On my way home from work earlier this week, I took a route in my mind which led me down to Gender Double Standard Street….
Are ye sitting comfortably?
Then I’ll begin….
So along this little side road in my mind, I found myself revisiting past obscenities uttered – namely this one time I got unjustly dragged into a verbal back-and-forth with a female colleague at work. I remember, later in the day, letting loose my exasperation in the presence of Mother Dearest….
Her response to the injustices heaped onto me?
“You shouldn’t use words like bitch, son….”
“You have to be careful with women…. learn to get on with everyone…..”
Yadda, yadda, yadda…..
So if someone gives me shit undeserved and they happen to own a pair of tits, I should give them “special treatment”?
Fuck that!
My mum’s stance, whilst bloody annoying, is far from uncommon in our society today. It manifests itself in the moral watchdog who wants to censor all rap music for misogynistic content; it rears it’s ugly head from the mouth of the bloke who insists one should cast-iron never hit a woman – regardless of context; and it shows itself in the prig who considers the utterance of the word “cunt” to be epitome of evil. This stance I christen the chivalrist position – a remnant of times gone past, dragging itself kicking and screaming through the 21st Century.
Many look upon this stance as “gentlemanly” and “noble” and a thousand other glowing adjectives – I did too, once upon a time. However, it soon dawned on me that, far from being the antidote to the boorishness of chauvinism, the chivalrist position fell from the same cunt as that of its opponent – Mother Sexism!
What better time than now to show this Gorgon the ugliness of its own visage?
Why is it that the word bastard is more-or-less acceptable, but as soon as someone hollers bitch, you get a hundred and one social theorists, busybodies and politicos analysing the intent and rationale behind its usage? Is it really that inconceivable that a woman could perhaps actually be as obnoxious as such an ephitet implies? Do only men have the monopoly on being assholes? That sounds like sexism to me!
Even more to the extreme, why is it that “dick” considered a PG-13, mainstream term of abuse, yet “cunt” is a virtual taboo? A female referring to a bloke as a “dick” would be shrugged off, but Lucifer help the bloke if he retorted with the “cunt” counterattack – it’s immediately a sign that the user of such a word is an misogynistic pig! Never mind the fact that the female may well be obnoxious enough to earn the moniker “cunt”, nor the fact that the bloke is only referring to one female in particular – the dude’s obviously harbouring some deep, dark desire to rape, disembowel and eviscerate every woman in sight.
Thus, crucify the heretic on the social cross – him and his wretched context!
The Church of Misandrony – how devout its followers are….
As well as being a clear case of prejudice against men, isn’t the knee-jerk stigma against calling any woman “cunt” and “bitch” a negation of the character of any individual female worthy of the terms? Such a dogmatic reaction can only be born of a mind which sees the female sex as a homogeneous mass, or sees “woman” as a normative set of traits and characteristics which all born with tits ‘n’ twat must conform to – now if that isn’t a strong fucking example of red-flag sexism at work, please tell me what it is, cos I’m priapic for enlightenment!
In many ways this whole sorry state of affairs has similarities with the whole stud/slut double standard in sexual matters. On a superficial level, one could see it as a reversal of that particular stupidity, with the bloke being denigrated in place of the bird (the overthrow of chauvinism); yet on a deeper level, the dick/cunt stupidity is another manifestation of the cultural-societal tendency to place more emphasis on a woman’s “purity” and chastity than a male’s – keeping cunt under out of reach is the shared trait of both these double-standards.
The taboo surrounding the word “cunt” is not a million miles removed from the behaviour of stereotypical fathers of the old (and not-so-old) times who guarded the chasteness of their daughters religiously . Thus the fathers of the new time, the self-appointed, take up their swords and soapboxes in defence of the honour of their oh-so-helpless and huddling “daughters”!
Viva the eternal renewal of this great stupidity – in short, chivalry!
This chivalry extends from the mental plane to the physical – witness the man who lives by the commandment: “Thou shall not hit woman”. He ties himself to this, becoming its willing slave in all situations. Now in most matters, one has no business hitting anyone – whether they have a cock or cunt between their legs. But what of the sovereignty of self-preservation? A woman under the tyranny of a violent husband (a chauvinist) has every right to free herself from her oppressor – with violence if necessary! Can the same not be said in the case of roles being reversed? Yet how will the man, living by his sacred commandment fare against this insurmountable odd – dare he put life before law?
In a matter where clear heads are needed, the chivalrist-chauvinist dialectic creeps up to poison the thinking of the great many….
In plainer terms, you’re fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t!
To be a chauvinist is surely a great idiocy, but can it be argued any differently in the case of the chivalrist?
How ironic that in an age of equal rights, equal wrongs have yet to be acknowledged….
~MRDA~
You know… I consider myself to be a feminist, in that I believe in self-sufficiency, and my own right to find my place in the world, wherever that may be. But every time I hear the word ‘cunt’, I laugh. First, it reminds me of a Monty Python skit (silly bunt!) and second – it’s just a funny word. ANY body-part name-calling, for that matter. I always want to respond with, “Well, YOU are an elbow!” As for bitch, I have no issue with dogs of either gender, and wear that one like a badge of honor. It usually means I’m doing something right. 😉
I thought for sure, after reading the first sentence, that you’d held the door for someone and been glared at. Haha – you know, in Girl Scouts, they taught us not to allow branches to snap back into the face of the girl behind us on hikes – to ‘hold nature’s door’ for each other. I don’t consider buildings to be so different, or symbolic of my obstacle-removing capibilities. I’ll also accept help lifting heavy things, shovelling snow, mowing the lawn (or starting said mower) from whomever offers. But I’m weird like that.
Whenever I’m with a male friend and he opens a door for me, I have the tendency of opening the next set of doors for him. I just see it as being nice.
And at the same time, half these men seem to only think that women are sex objects without feelings. We’re just supposed to have big boobs and shit and parade around in skimpy clothes and fuck every man at a whim and do lesbian shows for them, blah, blah, blah . . .
If a guy wants to call a girl a bitch that has been a bitch to him, I have no problem with it, it doesn’t apply to me, so I don’t care. But I don’t like for a guy I don’t even know to come up to me and go “hey bitch!” or something like that.
I read somewhere that men like to hold the door for women they are attracted to because it allows them to be masculine. It was something about the more feminine the woman is, the more masculine the man can be and therefore there would be more romance in the relationship . . .which apparently could possibly be why I’m still solo, since I’m nowhere near feminine. x_x;;; But, I thought it was a load of bull, myself. I always buy lunch for a guy I’m attracted to, for example. I might never get the favor returned, but it’s the thought that counts.
Hell yeah, I too encounter plenty of that kind of reaction and have never been able to explain it that well.
Write a poem about it! *eager to read your poetry*
YES. I’ve tended to write a lot of female villains in my fiction lately because one of the most annoying characteristics of a villain is when an evil woman hides behind her gender, treats it like some kind of Do What You Want license. If women shouldn’t be expected to have honor, virtue, skill, etc, then they should put down the briefcase and get back to what they did before we had equal rights: Cooking Food, Cleaning House, Raising Kids and Sucking Dick. And I love that when I say this kind of thing, a lot of women ignore the context and assume I hate the advancement of equality, the truth is, I want men and women to be equal more than the feminist movement does. Equality is all encompassing, women can’t just take the rights they want. When slaves broke free they didn’t say “We don’t want to work here anymore, but keep feeding us and giving us a place to stay PLZ”.
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