Installment 6. If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules?
Share this compelling intro to the Men's Movement with your skeptical friends.
The Power of Sex
“There’s an exquisite power to be gained in being desired.”
—Lucinda Rosenfeld, speaking of What She Saw, her novel about a woman’s love life, Toronto Star, October 29, 2000
Society authorizes women to use make-up, fashion and jewelry to gain attention and stimulate sexual demand among men. “Nice girls” are not allowed to make sales calls, but they are allowed to advertise—as long as they don’t cut their prices too deeply. (The Sisterhood is, among other things, a powerful trade association.)
Professor Nigel Nicholson of Reed University in Portland, Oregon teaches a class on sex and gender in ancient Rome. His class notes say “[An] aspect of sexual behavior that defined a man’s masculinity was how much sex he had. Oddly, the right amount was not what we would expect; it was not very much… A large sexual appetite, whether directed at men or women or both, was considered effeminate [because] it tokened a lack of self-control, an inability to dominate oneself… ” He notes a contemporary criticism of the Emperor: “Claudius enjoys sex too much, becomes overly fond of his partners, and so gives them control over him.”
Women laugh at us when studies show that we think about sex several times per hour. We could get a bigger laugh if anyone ever did a study of how often women think about being sexy.
Why do we have trouble relating to “the powerlessness of women” whenever we see the cover of Cosmopolitan?
“Women chat happily, send sexually explicit signals and encourage the man’s attention, even if they have absolutely no interest in him. This gives a woman time to assess a man, says [Karl Grammer of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Urban Ethology in Vienna, who studied 45 male-female pairs of strangers in their teens and early twenties]… Importantly, the women also seemed to control the encounter—what the women did had a direct effect on how the men behaved next. ‘You can predict male behaviour from female behaviour but not the other way round,’ says Grammer.”
— New Scientist Magazine (London), February 14, 2001
Women say they have to control sex because we control everything else. It makes just as much sense to say that we need to control everything else because they control sex.
“Women learn that if they’re not sexual, they could be rejected. And they feel a real fear of abandonment. But they also find out that a guy will do anything to get laid. And that’s pretty powerful; they control whether that man’s going to get laid.”
— therapist Laurie Ingraham in Good Will Toward Men by Jack Kammer
The army’s 1996 Aberdeen sex scandal focused on sergeants who used their authority to get sex with female recruits. But what about female recruits who use their sexual power to get easier treatment from sergeants?
“Male soldiers complained that female soldiers ‘got over’ on the male drill sergeants [and] fraternized with drill sergeants… to get out of training.”
—a study by the Army Research Institute, 1995 reported in the Washington Times, June 5, 1997
Women’s law of sexual supply and demand: keep the demand hot, keep the supply frozen.
Thirty years ago, if we heard a man telling a woman during an argument that she was “cut off,” we’d know he was controlling her financially. Today, when a woman tells a man he is “cut off” we know she is controlling him sexually.
“To be blunt, sex has historically been a commodity. It’s a valuable source of power… Traditionally… [a] woman’s most reliable currency was the potential of sex… Sexual power is… the female commodity… Buried in the recesses of [women’s] memories are years of messages telling us that sex is our most important asset if rationed, if kept out of reach.”
—sex educator Carol Cassell, Ph.D. in her 1984 book Swept Away: Why Women Fear Their Own Sexuality
The Fourth Branch of Government
“A longtime lobbyist in her fifties dresses up in ‘tight leopard get-ups’… and then, essentially, lobbies with her chest, rubbing it against the appropriate arm…
“One advocate for a liberal public interest group, when interviewing for a job at a new firm, repeatedly alluded to the senators she had slept with… She apparently believed these accomplishments represented her best credentials for getting the job.
“A well-respected reporter for a major daily is known for redirecting her love interest on the Hill every time her employer switches her beat.
“One staffer, intent on marrying a congressman, has allegedly attempted to have affairs with as many of them as possible in the past few years, through expert cruising of bars and fancy receptions. Just recently she hit on Congressman Right; alas, his interest waned. Now she’s threatening to expose the relationship…
“Face it, feminists: Not only is there complicity on the part of some women who walk the halls of Congress, but some see sex and sexuality as legitimate professional currency… Let’s not pretend our evolution as women is complete.”
— Karen Lehrman, Washington Post, December 20, 1992
Pornography does not glorify our sexual domination of women. It expresses our wish that women didn’t have sexual domination over us.
When we misuse our economic power over women, women legitimately react in ways we do not always like. One of those ways is to fantasize that they have achieved power over us. In the movie 9 to 5, for instance, three women laugh merrily about how they’d like to get violent revenge against their chauvinistic male boss. In the end, the trio settles for humiliating and subduing him in a dog collar and chains.
No one could reasonably say that 9 to 5 glorifies women’s domination of men in business. It is precisely because women don’t dominate men in business that the fantasy is popular with women who wish they did.
Similarly, “pornography” does not glorify our sexual domination of women. It expresses our fantasies of overcoming women’s sexual domination of us. The fact that 9 to 5 and some of our erotica both involve people in dog collars and chains is not mere coincidence.
What’s more, some of our most popular sexual fantasies aren’t about reversing sexual control at all, but are simply about equalizing it, about meeting women who participate enthusiastically in sex, who love male sexuality, and who don’t hold out for money, dinner or furs. Portrayals of such egalitarian sex don’t demean women any more than we are denigrated by stories of women and men working cooperatively in an office where men no longer think it is their right to have women fetch them coffee.
“The one thing never depicted in a pornographic film is a woman criticizing her lover or demanding something different from him.”
—therapist Terrence Real in his 1997 book I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression