Men Are Scared of Women

[chris_gerrib]

Jim C. Hines has a number of cogent thoughts on the case of the 17-year-old kicked out of her prom because the fathers were lusting after her. It's well worth the read, if only for lines like:

Trying to maintain my dignity as a teenage boy was like a neverending game of whack-a-mole…

Because apparently seventeen-year-old girl legs are made of man-kryptonite.

We blame and punish the women, because it frees men from responsibility.

But the last-quoted line is the one I want to riff on. "We blame and punish women" is true. I'm not as sure that's because it frees men from responsibility. It seems to me that, when you consider the extremes that men have gone to veil women, there's an element of fear involved. (BTW, it's not just the Taliban and the burka - think Victorian England for example.) It's as if certain men fear the "man-kryptonite" of women.

Just a thought.

ETA: A certain Professional Crank on the Internet (PCotI) is arguing today that there is no such thing as martial rape. He's basing it on "Christianity" and a ruling by an Indian court in which a woman claims she was drugged, forcibly "married" and then raped can't claim rape because she was married.

The comment thread on that post is thick with hatred about women and a distressing lack of Christianity (at least the kind of Christianity I learned at my Catholic grade school). I think the posting and the comment thread proves my point above.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Having never been to a prom, we don't do them, or at least didn't. I am wondering what in the name of hell parents were doing there.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well, you do need SOME adult supervision at any gathering of a large group of teenagers, so having chaperones is common.

I think a fair number of the "adults" there were adults in name only.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well yes, but at our school social events a couple of teachers who were closer to our age cohort usually sufficed.

[(Anonymous)]

I have to ask, as you keep bringing this guy up even though you consider him a professional crank. Is it a moth to the flame type of thing that keeps drawing you back? Or something else?

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

They say that half of Howard Stern's listeners hated him. When asked why they listened to him, they said "we just want to see what he's going to say next."

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I find it like a hang nail or similar. You can't leave it alone.