MANifesto: Part V

Dating and Marriage
Men often say, “I love women” when they are about to say something disparaging about all women. The most aggressive men often say terrible things about women and worse things about men who act like women. However, at the same time, they openly make brazen displays of desiring women and those things that women have to offer. It is true that women have a lot to offer men, as do many of the skills and jobs normally associated with feminization, but why can men earnestly say “I love women” but “women are bitches” in the same sentence without recognizing the contradiction? Because men’s feelings towards women are a tool of maintaining aggressive masculinity, men have agreed that how much a man desires a particular kind of woman gives the man points in his ever constant struggle for secure and aggressive masculinity. Below are some of the rules of the game.
Men do not desire just any women, but a particular kind of woman which is constantly changing according to cultural preferences. The feature of aggressive masculinization’s preferred mate is that they must be hyper-feminized. A group of men decide how many points each woman is worth by deciding as a group how closely the woman looks like the perfect mate. Men play this game outwardly by actually rating women on a scale of 1 to 10. Men who secure a “10” are considered the most masculine. They are respected, and envied by other men. But they are also sought after by women who want to be looked on as a “10” in their own right. Those men who can only secure a “1” or show no interest in women whatsoever are subject to the same kind of taunting as in their childhood. They are called “faggot” and told that they are not properly men. When their mates are derided, some feel as though they must resort to violence in defense of the woman they love, and also in defense of themselves. They are then under threat of the same kind of physical manifestation that brought about their original insecurities about masculinity.
The fact that groups of men decide what it means to be a woman based entirely on arbitrary preferences, leads women to starve themselves, work their bodies unhealthily, and even put themselves under the knife to appease the men they love or want to love. Also, men who do not fit the paradigm of aggressive masculinity often find themselves without a girlfriend, wife, or partner of any kind. As a result, many men are now using steroids, going on damaging diets and having surgeries themselves. Some men think this is wrong because it is too feminine and proclaim that men who diet are “pussies,” but these men miss the point. Men who mutilate themselves and use dangerous drugs to appease women, men, or anyone else are subjecting themselves to the same damaging and arbitrary objectives that have so long oppressed women. The lesson to be learned is that replacing masculinity with femininity is not necessarily applause-worthy. Hyper-gender of any kind should be eliminated before any of us will truly be free.
Sasha Grey, a porn star, recently told Rolling Stone magazine that she wants women to know that “It’s okay to be a slut.” While some find this statement empowering, it is complicated by latent hostility towards Ms. Grey herself and her own gender. She was not saying that “Slut is not a bad word” but rather, in the traditional sexual sense, she was saying “It’s okay to be bad.” Behind her words, one has the feeling that she senses that when women sleep around they are being bad feminized women, but somehow good role models for women who are liberated. One reason behind this ambivalence towards the sexually active woman is that we have pulled apart the feminine role in sex without pulling apart the male role so that only greater or lesser degrees of the male roles perpetuate. There are two problems with the survival of the traditionally masculine sex role. Sex from a traditionally masculine perspective is demeaning to women, so that empowered women must somehow love having sex but hate themselves for loving it. In a society laden with religious overtones about sex, this unhealthy dichotomy is unavoidable for women and men. But also, when women adopt a traditionally masculine role in sex there is the unsaid assumption that the masculine role is not also unhealthy and damaging.
The masculine role model for sexuality, however, has always been unhealthy. Men traditionally objectified and even bought women for their sexual labor. They denied homosexual love even existed, while punishing those who engaged in homosexual “acts” to horrible punishments. One notable case in early New York City condemned a man who was caught have sex with his fellow sailor to have his arms and legs ripped form his body before he was thrown in the sea. Additionally, instead of undermining the system of objectification, some women find empowerment in objectifying men, as though it would be equal if only Native Americans were allowed to have tiny reservations full of white people on the reservations we have left them. Instead of believing that feminine empowerment means acting masculinized on sexuality, we must find some healthy third option that is healthy and empowering to both sexes. Before we can do that, we must admit that both sexes are oppressed by traditional gender roles, otherwise we risk continuing to glorify the masculine role which simply means oppressing both genders equally.