Friday, February 20, 2009

As for staring at my sister's ass

First, why do guys think I give a shit about how hot my sister* is?? Or that it isn't offensive...I feel some mature part of myself suppressing the inevitable rant so I can actually tell you something coherent, and I've been trying to think how to word it. It goes something like this:

Privilege has a history that the privileged are often blind to. It would be one thing, let's say, in a vacuum society with a blank slate, for a man to look at a woman's ass. It's biological, sexual, evolutionary. Completely guilt-free, and, well, natural. Same with the reverse (woman checking out a man)(EDIT: or a woman checking out a woman or a man checking out a man).

However, in our society, that is not the case. The case is that for the past few hundred years (maybe even thousand), women have been constructed as objects in mens' minds. We have been forced to act according to man's will. We are told how to dress, how to walk, how to please him. We are fed a history of lies - of how we are made from him (Eve from Adam), of how we are not as holy as He (no female Priests, Rabbis (until lately), few deities), of how we are not as powerful (no presidents, political leaders, few CEOs), we are told we are weak, we are not artistic or creative (no major female artists, poets, writers, inventors until the past 2 centuries). We are dehumanized, demoralized, and thus dominated by the male psyche. So, when you stare at a woman's ass in our society, that's what you're reinforcing.

When you tell me about staring at my sister's ass, you ask me to justify that, and I cannot.

(* I use this word in the broadest sense possible.)

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