an imaginary exercise for all men (and some women too)
I am a man after all.
I would like all the men reading this to indulge me in a little imaginary exercise. Imagine you live in a world where, because of the biological role your gender bestowed on you, you were physically unable to challenge women and you spent most of your adult life growing little people in your body or caring for the little people your body produced. As such, you were somewhat marginalised from the ‘important’ functions of society. While you were seeing to the continuation of the species, the women were out and about, collecting food, building shelters, and also finding time to think and chat, and set up little groups of power and influence.
Then, let’s imagine, some one hundred years ago, some of your kind fought for your right to be included in the decision making, to a limited degree. That’s nice. But your big break comes when a way to control when and if you start growing the little people is discovered. Not only that, but technology makes it possible for the things that had kept you busy looking after the little people to only take up a fraction of the time and effort it previously did. Hurrah, you’re there! You can now fully participate in society and still have some little people if you feel like it. There are even laws that tell the women they have to treat you equally!
Except that, everywhere you look, the women are still in power. Pretty much every head of state is still female – you look at the G20 summit pictures and squint to pick out the one representative of your gender. All the popular gods, all the heads of religion and indeed most of the thought-controlling religious instructors are women. All the power, all of the influence is still in women’s hands. That’s fine though, because generally they treat you real nice. In fact, most women like men so much, they like nothing better than admiring hot male bodies with luscious six packs. When you turn on the TV or look at the rows of magazines, there’s lots for women to enjoy. It’s kind of flattering really because the male form exists to be appreciated – kind of like art. You look at your son and think, he’ll make a really nice husband for a successful woman one day.
You don’t feel irritated in the slightest – I mean, why would you? There are some of your fellow men who are grumbling away somewhere in the background, but they’re just uptight women-haters, frigid or gay, or just plain ugly.
Sheesh, I had to read all this right to the end and not one picture of you without your kit on!
Are you going to post a picture or what? Cherubs, Urns and Plinths are optional. 🙂
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It’s okay, I sense your deep shame. No need to try and cover it up with weak humour.
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True enough. ‘Shakes head.’
I have to visit the loo with the light off, just in case Jesus is watching.
BTW there is a post, just for you over at The Ark’s spot, as we are now blogpals, right? 🙂
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as more are educated and enlightened, change is always possible over time. but never fast enough…
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Yes, I guess there are still a few generations to go. The theory of equality is at least now rooted in society.
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Coming from a country, that had a woman president for two terms and as a person who actually voted for her, I think I can relate to this. As a man.
I once read this book by a Norvegian author Gerd Brantenberg called Egalia’s Daughters, wich has rather similar setting. It was amusing and educational. I recommend it to anyone.
One of the main issues of equality between the sexes is as a great medieval philosopher Christin de Pisan put it, the problem, that what ever women do does not get the same appriciation as when men do it. I once worked in a factory that had a majority of women workers and alltough it was a metal working factory we all got just too little pay for the work in comparrison to any similar factory I had worked in where the majority of the workers were men. But the management had all sorts of neat tricks to keep the women happy. Instead of actual bonus pay for achieving goals, we got chocklid and the women were all so gratefull to the factory bosses (who were male) for it. I thought it was bogus and sought out a nother job, that paid me better. The point being, women are taught from childhood to accept their position in the society.
I can not see what reason there is for our reproductive organs to be the decisive matter in what roles in a society we should be able to take, or what those organs have to do with those roles. But it seems, that the less men can utilize their actually bigger muscle mass in everyday life, the more they cling on to conservative cultural rolemodels and the more ridiculous their excuses for that become.
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Thanks for your contribution to the topic. I do think things are heading in a good direction generally. This post was designed to point out the weight of historical gender discrimination and the continuing huge imbalances there are, as some men clearly feel that women are ‘over-sensitive’ when they’re just ‘having a laugh’. It didn’t work in terms of the intended recipient but some people are clearly too old and confused to change their ways. I’m really pleased that other men got it though! And thanks so much for the book recommendation, looks really interesting, I’ll definitely check it out.
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Yes. It is the same with other forms of persecution and oppression also. People have a certain right to be sensetive about issues in wich they have been oppressed. Just like sexism, or racism, or other cultural bias. And it is confusing when equally cruel joke is sometimes approvable, and a nother one equally cruel is not, because of the history. I have run into people who spout out “politically correct” as if it was an absolutely negative term, without the slightest bit of understanding how, or why something like that is formed.
It must also be confusing, when people have learned to think a certain way wich may be completely against even their own natural ethics, but they have neglected this, because of cultural indoctrination, and finally the society has moved towards higher ethics in the matter. Then we have these individuals who cry out that their former rights to oppress other people are being stripped from them, as if that was a violation against their actual rights.
But it would be healthy even for the oppressed party to learn to recognize when a pun is an intended attack and when it is not. It is hard, though. And easy for me to say, being a white, adult, heterosexual male.
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Old!!!! Who’s OLD! 🙂
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Neat. Nicely done as ever. pesky podenco has woken up so a dog walk is called for before further comments.
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