Thanks to ahunt for pointing me to Gangly Thoughts, and to a post about hitting that Certain Age where the invisible sign around one’s neck that reads ATTENTION ALL MEN: PLEASE COMMENT ON WHETHER YOU FIND ME FUCKABLE starts to get a little faded and weather-worn.
Part of me is really enjoying this slide into the invisibility of females over 35. Part of me is just pissed off. Look, I don’t need the hassle, but when even the lack of hassle pulls you into the swirl of the patriarchy and assigns you your rank therein, it’s annoying as hell.
It reminds me that back in the day, I used to explain to people that the difference between being a stripper and not is that people who want to stare at and harass strippers generally have to pay in advance for the privilege.
mythago
12 Responses to “Wilfully invisible”
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Oh, yes. The stripper comparison is so sadly apt.
It doesn’t strike me as patriarchal “Daddy know best” at all. It varies from being sometimes maladroit in approach (No one is born with smooth moves.) to trying to be macho alpha-male. Ass to the latter, it’s no fun dealing with the quasi-alpha-females who try to arbitrate a guy’s value either.
It doesn’t strike me as patriarchal “Daddy know best” at all.
I’m not sure you understand what Patriarchy actually means if you think it’s just “Daddy knows best”.
It’s unlikely that our species is going to give up on hierarchies entirely, so ranking each other in terms of “value” is always going to occur as part of the dominance dance.
What’s fucked up in the patriarchy is that women are essentially valued only for their fuckability: it’s all about the body and nothing about the person inside the body. The way that men are valued and ranked takes account of a lot more variables.
Sexual equality would mean that women are valued on the same collection of variables as men: looks are part of it, but not everything.
The feminist goal of it to remove the single rating of “fuckable/unfuckable” as the major way of valuing women, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not also working on the larger humanist goal of levelling out some of the peaks and troughs of the bullycrat elitism fostered by patriarchy generally.
>I’m not sure you understand what Patriarchy
Well, in politics and culture words seem to mean whatever you want them to mean. It the downside of being able as a speices to manipultate symbols.
If you are going to say “patri”- anything, it would seem that the core communication would go back to paterfamilias – roughly the right of the “man of the house” to direct – and even kill – wives, sons and daughters (and maybe slaves as well). It’s far more about being Lord and Master than anything else. Nothing related to sexual intercourse and everything related to a mini-godhead.
If you want a word that means “Philosophy that women’s top 10 functions are all sexual”, then devise a clear word for that. Simply absconding with a word with archaic connotations and infusing it with new meanings is like Palestinians calling Israeli’s Nazis simply because they want a powerful word to use.
“If you want a word that means “Philosophy that women’s top 10 functions are all sexual”, then devise a clear word for that.”
But Roy….”All MEN SUCK” just doesn’t fly, and methinks you are not considering the foundations of male priviledge and female restriction. If not rooted in the traditions of patriarchy, then where?
That said…gonna take your suggestion to the men in the family, ’cause I just so love manly humor. Will report back.
>But Roy….”All MEN SUCK” just doesn’t fly
Well, technically, what are tits for after all? Surely not temporary nourishment and speices survival. (Ehhh, this does reveal a het bias though. The trials and tribulations of generalization. Actually, since both hetero and homo usually suck, it realy reveals a sexual vs. asexual bias.)
Priviledge and restriction of any kind simply reflect the advantages to a culture of adopting certain characteristics. The Moslem empire, for example, spread wider partly because it the priviledges of being Muslim were balanced against the need to maintain peaceful and prosperous Christian and Jewish populations. Christians were handicapped by the cultural tendency to maintain purity and the intentional destruction of Muslim and Jewish communities. Meanwhile the newer cultural hegemony of the Christian nations evolved most to those who ended up least pressing religious priviledges. There was still priviledge, but it had to be attenuated to prevail.
That was impressive–0 to Nazis in only four comments!
Uh Roy…not to be argumentative or anything, but permit me to point out that the “certain characteristics” you cite are invariably attached to the condition of being male.
Anyhow, Myth, this is OT, but I wanted to bring this to your attention…over at Lawyers, Guns and Money…there’s a great discussion underway regarding the inherent sexism in the Larry Craig debacle. The gist is that men must be protected at all costs from unwanted male advances, but no one is too perturbed when the same degree and type of “disorderly conduct” is het, and specifically directed at women. You should really check it out, because there are also some interesting legal points you might want to weigh in on.
OT…but I’m not clear on how to reach you back channel.
Myth! I thank you for your acid rejoinder over at LG&M. But it didn’t take, and once again, it is about womanly whining and not about the very real threat women feel when street harrassment is truly ugly.
For cryin’ out loud Myth, we lived on Arbordale, off of Pauline and Seventh. We had one vehicle between us, and I walked everywhere. Zen over at LG&M denies that women face street harassment regularly…for God’s sake, I was pushing a stroller up to Stadium, and was accosted not once, but three times by idiots circling around to assure me they could “put another bun in that oven.” For cryin’ out loud, I got more frightening street harassment when it was obvious that I couldn’t run… than I ever did when I was truly fit and hot. I could go on.
And yet…we have insistant denial that threatening harassment happens constantly. Back in the day, on Arbordale, I pocketed the .25… illegally…just to go about daily chores.
Why would I have done so had I not been made to be afraid? In freakin’ Ann Arbor, Michigan…in the middle of the freakin’ day?
You have terrific net credibility. Please post the discussion. 25 odd years later, vindication would be good.
You aren’t going to get through their thick skulls. Ever. The guys posting over at LG&M are very clear that they enjoy harassing women, and they’re going to get very very pouty if you actually use the H-word instead of labelling their dick-swinging fun as the mere exuberant expression of free speech.
Nevertheless…thank you.
We get to the point where we can take it in stride, I suppose. But that little .25 was my “little friend,” during my time in A2. Freakin’ A2! Can you imagine what I would have been packing had we lived in say…Inkster?
And get this…it was my Mom’s bedside pistol, before she traded up to a .38.
Thanks again, Myth. Back in the day, I thought it was all just the price one pays for being female. I know better these days.
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