The Sadness/Madness of Groping

Sexual assault and sex work has long been considered linked to sexism against women, but part of the point of this blog is that all oppression of women is at the same time self-oppression. Groping (a.k.a. sexual assault) is one obvious example.

A woman who is sexually assaulted is ashamed by the attack and also deeply hurt, and we should not downplay that fact, but we should also consider how it is always true that men are the ones who are overwhelmingly the sexual assaulters. What is it about maleness and masculinity that leads men to such unhealthy sexual relationships with the people around them that they are driven to, or aroused by, forceful and violent interactions with strangers whom they are victimizing? While there are some who say that groping is inherently male, I disagree. Groping is inherently masculine, but not male. Men are not bad people somehow evolutionarily driven to sexual deviance any more than women are evolutionarily unable to handle themselves in the work place, or driven to "hysteria" by over-exercise. But men are trapped in the self-oppression of masculinity, and one of the rules of our self-confinement is that our relationships cannot be overly healthy or loving. We must remain aloof, the bread winner, the cowboy with no ties to our families or our lovers who inevitably make us weak or (horror of horrors) "pussies." But we are still sexual animals and have a need for affection. When healthy love and sex are not available to us, we will fulfill our needs through unhealthy desperate means. How better to remain aloof and unhealthy, while satisfying our sexual desires than to make our victims into the objects of our affections ? No movement for women's equality will be complete until men are free of their self-oppression, because as long as men need victims, women will have to be those victims.