I was seriously prepared to comment on the upcoming Mayoral election in Chicago and the fact its devolution into a race-based free-for-all. Speaking of devolution, however, there is something else that has been pressing on my mind for a week or so now. It needs to be addressed, and odd as it may sound coming from a 59 year old white male, I am thoroughly appalled and annoyed by men's attitudes toward women, their expectations, and their assumptions. We're talking about male-female relations worldwide, not just in areas we might think of as backwards. America and the so-called developed world have their problems as well, in this respect.
Let me start from the beginning of my current annoyance about this issue. A short while ago there was a feel good story in the Chicago news about a man who rescued a woman from a rape attempt in a public bathroom at the Foster Avenue beach house. While it is admirable that the man in question had his head in the right place and responded to the screams from the bathroom, the other side of the story is that a man, an American man, followed the woman into the bathroom, punched her repeatedly, beat her head against the cinder block wall, dragged her into a stall, and was trying to get his pants and hers down to consummate the deed when he was dragged off by the rescuer. He punched the rescuer and ran.
The attempted rapist in this scenario was arrested and identified in a lineup, by the victim. Now here is where this story gets really sordid. In a statement to police, the perpetrator of this crime said, "She wouldn't fuck me, so I beat on her..." Now it occurs to me, "What kind of sick sucker just expects a woman to fuck him because he's a man who wants to fuck and she's a woman and she's there?" The trouble is that this attitude is all too common in many sectors of society.
Let me relate just one more little anecdote of this ghetto mindset to bring the point home. I teach in a public high school in a not so good neighborhood and a couple of years back one of my students was arrested for sexual assaulting a woman at gunpoint. When arrested, his statement to the police, in some apparent attempt to justify his actions, was something on the order of "My girlfriend is pregnant and won't fuck me. I ain't had none in a long time. I just couldn't stand it no more, so....." This is the thing. In some sectors of American society you take what you want from women. That's what they're there for.
Noted that these are extreme cases, but we need to take a long look at how male-female relations in general are structured on this planet Earth. When you take a long look at the more conservative societies of the Islamic world, you find that women are, as a rule, relegated to second-class status. The whole thing about women covering themselves head to toe is just mind-boggling. Are we to believe that men are incapable of restraining themselves when confronted with a woman's sexuality? Just looking at a woman who even remotely resembles a woman in shape and form is enough to cause a man to rape her? Is that what this is about?
Several years ago Babs and I were in Morocco on a train, in one of those cars that have little compartments that hold 6 people, 3 on each side facing each other. Babs was obviously with me, but was not wearing a head scarf or one of those "cover it all up" outfits common in that part of the world. Several Moroccan men got on the train in Rabat and entered our compartment. The Moroccan woman who had not felt it necessary to cover her head when she was alone in the compartment with Americans made a show of covering her head. Then one of the guys sat down next to Babs and proceeded to put his hand on her leg. Babs was indignant and he removed it, but the assumptions and the assumed right to do this were appalling.
This is just a drop in the bucket when you consider that women in Iran are threatened with stoning for adultery. Women in Afghanistan are routinely intimidated to keep them from going to school. Women in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from driving cars or from going out of their homes without the accompaniment of an adult male member of their family. Women in parts of Africa have their clitoris removed to prevent them from having any pleasure in the sex act. Apparently the males in that part of the world feel that females who have pleasure in sex are sluts and impure.
Mind you these examples are pretty extreme, but even in so-called civilized corners of the planet male-female relations are not exactly the relationship of equals. As I recall, there are various Christian groups that press the idea that the man is always the head of the family and it is a woman's duty to obey him. No less of a mainstream Christian group than the Catholic Church disapproves of any form of birth control. They press the idea that sex is for procreation only, and women have no say in whether they should give birth to a child if they opt for having sexual relations.
Then there is the thing about women in modern industrialized societies doing the same jobs as men and making significantly less than men who do the same job. There is the thing about women being pointed toward vocations "more suited to women" and away from traditionally male-dominated professions like engineering and science. On and on and on ad infinitum. It is 2010 A.D. We can clone body parts, but religions don't want us to. We can send humans to destinations beyond our planetary boundaries, yet men around the globe cannot grasp a concept so simple as "women are our equals, just made sexually different so we as a species can reproduce." Is that so hard to grasp, really? Or are we still just a bunch of glorified Cro-Magnons?
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