From: Will Steeves <goid@zooid.guild.org>
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Shaming men's sexuali
Date: 21 Dec 1992 18:13:45 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine) writes...
LL> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:

LL> >...I agree wholeheartedly that men's sexuality has been so distorted and
LL> >degraded as to cause pain and shame to many kind and truly gentle men,
LL> >and to those not so gentle as well; no one can be happy living treating
LL> >half of the species as a blow-up doll.

(Discussing the article in the Chicago Tribune...)

LL> In particular, they were discussing Prince Charles' female friend,
LL> Camilla Parker-Bowles; and they implied there was something disgusting
LL> or unmanly about Charles, because he preferred a woman who didn't
LL> look like the culturally preferred template, to one who did. In other
LL> words, insofar as Charles did *not* treat half of the species as
LL> a blow-up doll, he was less of a man.


Hold on a second, Lenore, I think that you may be over-reaching here.

Indeed, if I were to have a relationship with a woman who *was* beautiful,
a.k.a. "looked like the culturally preferred template"), and indeed, I
*have* (before I was married, you know, the one whom I "got into trouble"
and always end up having to talk about because people are always asking me
about "What happened?"), I don't believe *AT ALL* that it would mean that
I was treating women like "blow-up dolls".

While I imagine that if she were to discover that I had considered her
beautiful, she'd be rather surprised (to say the least), the fact is that
our relationship was *not* based upon her looks.  Indeed, there were times
that *I* chastised *her* (though not bitterly, mind you) because there were
some occasions when she wanted me to take her to places where my friends
frequented, in order to "show me off" (her words).  As you might have
expected, I chastised her because I felt that she'd be demeaning herself by
treating herself as some sort of object to show off, not to mention the
image that it would give *me*, as though I were some sort of macho girl-getter,
an image of maleness which I very much eschewed, especially when I was a
high-school student in an all-boys school.  (Can you say: "lonely"? :-( )

In other words, I don't feel that a man attracted to a beautiful woman should
feel as though he is treating women like objects, as long as he at least
realises that there are other elements to his feelings for her, than her
appearance.

Mind you, a lot of women *also* get involved with men who are "hunks" (which
unfortunately, I am *not* ; note my words carefully...I said "unfortunately".
Shameful as it may sound, I am also a victim of the beauty myth, proving also
that it doesn't exclusively oppress women) does this mean that they necessarily
consider men to be objects?

---
Will Steeves, goid@zooid.guild.org                      "Neil Hull is GOiD"
ZOOiD BBS, Toronto, Ontario - The Zoo Of Ids            "GOiDS Rule"
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"Cthulhu for President in '92 - Why vote for the _lesser_ of two evils?"
                                                          - Bronis Vidugiris
---
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