[LMB] Predators vs. Protectors

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007, Thad Coons wrote:

> I'm one of those who was angered by Marna's first reply on this
> topic, and it's taken me a couple of days to simmer down.  She
> has since graciously apologized for misunderstanding what I
> meant, so I'm going to risk bringing this up again.
>
>  Marna wrote:
>
> > 3) Do the thing we can't do nearly as easily: deal with the
> > men around you on even terms. Stand up to and educate them.
> > Make them realise that it isn't only women who object to
> > violence against women. Tell them you do too.
>
> Umm...That's basically what an honorable gentlemen escorting a
> woman was supposed to do, although there was a certain
> expectation that he not confine his objections to the verbal.

Marna didn't mean "Stand up to men who harass your female
escort."  Most people expect that as part of standard decent
human behaviour.  If you're out on a date with someone or you're
taking them home so they don't have to go by themselves, that's
part of the job, so to speak.

Marna meant, I'm sure, that you need to stand up to and educate
other men /when there are no women around/.

If 'the guys' are laughing about a story they heard about some
woman who 'got nailed' at a party 'because' she had too much to
drink (and not because there were predators present), tell them
to STFU, that's not funny.  Even if she's someone everyone in
town knows has been having group sex while sober since she was
15.

If 'the guys' are blowing off some woman's accusation, not
because they were there and they saw what happened, not because
they really know the accused like they know the back of their
hand, but just because 'X seems like a good guy, ergo he wouldn't
do that', remind them that they don't know X that well and X may
act completely different when he's alone with a woman, especially
a smaller or incapacitated one, than he does with them.

Don't let men get away with minimising what other men do to
women.  Don't nod your head and smile or laugh when the
madonna/whore double standard is used to justify treating some
woman like a kleenex.

Don't let men get away with talking and acting as though a woman
must want to be raped if her guard lapses for a second and she
stops thinking about being raped long enough to do something
risky.

I am not saying that you do this now.  But you might be amazed
how many men are unwilling to believe that their friendly
acquaintances could ever hurt a woman.  Even if they don't
actually know the guy that well.  Or maybe they do know what this
guy is like and they're embarrassed to admit it.  Whatever.


> Rather, the old-fashioned technique of moral education known as
> corporal punishment of the would-be rapist, or thief, or
> whatever was usually called for.

Most women would want a man who was escorting them to help them
if someone attacked them.  But as a general rule, women are
usually not attacked when they're out on a date and when they
are, it's by a group who think they can take both of them.  Sure,
I'd like it if my date got up in the face of some guy who's
hassling me, but I'm not accompanied by a man 24/7 and I wouldn't
want to be.  At some point I've got to pee.


> She also wrote:
>
> > Stalkers and rapists frequently define themselves as "protectors", as
> > you yourself note. They simply wish to retain the right to decide who
> > deserves protection, what form that protection will take, and what price
> > they will exact for it.

If this seems weird to you, consider the catch-22 of this
situation.  A woman is leaving an event after 10 PM.  A man she
has met that evening offers to drive her home instead of letting
her take the bus because it isn't safe.  He *seems* nice enough.
He seems like a decent person--and if she's single, she might
even consider dating him.

But she doesn't KNOW him, and if she accepts his offer and he
rapes her, there WILL be people--even people she knows--who will
say, though maybe not to her face, "Well, shouldn't she have
known better than to get into a stranger's car?"


> > Chivalrous men do this also, actually; their criteria and their price
> > may be more reasonable, but the transaction remains the same at bottom.
>
> This seemed to imply that chivalrous behavior (To call a woman chivalrous
> sounds very odd)

It shouldn't.  If the essence of chivalry extends, as you imply
below, to defending people who need defending regardless of
gender or desirability--there are many people who do that, and
not all of them have testes.  I like to think of myself as
somewhat chivalrous where it is called for.  I've more than once
stepped between someone and another person I thought was
harassing them undeservedly.

> is somehow at bottom the same as rape, which not only
> trivializes the very serious moral offense of rape, but sounds
> incredibly insulting to any man who has a Miles or Caz-like
> notion of chivalry.

Ah, but you see, if chivalry isn't something that women do--that
people do--for everyone who NEEDS it, but is rather something
that men do for the women they date, marry, live with, care
for--then it follows that women and other people in need of
protection who have no male protector won't get protected, and
that in order to hold on to her protector a woman must hold on to
her man.  And the things that women have been advised to do and
have in fact done to hold on to male protection in cultures where
they're fair game without male protection are virtually
limitless.  Women have been forced to turn a blind eye to the
abuse and molestation of their children in cultures where they
can't live safely or feed themselves and their kids without a
male protector.  Women have been told it doesn't matter if he
smacks them around a little--they should know how not to upset
him--or cheats on them as long as they have a man.

This?  Is Not A Good Bargain.

Chivalry, when it is genuine, is not a man protecting women who
either belong to him or will potentially belong to him.  It is
the strong protecting the less strong, when it is needed and to
the extent that it is needed, without belittling or humiliating
or diminishing them.  It's helping a disabled person across the
street, and it's also pretending not to notice how long it takes
the same disabled person to do something easy for you but
difficult for them that they're determined to do themselves.
It's telling a jerk to leave a woman alone not because she's your
date or your girlfriend or hot, but rather because he's a jerk.

> A comparable insult made by a man might be "all women are
> whores, they just have different prices".

It's comparable because it draws on the same assumptions.  In a
society where women are forced to depend on men, all women ARE
whores--they have to sell themselves to get by, and it's a
tradeoff.  You live a safe life selling yourself permanently to
one owner, and hope he's decent once he's got you cornered,
because it means you are at the mercy of one man, not all of
them.  Or you take more risks by living a life in which you get
to send the man away when he's done with you and count the money
(unless you have a pimp.)  Many women in such cultures become sex
workers because they have learned--often in early childhood--that
having one master who legally owns you is worse than being public
property if he's determined to have his way whenever he wants it.

In cultures like this, the madonna/whore distinction serves the
psychological need people have for authentic relationships; if a
man can flatter himself that his darling would Never Do That No
Matter What, and a woman can flatter herself that she would truly
rather starve or let her kids starve than sell herself, they can
ignore the buyer/seller relationship between them and have a
happy relationship, though there will always be tensions.  The
contempt some "Good Women"  have for "Sluts" has to do with the
fact that a girl who is labelled a slut is usually more unlucky
than promiscuous.

A woman isn't really free to love a man until she is in a
position where she can afford not to need him.  How can you
really give full and joyful consent if the price of saying no
could be the loss of your livelihood and result in people
regarding you as fair game?

> I certainly do NOT believe this about women, and I'm going to
> give Marna the benefit of the doubt and assume that she didn't
> intend insult by what she said.

I'm sure she didn't.  I expect she was trying to get you to see
the ugly cultural assumptions that underlie chivalry when it's
framed as something a man does for women who please him or belong
to him in some way, instead of something humans do for each
other.

> For instance, and Caz is the better example here, he does not
> rescue Danni from the Roknari slave master because he wants him
> for himself. He offers himself to the Bastard in order to
> remove dy Jironal, but it's Iselle, not Betriz, whose impending
> marriage (in this case, a rape in all but name) moves him to
> this sacrifice.  It's not his own marriage that he rides to
> arrange, and he already has his lady-love when he sends a Ferda
> and Foix to Ista. This notion of chivalry is not limited to
> women but is far more inclusive; even extending to a possible
> victim of slander who is neither female nor a particular
> friend.

And that's why it IS real chivalry.  It's not limited to women,
it's not limited to potential sexual partners, family members or
people who can give him what he wants.

> Miles does in fact make a few missteps about rushing in. The first I saw was
> when he tried to shield Ekaterin from the ugliness of Tien's death,
> and was met with "Please do not ever lie to me". Then, a bit of a
> minor protest "Do you always arrange people's lives like this", when he
> decides it's settled that she's moving in with Uncle and Aunt Vorthys. The
> most serious misstep was concealing his affection out of fear that she would
> reject him, and treating her like a ship to be hijacked. And for that,
> he apologized, in both word and deed.  What *I* noted, from about two dozen
> incidents when he tried to protect her or ease her way was that in response
> to his genuine understanding and concern for her as a person, she changed
> her mind about never marrying again. His version of protection was not
> stifling, but nurturing, not confining, but liberating.

Oh, it stifled and confined her in places.  Otherwise she
wouldn't have said "don't lie to me," "do you always arrange
people's lives," &c.  It is pretty damned arrogant of him to
decide for her where she should live and I would not put up with
that from a man unless I were at my wit's end.  It's not that his
version of protection is liberating and nurturing.  It's that
he's trainable because he sees Ekaterin as a person due to years
of befriending and working with women, and Ekaterin likes him
enough to tell him when to back off.  She would have been utterly
stifled and confined if he hadn't listened when she pushed back.

>  These are about as close to the opposite of the predatory
> behavior of social cannibals as I can find. And yes, it would
> be nice to hear some female admit she would appreciate it.

Why does it have to be a female?  Most people would appreciate a
friend like Caz.

I would appreciate having Caz as a friend and would cheerfully
accept his help if needed.  I'm not so sure about Miles.  Miles
will in fact cheerfully decide your life for the next 10
years--if you let him--and Ekaterin doesn't let him, but I'd
prefer to have a man who doesn't *try*.

~malfoy :)

****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley