Posted on 02/16/2005 7:35:13 AM PST by MisterRepublican
Yes, but in the minds of men the valley isn't quite as wide as you think it is. The third category women could shoot for is being equals but most women, in my experience, really don't want men to treat them like a man because men don't treat each other gently. All that hazing that women fighter pilots and such complain about -- yeah, men do that stuff to each other all the time and we're not allowed to cry and complain about it. Not being able to fight off attacks and abuse is a sign of weakness. Crying and complaining about it shows that you aren't up to being treated as an equal. Changing standards is even worse and creates the same impression that affirmative action does -- that the person can't really do the job and doesn't deserve to be where they are on their merits. Some women can and do pull this off. For the rest, that really only leaves the other options of sex toy or pedistal goddess that I can see. I'm sorry but the minds of many of my fellow men are not sophisticated enough for more complexity than that.
Why?
The reality is that women are generally physically inferior to men. That's why women's sports don't sell very well and why men and women generally don't compete against each other (letting transsexuals compete as women should illustrate this, too). It's also why, even in liberal liberated households, that when they hear a strange noise in the night, it's the man who gets out of bed with the baseball bat or fire poker to find out who the intruder is. There are other issues, but without going into detail when men evaluate women on the basis of things that matter to men -- stoicism, physical prowess, mechanical intelligence, etc. -- women often come up lacking. Many women make poor men so, judged as men, they are inferior. The way not to be judged as wholly inferior if you don't want to compete as a man is not to be judged by the same measure that men judge each other or to be judged in an area where men are inferior.
The sex toy tries to play the man's game of being promiscuous but doesn't add anything that men admire. Yeah, that get's some pseudo-respect but it's the sort of uncaring respect that you can also get from fear and it doesn't last. Because of that, the sex toy ultimately gets treated as a lesser being. She's somewhere just above a blow-up doll and a sheep on the moral scale. They are entertainment, not really human.
The pedistal goddess plays a different game. The idea is to out-do men in an area where men do poorly. As the above conversation (and this whole thread) illustrates, men are often severely lacking when it comes to honor and dignity. Women can compete favorably with men by that measure and can even blow their doors off. The reason why the pedistal goddess gets the respect of men is that she's earning it, by outperforming men in an area that men respect but are often lacking in. Basically, men respect the pedistal goddess because he know's she's morally superior to him despite the fact that she's lacking physically and in other ways. That moral superiority allows the pedistal goddess to demand respect and get it. Similarly, the woman who dedicates herself to raising children is also doing something that men often respect (at least when it is their children) but often don't want to do themselves. The sex toy, on the other hand, offers nothing for a man to respect. Worse, she raises the whole specter of paternity and committment if a man does commit to a long-term relationship with her.
Does that mean that a woman needs to be perfect? Of course not. But they should compete in the realm of honor and integrity such that they are better than men and men will respect that. Men are all about respect. They either respect you or they don't. Women can compete here and should, rather than trying to out-men men unless they are really up to the challenge.
The only alternative is to find something else that women can do better than men that men will respect them for. If you have any other alternative suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.
And please note, before writing an angry reply, that I'm fully aware that this is an oversimplificiation and that there are some women who can compete favorably with men as men in various areas including business and politics. But a lot of women apparently can't and don't and the women who do can wind up paying a price in other areas. For example, a lot of men are turned off by women who compete as men. And, of course, I don't particularly find a lot of this admirable. I'm not saying that it's a good thing that men behave this way. I'm simply saying that they do.
I didn't say it was the same. I said it was immodest. I stand by my opinion. The only schools my son is applying to either have dress codes or uniforms to prohibit that sort of thing, and my daughters won't be dressing that way, either.
Unless you're male, you can't appreciate how distracting that is. And, unless you're a parent, you can't appreciate wanting to protect your children from it. The number of fathers of teenage daughters who honestly think it's a great thing for their daughters to go to school with their bellies hanging out is pretty small, IMO.
While this article may touch lightly on the subject matter at hand, the guy who wrote this article is a nut. Sorry!
Example:
A young woman must consecrate her innocence for the man whom she will eventually love and marry. Her thoughts should be focused on him and on her future children. She should prepare herself to be worthy to become a wife and mother.
There's a line from the movie "Staying Alive" that you remind me of. A woman looks at Tony and says, "Guys like you aren't relationships. They're exercise."
Shalom.
At my high school the girls got individual toilet compatments, while the guys had seats side by side.
Another example:
In fact, the real establishment consists of a well-organized network of superrich pedophiles, Satanists and drug dealers. See "A Conspiracy Too Monstrous to Conceive. See also the book, "The Franklin Cover-Up" by John De Camp.
I think it's a great idea for ALL schools to institute uniforms. Not only will you avoid the problem with offensive fashions, but you'll make life a lot easier on the parents who only need to buy one or two uniforms instead of five outfits for every day of the week.
My gosh, have they forgotten the free love communes and dirty flower children all doped up? On television we had Charlie's Angels and the drive ins showed X rated porn that we teeners could climb onto rooftops and observe.
We are a fairly puritanical society. The current rebellion involves women sticking pins into their faces, tongues, noses, and non-public parts. To me this is stupid, dangerous, and obscene. It destroys their beauty in many cases.
But sexual it ain't.
The question is whether the party girl will settle down and stay happily married. It's largely a matter of people assuming that past behavior will provide some indication of future behavior. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. It's all a matter of how much you want to gamble and which way.
Similarly, men have always been less bound by standards of virture than women. A mistress, as long as she was maintained discreetly, has always been a common thing for men of means.
Women never have to worry about who the father of their child is. Men do. And before blood and paternity tests, there was no way to know for sure. That's why men have always cared more about the virtue of their wives than women have cared about their virtue of their men. The main thing that women have always wanted to insure is support, first by not letting men divorce them to be with their mistresses and later with hefty child support settlements.
But this also ignores the bigger issue that just because people get away with something doesn't make it right. The fact that men generally don't bring their mistresses home to meet their wives, that wives generally don't give explicity approval for affairs, etc. suggests that, deep down, people know this sort of behavior isn't a good thing.
I don't personally feel that way and I'll give you a quick anecdote that I think proves it. I attended a friend's bachelor party. We're not a wild crowd and I was married at the time so I didn't expect to much wild to happen (the bachelor party I arranged for another friend included a trip to a comedy club--that was it) but the friend's brother got a stripper. Without going into too many details (they really aren't that interesting), the two women were almost raped at the bachelor party they were at before the one for my friend. One eventually did her thing because we were a nice enough group (none of my friends would have demanded anything from them). I was the one who cared enough at the end of the night to lead them in my car to the highway so they could get home. In fact, it's because I can't help but thinking of strippers as anything but human beings -- daughters, sisters, mothers -- that I get little-to-no enjoyment out of strippers.
And, yes, I find the things that other say about women embarassing. In fact, I find men talking about their wives particularly distasteful. One day, a friend caught his wife talking to another friend's wife about their sex life and he confronted them. They replied, "Well you men talk about this stuff behind our backs!" He repliled, "No we don't!" My friends don't, which is why they are my friends, but plenty of other men that I've run into at work and elsewhere sure do.
Actually, thinking about this, I think I missed a category or two. A woman can also be an object of pity or a menace. I think that pretty much covers how most people view sex toys women. They are either sub-human entertainment, an object of pity, or a menace to society and treat to morality.
Really? I don't think men talk about much of anything of substance, with other men.
The Patriots sure are going to tough next year, aren't they? ;-)
Well, of course, I discuss substantive things with my confessor, who's a man (of course), and I guess with a few of my other friends ... so maybe that's just a stereotype.
Your son sounds like he was one smart cookie at a very early age!
Thank you.....my husband has far more experience than I, as he was the father figure to his sister's 2 girls.
But you are so correct about the need of communication and agreement between both parents. We are trying our best to make sure we present a united front in decisions, and she is learning quickly she can't play us against each other.
I'm not claiming that the sex talk has an substance to it...
Well, of course, I discuss substantive things with my confessor, who's a man (of course), and I guess with a few of my other friends ... so maybe that's just a stereotype.
As a white person, I hear things come out of the mouths of other white people that I never hear when my black friends are around. As a man, I hear things come out of the mouths of other men that I never hear when women are around. Not all in either case but more than I'm happy about. Of course I also know that there are things that women say to each other when men aren't around and things that blacks say to each other when whites aren't around.
I didn't presume you did. It was your talk about men who turn women into sex toys that made me think of the line.
Your comment about predators was spot-on. When the women circle the floor of a strip club selling dances, which are the predators and which are the prey?
<ahem>Not that I have any current experience with the subject, mind you.
Shalom.
You sound very much like my husband. I have no fear of ever being embarrassed by something that he had said to someone else "out of school" so to speak. And the reverse is true as well.
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