make each other dirty

there was an incident recently where a woman cut off her husband's penis and permanently destroyed it in a garbage disposal. it's been in the news. and i've heard people talking about it: both people i know and people in the media.

a lot of people have compared it to the lorena bobbit incident--an incident which made a considerable impression on my as a kid. i thought all women did this to their husbands when they got mad at them--or at least that it was a very real and terrifying possibility.

in that way: it made me unnaturally fearful of women, even to this day. for the longest time: i was afraid to say or do anything that might upset a woman because i thought it meant inevitable dismemberment. which i guess is good: in a preventative sense. but i'd like to know how i would have turned out had i never known about the incident or if it had never occurred at all.

i agree somewhat with the feminist stance that, of course, women should be treated with respect: but is it right when it's a respect earned by fear? i know there are men who command respect in this way. i know there are dictators that command respect this way. but i don't agree with it.

true: women deserve respect. but so do men. men deserve respect. women deserve respect. all people deserve respect. but i believe it should be earned: that everyone is entitled to the same amount of respect and love and genuine understanding and appreciation that they show to others. it's sort of the golden rule.

this is why i find the feminist argument kind of flawed. i'm sure it's just a few feminists on the fringe who feel that this most recent case and the john bobbit case were justified or that either incident was good in terms of progress: but i actually disagree. and i'm especially upset by a clip i saw today on youtube in which the all-female panel on an early-morning talk show called "the talk" (a b-level rip-off of the view) make light of the case with the woman drugging her husband up, dismembering him then irreparably and forever mutilating his genitals to tatters in the garbage disposal. i don't see how this is funny. or how this is something, as sharon osbourne, one of the show's hosts, someone can openly condone. it's an argument i've seen before but it's so true: if the roles were reversed, would we be joking about it? would we be joking about it on national television? would it be ok for a man to condone this sort of behavior from another man? the thing is: she didn't even have a legitimate reason? she told the police that she cut her husband's penis off because, no joke, wanted a divorce. to sharon osbourne however: this is a justifiable retaliation. a man asks for a divorce and his wife is entitled--she is justified in--permanently disfiguring him in such a terrible, cruel and malicious way. how does that make sense? i can understand if she was raped, maybe. but this?

and it's not just sharon osbourne who feels this way. a lot of women i've talked to feel this way. a lot of women openly joke about this case specifically and cases like it in the past? why? is genital mutilation really that funny? it's not funny when we're talking about helpless girls in africa getting their clitorises cut off, so why is it funny now?

i think i've felt this way for a long time: ever since i was a kid and (this probably sounds ridiculous) i used to watch movies specifically targeted at kids in which, for whatever reason, they always ended with the bad guy's genitals getting horrifically maimed or destroyed or that the "nut-shot" was always the big hilarious moment on which the story hinged. i remember sitting in the theater and feeling terribly uncomfortable and everyone around me (a few times, my own mother) breaking into side-splitting fits of laughter. i actually (and this is true) used to dread going to movies because i knew there would be a nut-shot and that not only would it make me physically uncomfortable (vicariously, being a guy) but it would make me emotionally uncomfortable as well witnessing the reactions of fellow movie-goers. i just didn't (and still don't) see how getting hit in the genitals is funny. if it were a girl, say, and she tripped along a fence (for the sake of this argument, she's walking along a fence like a tightrope walker) and she slipped and let's say she was the story's villian and she just so happened to fall in such a way that a particularly pointed fencepost sliced through her vagina, would that still be funny? would it still get the same reaction as, say, the final scene in beethoven when the bad guy is hit by a tray of twenty needles in the crotch--purposefully: all the needles are concentrated in the area where his genitals are. would it get the same reaction? it's not likely.

which is why this double-standard irritates me. not only is it stupid (like most double-standards) but it reflects negatively on how our culture feels about genital mutilation--if it's a woman, it's a terrible terrible crime against humanity. but if it's a man: it's an act of female empowerment (regardless of the circumstances) and ripe fodder for cheap jokes. no: that's not right. it's wrong either way: regardless of which sex it happens to.

this is essentially why i don't consider myself a feminist. i believe in equality for women. but i believe in equality for all people. not just women. and i certainly don't support any belief that puts one sex before the other. i believe the sexes should be treated with the same amount of respect and appreciation--otherwise you're just tipping the scales in the other direction. it really is like a game of tug-o-war: both sides struggling for supremacy over the other (and this is so true of most ideological battles) when it's to the advantage of both parties to simply agree to drop the rope at the same time, walk around the mud puddle, and meet and mix on either side, so that there are no more sides and neither party gets dirty--neither party loses. then again: there is the issue itself (the mud puddle) and it's just too damn tempting for people not to eventually want to push the other party in.


i haven't said all i wanted to about this but i got the skeleton of my heated feelings out so i'm satisfied for now.