Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Resurrection

Do You Trust Women, from Bitch PhD. Why am I linking this?

Well, I don't always agree with BitchPhD about a lot of stuff. Her politics are not mine, nor are her opinions, entirely, but she's generally got a good argument behind what she says, which is something I approve of. But that page I more or less agree with, especially the section on abortion.

I'm pro-choice. Firmly so. I don't think I could ever have an abortion, but I also don't think I get the right to make that decision for anyone else.

According to this guy, Judaism's banning homosexuality, and the Christian continuance of same, is the foundation of Western civilisation.

I'm pretty sure people talk about ancient Greece and the influence of democracy, Aristotle, mathematics, and whatnot more than they talk about Leviticus when they discuss the foundations of Western civilisation. Certainly from the Middle Ages it was getting into the classics that was the basis of enlightenment; hell, in the capital-E Enlightenment it was philosophy, not religious dogmatism, that brought forward much that modern life depends upon, ideologically speaking.

Parenthetically, the Greeks were pretty cheerful about man on man action.

His best bit, though, is this one:

When male sexuality is not controlled, the consequences are considerably more destructive than when female sexuality is not controlled. Men rape. Women do not. Men, not women, engage in fetishes. Men are more frequently consumed by their sex drive, and wander from sex partner to sex partner. Men, not women, are sexually sadistic.

He is, clearly, victim to one of the more subtle effects of our rampant cultural misogyny. This is a touch of Virgin/Whore syndrome, perhaps. Women are clearly noble and pure and sexually passive.

Bullshit.

Women rape. Less than men do, it's true, but our culture isn't exactly riddled with pernicious assumptions about men as sexual victims. As for the fetish thing, though... seriously. Lots of women are into fetishistic sex, are sexual sadists, etc. (I am not one of these women, but I know they're out there and have known some of them.)

This is the kind of thinking that not only disadvantages The Gays, but keeps in place some of the underpinnings of our society that are so very, very sexist. Which hurts both women AND MEN. It sucks.

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1 Comments:

Blogger tflynch said...

I actually disagree with the line of argument. It's a long step from wanting to control choices regarding abortion to not trusting women in general.

"Not trusting all women" or even "not trusting all people" seem more reasonable conclusions, given that even in a pro-choice, permissive legislative scenario some women will still have their reproductive choices controlled by others with whom one might disagree, and still other women will make whatever choice you would make with a high degree of reliability.

I don't think that the extent of trust is an adequate metric for determining whether or not to regulate some moral issue ... the extent of one's trust is dependent on the incidence of events that violate that trust -- for a reproductive choice advocate I guess that means when women are forced to carry pregnancies to term against their natural wishes -- and that's the real motive behind any move to commit a moral principle to binding legislation.

8:37 am  

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