[LMB] Predators vs. Protectors

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007, Thad Coons wrote:

> On Sat, 2 Jun 2007, *Azalais Aranxta* wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Umm...that's the point of having an escort.  If I were the
> predatory type operating solo, just the possibility of having
> to grapple with the bodyguard while the woman runs screaming
> away wouldn't present the most tempting target, no it wouldn't.
> So the escort seldom has to do anything but just be there.

Yes, but I'd like to be safe when I realise I've run out of paper
towles at 10 pm without having to call someone to walk me half a
block to the store, because actually, it can't always wait till
morning especially if the mess is large or I have to go to work
the next day.

> > 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?"
>
> Ah, yes. How do you tell the real guard dog from the wolf
> disguised as one? I don't suppose you can, at first meet.

Which is why I'd prefer not to need a guard dog.  I don't think
possession of a vagina is such an extraordinary thing that I
should need to become a soldier or acquire a guard dog,
four-footed or two, to keep unwanted intruders out of it.

> I see your point...Jane Austen brings out the economic position
> of women in early 19th century Britain quite clearly, and so
> does Anne Perry, for a period a little bit later, but even
> then, you view of marriage seems a bit jaundiced. There were
> certainly some happily married women, and I do believe your
> description of their situation would have scandalized and
> infuriated them.

People are always scandalised and infuriated when they are
forcibly confronted with the unpleasant realities that underlie
their happiness.  I'm not saying that no one ever fell in love or
had a happy marriage back then; I'm saying that even the happiest
marriages were still not free associations based entirely on
love, nor could they be.

The fact that something makes you angry does not mean that it is
not true, sir.  Sometimes, in fact, it makes you angry because it
is very true and you would prefer not to think about it.  No
matter how kind and adoring the jailer or how comfortable the
jail, the fact that you are happy there and that you like the
person who controls your life does not make you free.  It makes
you LUCKY.

> I don't think she would have let herself get trapped again.  But just look
> at how she grew into herself under Mile's care.

Ekaterin didn't grow back into herself because of Miles, she grew
back into herself because of Ekaterin.  Because she wouldn't let
herself get trapped and because she trained Miles not to get in
her way.

> > 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*.
>
> I'm sure Team Koudelka would agree with you: Bel and Taura and
> Elli might have a different view of the matter.

Taura was a slave who needed to be rescued.  Bel loved Miles but
it married someone else.  Elli is not a person I am much like nor
would care to be compared to.  Anyhow, I like Miles, but I would
not date him.  This is true of a lot of people.  I do not like
having people try to manage, control or constrain me even if they
think they are being nurturing.  Even if they actually are.  I'm
an adult, so they can respect and nurture me, or they can leave
me alone.


> For another take on the situation, consider that men do not
> ovulate, menstruate, gestate, or lactate. (duh). (And this is
> men's fault..how?  they can fix it...how? Maybe in the
> Vorkosiverse "fixes" are possible, but not in this one)

Okay, I completely fail to see what this has to do with anything
we've mentioned above.

> The point being that it's no accident that the lion's share of
> bearing and caring and nurturing of infants and young children
> has always fallen to women. There are all kinds of variations
> on the theme, but how to manage the unequal reproductive
> biology of men and women is a problem every society has to deal
> with.

Bingo.

I have the maternal instinct of a drywall.

> The problem posed by modern feminism and women's liberation is that,
> once you've secured women's independence from men, what are you going to do
> with the men? What IS their proper role? if "Protect' and "provide" are too
> loaded with connotations that women are chattel,  how would you who have
> expressed such opinions describe men's proper role in society?

Why, that depends upon the man in question.  Doctor?  Lawyer?
Engineer?  Parent?

> Left without a role that women can approve of, men are all too likely
> to default to beget'em and forget'em. And they have a disturbing tendency to
> turn feral. And that leaves women alone holding the baby, so to speak, and
> forces them to do all the providing AND protecting AND nurturing by
> themselves in a more dangerous environment. That's a worse bargain for women
> than what they had before.

I see.  Shut up, little girl, and accept your protection, or else
you'll be rape bait, and you wouldn't like that would you?

I do not believe that MEN and WOMEN need GENDER ROLES.
Particularly not since a significant minority of the population
is not heterosexual and thus not inclined to pair off that way.

I suggest raising young men--and young women--to find
satisfaction in defending the weak, nurturing the young, doing
the work that needs to be done, and finding their self-respect
and satisfaction in mastering the skills they need in life to
survive in a world where nobody has to pop out babies for 40
years till they die and nobody has to kill tigers with rocks.

The young men and women of my acquaintance who HAVE been raised
that way seem happy and relaxed and secure in themselves without
any of this me-tarzan you-jane crap.

~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