The Masculinist

When she did not place the cheese
properly on his meatball sandwich,
he attacked her with knife and teeth.

Republicans are going to go ballistic, they say, if anyone reveals the terrible and illegal things they did over the past eight years. That is, if the Obama administration releases certain memos that allowed Bush/Cheney to arrest and torture people at will. They argue that releasing such memos would be embarrassing. I guess we certainly wouldn’t want any war criminals to be embarrassed would we? Of course they will argue that it might reveal state secrets and it might involve foreign governments that would also be embarrassed, and so on. This is all nonsense, the memos should be released and those involved should be held accountable. Embarrassment should be the least of their worries.

You may recall that some time back I began a new hobby: collecting sex advice to women as expessed on the covers of women’s magazines (Morialekafa 3-7-09). Unlike almost all of my previous attempts at hobbies, I have not already abandoned this one. Today I was able to add to my beginning collection: from Best You, Better Sex Tonight, from Complete Woman, Sex Secrets You Must Know About Men, and Sex Goddess Secrets Amazing New Moves He’ll Dream About Day and Night, from Cosmopolitan, Sex He Craves, and also The Easy Way to Improve Your Sex Drive, and finally, from Glamour, 25 Things You Do that Men Secretly Love. I quite likely could have collected more but I ran out of time. I also discovered that this hobby is not as easy as you might think. This is because there are all kinds of what are perhaps borderline cases. For example, also from Cosmopolitan, Get Butt Naked, from True Romance, Bunny Love A Hop, Skip and Jump Away, and from Women’s Health, Get a Tight Butt in 10 Minutes. These kinds of things just hint of sexual pleasure rather than hitting you in the teeth with it. Another problem is that virtually everything in women’s magazines refers to “sexy.” That is, you can have sexy thighs, a sexy butt, sexy legs, sexy eyebrows, sexy eyes, sexy smiles, sexy dresses, sexy swim suits, sexy nightgowns, sexy lips, hands, and arms, and pretty much sexy everything and anything (I have yet to encounter sexy feet). If I didn’t know that American women were the most progressive, modern, feminist, glass-ceiling-busting, as good as men, women, anywhere on earth, I would think they were preoccupied, even obsessed, with sex and becoming sex objects. The rules of my hobby do not require me to actually read any of these articles, nor do they allow me to analyze any of the materials I gather. Even so, I cannot but wonder of the image of women that seems to be implied by this ubiquitous literature. It does seem to imply that women must want to be sexually attractive to men, and to please men sexually. The aim of the magazines seems to be to help women in this ongoing enterprise. Although I have not searched seriously for it, I have seen nothing even approaching this concern in magazines for men. Men’s magazines for the most part tend to show nude women and women in sexual poses and such, but there is little in the way of instructions for men on how to please women. I wonder at this. I’m sure that at least in part it harkens back to the days when women were believed not to enjoy sex, were not allowed to sue for loss of consortium, and so on. I’m sure there are attempts to teach men to think of women’s pleasure as well as their own, but these are nowhere near as prevalent as the advice for women.

In the course of my researches on this earth-shattering pursuit I discovered what I think is a strange anomaly. If you look up “feminist” in Merriam-Webster it appears only as “feminism” and is defined as: “1. The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, and 2. Organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” If you look up “masculinism” you find there is no such word. It appears only as “masculinist” and is defined as: “an advocate of male superiority or dominance.” This raises a number of questions. If there is such a word as feminism, why is there no such word as masculinism? And why is feminism concerned with equality whereas masculinists are concerned with inequality (superiority and dominance)? Is it the case that if you are masculine you are automatically a “sexist pig,” whereas if you are feminine you lack feelings of superiority or dominance and strive merely for equality? And why is there no “organized activity” on behalf of male rights and interests? It would appear to me that feminists are organized in order to fight against male superiority, but male superiority is not, in American culture, generally speaking, organized (although in some cultures it may be). It seems to me this whole argument is predicated on the assumption that males have always been considered superior and dominant and females always subordinate and inferior. I acknowledge this may be the kind of general view we have of Western-European cultures, but it is clearly a pretty superficial description of the facts, and is based upon assumptions as to which kinds of behavior are somehow more important than others (fighting/hunting more important than food gathering/child care, etc.) The ethnographic record indicates to me that the issue is far more complex and nowhere near as clear-cut as we make it out to be. Sexual behavior may have been symbolic of broader ideas about dominance/subordinance in the past, but I suspect the so-called “sexual revolution” will eventually put an end to such ideas. Far from training to be sex objects, women may well be training to their strengths, and the idea of male superiority may well go the way of the chastity belt.

LKBIQ:
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
Charlotte Whitton

TILT:
Armadillos have the ability to stay underwater for up to six minutes.