarchy that maintains its death-grip on human society. We must break ranks with those men who hold power for power's sake. We must drive the money changers from the temple, to restore order to a more natural state of human equality in every dimension. We must reject our privilege, for to do less only perpetuates a system that has been unfair for far too long.

My Daughters, My Wives, My Mothers, My Sisters, My Lovers, My Friends

I grew up in a house of women; my grandmother, my mother, my sister, and I lived together for over a decade, and whether that sensitized me to the plight of women, I do not know nor cannot say with any surety. I remember tears, hugs, fights, laundry, long hours, and plenty of time in the solitude of my room, absorbing the happenings of the world, trying to he the "man" of the house. I saw the pain, I knew the travails, unspoken though they were most of the time, and it could not help make an impact on me.

Now I sit here, decades later, steeped in the tenets of humanity and feminism, father to a daughter, husband to a wife, brother-in-law to a sister-in-law, watching as self-righteous, self-satisfied, self-proclaimed "arbiters of morality" tear at the fabric of our society by demeaning, degrading, and deploring women and women's rights. My mortal soul writhes in agony within, knowing that these men -- and they are men across the board -- would suffer women horrors that womankind has not had to know in decades, all in a bid to reassert their "rightful" place as dominators of the social contract.

Nowhere is this most cowardly, most reprehensible, most misogynistic bent seen than in Virginia, where Governor Bob McDonnell, a man of undoubtedly low and amoral character, is ready to sign a bill that would give State sanction to the forcible penetration of a woman's vagina by a doctor for an unnecessary ultrasound prior to an abortion. Yes, that is correct: forcible penetration. As if that were not enough, he is also aligning behind a "personhood" amendment, declaring fertilized eggs people. But back to the first indignity -- in order to pander to Christian anti-choice fanatics and make himself a choice candidate to become a Vice Presidential candidate, this man is will to place his name on a bill that will require the forcible penetration of women.

The amount of bile that rises in my throat, the disgust that wracks my innards, the Vesuvius-like rage that boils behind my eyes for this man and all those who supported this bill, cannot be truly placed in words. It tempts my vow of anti-violence to a degree that nothing has in some time. The people behind this violation of human decency and the civil rights of women must be excoriated in their ignorance and religious fervor, for no person of right mind would consider this a reasonable thing to do. This is akin to the Salem Witch trials, where innocent women were killed for the merest suspicion of witchcraft. It is as if the State government of Virginia is wont to re-write, annotate, and expand on The Malleus Maleficarum, "The Hammer of Witches," as if the modern woman's desire to have control of her own body bears the taint of dark magics. Virginia is busy plunging itself into the 15th Century.

I am torn up inside, knowing that people such as these exist, people who would hide behind religious zeal and the march of "morality," people who would proclaim themselves "decent" and "Christian" people, even as they seek to torture and defile those who do not willingly follow their command. It stinks of the thumbscrews, of the stake, of the manacled form wreathed in flames for the "mercy" of her soul. This is the 21st Century, and ideas such as these have no place in a society predicated on freedom and individual liberty.

I ask these people these simple questions: Could you do this to your mother? Could you do this to your sister? Could you do this to your wife? Could you do this to your lover? Could you look a woman for whom you have the greatest love and admiration, and take a cold steel tube, and jam it up inside her, with a clear conscience? Could you see her lying there, in suffering and torment, and proceed to torment her further? Is it far easier to detach yourself from the heinous nature of the crime against a woman's body, to know it will not be you who has to do it? Would you so easily bestow on others the garish and lurid mantel of purveyor of pain, forcing them to deal with the consequences to their soul, while you sit in the comforting walls of your home, oblivious?

These women, these women I do not know, have not met, may never know, are my wives. They are my daughters. They are my mothers. They are my sisters. They are my lovers. I would not stand idly by and watch them suffer under such ignominious conditions for your "morality." I will not allow my daughter to be raised in a world that values her only as a brood mare, that sees her body as a plaything of the State. I will not allow you to strip these women of their dignity, where there is the least little thing I can do about it. I will write words, shout them from rooftops, I will organize, I will agitate, and I will not stop until I see every one of you who put your festering and fetid stamp on this, brought down and boiled in a stew of your own iniquity. This is not America. This is not justice. This is not liberty. This is the heavy hand of the State, and this is what was fought against to raise up a nation conceived in liberty and justice for all. These women will have their justice and their liberty, and you will not be able to stop it.

The Strongest Sex

This year has seen a full-on assault on women and the female gender by men in positions of power or attempting to obtain positions of power. Without pouring over the sordid details, it should be noted that women's health care, contraception, abortion, education, and social standing has been under constant fire with the turning of the year, and misogyny has risen to cast a cloud over our society as never before. This whole movement toward rolling back the status of women to some point in 1950s, on the way to trying to push their rights and privileges back to some point before the 1920s, is unconscionable in the 21st Century. How can we be at this point again?

It boils down to a simple fact: men have dominated human society for millions of years, based solely on the perceived notion that they are the stronger of the binary genders, a notion conceived and reinforced through the application of wholly artificial standards and practices developed to stack the deck in their favor. In the distant mists of the human past, when survival was not assured and no mean feat, men perhaps thought that their hunting and fighting skills made them the natural leaders of humanity. A few million years later, it's easy to see why this idea is wrong...

No Woman Left Behind

Some men are afraid of women, specifically strong women, women who are independent, capable, willing to work and scrape and fight for what they want. For some reason, the idea of women being as capable as they are, frightens them. It goes against their personal sensibilities, their sense of entitlement, their lust for total control and power. As long as they could look upon women as the "lesser" gender, as long as women "knew their place," they were happy. Now, they are scared.

These men often occupy positions of power, and they wield that power in any way they can to hold women down, to beat them back, to wrest control from them. Take, for example, the execrable legislation just passed in the House of Representatives: H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. The bill itself is pointless, in that it simply reinforces already extant legislation (the Hyde Amendment), forbidding the spending of Federal funds on abortions or abortion-related services. Even so, it is significant, because it marks a blatant slap in the face of every woman. A bunch of mainly older white men, decided, more-or-less unilaterally, that women were incapable of making decisions about whether to have an abortion or not, and they would make it for them, by choking off a funding source, making it that much harder to get one.

So much for getting government off our backs.

From Woman Borne, Persecute Her No Longer

What woman has not brought a life into the world, of her choosing, and not been happy to care for it, raise it, and send it out into the world? There are some who, in circumstances we cannot fully comprehend, become a mother and are not so enamored of it; the vast majority are certainly not in that camp, or so we should hope. A mother raises a child to the best of her ability, and hopes to turn out a stellar example of humanity, trying though that path might be.

Still, it begs the question: why are so many male offspring of human mothers so hateful toward the female gender? One could imagine it if every boy were maltreated by a mother ill-equipped to handle the strain, but even some of the better-educated, intellectually-forward, well-raised men in our nation, seem predisposed to a venom and bile against women that they scarcely deign to hide it. Nowhere is this seen in greater profusion that in the halls of legislation, State and Federal, where male-dominated legislatures seek to impose heinous penalties and outrageous restrictions on women who merely seek to live their life as they see fit.

To Run The Gauntlet

You would think that women's suffrage and women's liberation, by tearing down the previous barriers between women and their rightful place in society, would also tear down the misogyny women were exposed to. Sadly, with women breaking the chains that held them to their homes and lives as only mothers and/or homemakers, the chauvinistic tendencies of men, which expressed themselves behind closed doors at home, followed women out into the streets. Now, a woman had nowhere to turn to escape it; all around her, men were seeing women and concluding that their attraction to them as sex objects was allowed to be expressed when and where they chose, and that women would find it "flattering."

It was the mistake of men to conclude that "women's lib" was some grand scheme to allow them to be more sexual in the presence of men. Far from forbidden fruit, women were now out in the world, able to show themselves off, and men were eager to lap up the sudden preponderance of femininity. So, the misogyny of the past took on new forms, and invaded the workplace, the supermarket, and worst of all, the street. Now, there appeared to be no barriers to the machinations of male libido.

A working woman could potentially be forced to literally run a gauntlet to get from her home to her job. Mashed together with others on the bus or train, she might be subject to the depredations of those who gain excitement from rubbing against her, or talked to death by a man who is sure she is impressed by him and his life. After that, simply walking the street, she could be subject to leers, whistles, and even shouted implorations for sexual acts and professions of "love." from all quarters. Even making it to work, she is not completely safe, for hidden amidst her male co-workers, are those who do not see her as a colleague, but a concubine, who are more interested in her physical form, than the form she needs signed. And after a full day, it is time to run the gauntlet back home, to close the door and shut out the horror... until it must be run again.

This is not to say that every man is like this, or that every woman must run this gauntlet, but that it happens at all is a sad commentary of just what progress society has actually made in gender relations. It was not enough for laws to be written and passed, if they are not enforced. It is not enough to enforce laws if the knowledge that come with that enforcement does not permeate the larger society. It does not matter what efforts are made to bring about equality between the sexes, if that equality is not enforced in the home. Young men and young women must be taught from the earliest possible age that there is no difference between them, save their gender, and each is capable of whatever they set their mind to. They must be inculcated with the idea that women are just as deserving of respect as men. Young men must be taught not to harass women, and young women must be taught that they are not expected to suffer the harassment of men.

Of course, none of this is easy, as preceding decades have shown. Human society, being locked in a patriarchal mold from almost the beginning of organized humanity, cannot simply be undone in a few decades, or possibly, even a few centuries. Attitudes require wholesale adjustment, at all levels of society, starting from the very beginning of life. Until each generation is composed of more and more citizens who have learned the lessons and precepts of equality, until the old mores become smothered by a more sincere and level-headed humanity's acceptance of the truth, women will still be subject to the gauntlet.

Women do not have to surrender to it, however. Far from it, for in order to impel the changes that must occur, women and men must fight it here and now. Women must stand up to those who marginalize and minimalize them as sexual objects; men must stand up for women, calling out their testosterone-driven brethren for their incivility and innuendo. Men and women, working together, can begin, must begin, to turn the tide of human ideology from its patriarchal course. In doing so, they will pave the way for a better humanity, a humanity where we shall work together to support and nurture each other. We shall create a future where everyone's contributions will count equally, and where women will no longer have to fear for themselves. In this, will come the true growth of humanity.