Throughout history one of the main dynamics that has influenced relationships between men and women is what can be called the "vagina monopoly." Men want them and only women have them. In fact, the world's oldest profession was one that was originally only capable of being performed by women. That profession was the "renting" of women to men for sex. Most of the pathological aspects of male-female relationships revolve around the objectification of women as objects of sexual gratification.
Originally, feminism was about changing attitudes, particularly that women are of equal dignity as men. Women can be just as capable of becoming doctors, lawyers, CEOs or politicians. Far from being merely sperm receptacles, they are people entitled to the full balance of human dignity. The rallying call of these feminists was "love me for my mind, not just my body."
Those days are long gone. Enter groups such as the Feminist Majority at the University of Illinois. The motto of this group and those like it can be described as "love me for my body ... PLEASE!" The slogans they chose to put on their T-shirts revolve around sex toys and genitalia. In psychology this would be called a "fixation."
Women traditionally have been looked upon as sexual objects. So what do these neofeminists do? Celebrate and proclaim liberation in being a sex object, of course. Frat boys on campus look at these poor girls as a vagina on two legs and they want to slap that idea on a T-shirt and sell it. They've gone one step further from the prostitution of women to preaching harlotry. The difference between a prostitute and a harlot is that the prostitute at least has enough self-respect to demand payment for services rendered.
What the "patriarchy" has tried to establish for centuries is whole-heartedly embraced and celebrated, ironically, by self-styled icons of feminism. The results of such puerile notions have been nothing short of tragic.
Every study on the subject has shown that women who buy into the inner-slut mentality of neofeminism are devastated. They suffer from depression, low self-esteem, STDs, single motherhood and they generally feel rejected in life. They grow into jaded women who think that the path to fulfillment is in imitating the worst men among us.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - cooper
I'm not a feminist and do not want to be contrary, but I find it annoying when a man, a professor yet, writes something like this and doesn't show me the "every study" he alludes to.
There are studies, and then there are real studies.
As long as the man is out there willing to do the deed with all these college age women you seem to know way too much about, I find it rather arrogant of you to chastise the female for wanting to get rid of embryos which are not wanted by them or the sperm donators.
Women, should they choose to can be "free from the Friday-night quests to the local syphilis buffet for Mr. Right" (although I wouldn't personally suggest it), and be doctors and lawyers. That is what makes so men angry.
Everyone has their opinion, which is the case with the books you mentioned - written by women with agendas of their own. Until I see verifiable honest studies done on controlled subject matter and not some random survey on the subject matter you it remains an opinion. An opinion which somehow does not even take into account what males of the same age are doing, have always done and the lack of responsibility they have had toward their actions.
How utterly condescending, and in my opinion out of line, of you to write an article telling women they are more than their vaginas while at the same time telling them what they should or should not do with their vaginas.
As if most women, even college age women, don’t already know that.
2 - John Bambenek
How fundamentally unamerican for you to tell me what I can and cannot say. This is America, you don't tell me what I can and can't say, you don't pre-select who gets to talk about issues, and you don't get to stack the deck.
If you want to get my opinions on these men, perhaps I suggest you look at my earlier writings... they get some too. But I wasn't chastising women, I was chastising a specific group, the ones who put "I love my clit" on a T-shirt.
3 - Dan
I live in Virginia. Dont know much about the state of Vagina.
4 - Michael J. West
I don't feel qualified to opine one way or the other, having never been in a position where what I did with my vagina was an issue.
That said, Mr. Bambenek, a statement as declarative as
Every study on the subject has shown that women who buy into the inner-slut mentality of neofeminism are devastated
does rather demand an example or three.
5 - Matthew T. Sussman
"Far from being merely sperm receptacles"
Hey let's not go crazy here.
6 - Michael J. West
West Vagina, though, that's a state, right?
7 - Patrick
I'm sorry, since when did "out of line" mean "you aren't allowed to say that." Funny that you zeroed in on that and not, say, anything of substance.
I've never yet met a clit I didn't love. Clits are pretty awesome. Does that mean I think of women as vaginas on legs? Does a woman's unashamed expression of her love for the organ that's responsible for her orgasms equate to tolerance for such an attitude?
Feminism in it's first incarnation was about women not being seen only as wives, mothers, and sex objects. Neo-feminism is about it being ok to be sexually liberated.
If you have a problem with an "I love my Clit" T-shirt there are any number of countries you could move to that make women wear goddamned carpets over their bodies.
8 - STM
John Bambanek wrote: "the "vagina monopoly." Men want them and only women have them."
Not true old boy ... I've met some very forthcoming goats.
9 - SHARK
AHAHAHAHAHA
Will wonders never cease!?!
The Liberated, Pro-Feminist Reverend Bambineck starts out sounding like Gloria Steinem, but then quickly turns to Mr. Hyde as he cuts to the money shot of his sermon:
"The senseless slaughter of children for the sake of sexual convenience... ranks first among the horrors in the history of humanity. More children have been murdered through abortion than any other genocide in human history. Abortion makes the Holocaust look like a petty crime in comparison."
Ironic that what's best for women (according to Rev. Bambi) might be turning control of their bodies' reproductive rights over to some Fundamentalist Christian politician.
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Oh, and now we can add "Bait and Switch" -- to go along with BAMBINECK'S other famous writing "techniques" such as the fake, hyperbolic headline.
Just tryin' to keep up.
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PS: ummm, just a guess, but Mr. Bambi... um... you're single, right?
10 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Shark, the truth may not be pretty, but John Bambenek's money shot is pretty much on the money. This past generation and a half has surpassed all the infanticide in human history - not because of starvation or poverty, which was the usual cause in the past, but because of convenience.
American and European culture has pushed this infanticide by sexualizing every damned thing in sight in order to make a sale. So sex is the new toy, and the sex organs are the big items on the agenda. Damn - how much spam do I see hustling porn? "Size matters" - "Be a man!" - "The best meds for your girl" - Have a cumshot like a porn star!"
An abortion for convenience is a small price to pay for the right to play.
Connect the dots from this sick mentality to the falling birth rates in Europe and America and you really get a clear picture of how sick western culture is. It's enough to file your teeth off, Shark - all of them.
Shabbat Shalom
11 - zingzing
being sexually liberated is not about being a slut. it's about the right to be sexually liberated without being called a slut. women who wear a t-shirt that say "i love my clit," would, if that love is true, probably also be quite protective of that clit. as in, using condoms, taking birth control, etc.
john, as usual, you totally miss the point. i would fancy a bet that of the real big-time sluts out there, feminisim is the front for the slutiness, not the other way around. a real feminist is a woman who protects herself.
plus, aren't all feminists lesbians anyway? right? right? man-haters...
if you can find an "i love my clit" t-shirt in the maternity section, i'll concede your point. until then, think with both sides of your brain before you spew forth nonsense.
12 - Baronius
It'd be nice if John backed up his statements with supporting studies, but he's got the world's best fact-checking system on his side: if Shark disagrees with you, you're right.
13 - Patrick
wow, argumentum ad hominem anyone?
14 - sr
Michael#6. Never throught of it that way. Maybe the late John Denver when he sung Take Me Home Country Rd, West Vagina Blue Ridge Mountains, (almost heaven) now makes sense. And to think all the years getting wasted in East Virginia. Golly gee pig farts.
15 - JR
Ruvy in Jerusalem: Connect the dots from this sick mentality to the falling birth rates in Europe and America and you really get a clear picture of how sick western culture is.
Um... I have no idea what you're problem with western culture is. Judging by birthrates (not to mention things like child mortality rates, free speech and participatory government) we've got the healthiest culture in the world. If we could just get the rest of the world on board with zero population growth, this planet might stand a chance.
16 - Baronius
Patrick, I assume that was directed at me, and yeah, I deserved it. When you see Shark aim no higher or lower than the kneecaps, every single time, you start to shoot back in the same range.
17 - Patrick
Wow. Someone gets called on bs and owns up... Dude I think you win at the Internet.
18 - SHARK
Just parsin' for the motards, Baronius.
; ) Yer welcome.
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re: Ruvy's massacreee ---
there will come a time in our culture when having an abortion will be a point of pride. You'll have a choice: eat yer babies -- or abort yer babies.
Gotta run! I'm baking a cake for the 7 BILLIONTH little earthling's birthday party.
19 - Mohjho
"inner-slut mentality of neofeminism"
Did you make this up? Please list verifiable and sane references.
20 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Shark,
I remember coming across this in a piece on the late Jim Carruthers by one of our fellow writers here.
"Up until a couple hours ago, that kinda hilarity is what flooded a fella's skull when the name Jim Carruthers popped into the skull-gunk. Look's like a fella's gonna have different thoughts from now on.
On Resonation.ca, a blog Jim posted on regularly, if one clicks on the heading Ramblings, one finds the following sentence, and not a damn thing more;
"Our 2005 resonation is to accept we've fucked up our lives, and need to go for a walk."
It looks like something along the lines of Jim never went for a walk. Or he went for too many walks. Walks that were far too long and gave him far too much time to think.
It's possible that I'm wrong, and it maybe doesn't make things one fucking bit different even if I am, but it looks like Jim Carruthers recently died, and the insinuation in the following text is that he took his own life.
This appeared on Resonation, posted by Mose, another regular;
"It has taken me a while to try and figure out what to write; to say; to put here. I was speechless. Honestly, am still in shock.
I am not one who is weirded out by death. Seen way too much of it in my life. I am, however, completely stunned by the suddeness of Jim's passing. I am sad to see him go. I will miss him terribly.
He was a good friend. Always did what he said - and said what he did. He never hurt anyone, was always there when called on and maybe it was just that the world wasn't there for him.
Things like this are not simple. There are no simple answers. We cannot generalize; we cannot guess what happened. It simply did.
Jim will be missed and will be remembered."
If the world ever gets to your prescription for its future {"there will come a time in our culture when having an abortion will be a point of pride. You'll have a choice: eat yer babies -- or abort yer babies."], it will be time for me to follow the late Mr. Carruthers on a walk...
21 - pia
99% of all abortions are for convenience? How does this Institute define "convenience?" "Every study?"
You're throwing out words and concepts without real facts
What if I said that most women have abortions as a last resort, and named three studies that showed that?
You would tell me that my studies are skewered in favor of abortion.
I say the same things about your studies
22 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
JR,
What is wrong with western culture? I'll send you to three links to find out.
The first one is from Blogcritics Magazine The Big "O", by RJ Elliott, which deals with the sexualizing of advertising. The second, also from Blogcritics Magazine, deals with the consequences of the sexualizing of the culture you live in, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears Create Two-Headed Monster, "Sparis", by Dawn Olsen.
The final piece deals with the roots of the rot of western culture, of which John Bambenek's article is only a reflection. It is called Great Darkness: the Last Goodbye, by Dr. Euugene Narrett.
Professor Narrett makes you dig for the fruit, but lets give you all some clues with these quotes:
"One could say that more and more people attend to escape the ugliness, urgencies, lack of purpose or redemption that increasingly fill our ‘real’ lives: the broken education system, the breaking health industry and employment situation; the seemingly invincible juggernaut of lawyer-world; the selling of goddess rapture, perversion… the multicultural and global marketing of lovely baseball itself, the snarling circus of lawyers, corporate sponsors, increased media hypnosis of the audience, and narcissism that hovers like a cloud over our spring and summer, now dimming toward fall."
---
"A proximate cultural watershed for the West’s drawn-out suicide was the openly pagan French Revolution with its attacks on the family, private property, Judeo-Christian morality and its use of State power against civilians deemed politically incorrect. At the same time, feminism began redefining marriage as slavery and men as oppressors. Sexual liberation and female self-assertion became paradigms; androgyny became an ideal, as in pagan Greece. Feminism first broke down Anglophone cultures. Its adoption by Marx showed and continues to show its role in the ‘partners in crime’ of modern imperialism in their war on the past, their creation of states of lonely, demanding and lost individuals.
The greatness of the Almighty’s kindness and love of life is represented repeatedly in Jewish Scriptures as enabling a wife to become pregnant, give birth and become a mother. “He transforms the barren wife into a glad mother of children; Hallelujah” (psalm 113:9). He helps the barren wife become a glad mother, not the soccer mom; not the ’single mom’ of the artificially created “non-traditional family.” The Eternal One and Creator, like all people once understood that widows and orphans are a terrible situation because women and children need fathers to be whole, just as we need to recognize and appreciate the Compassionate Father to be human and humane.
It is revealing that this essential unit of human life is and has been a primary target of the makers of the global security state. Their ‘omelet’ requires breaking many precious eggs."
---
"Consider other key points of the slide into darkness: divorce became correct and fashionable; in the twentieth century a female entitlement, then a self-perpetuating industry (the “lawless law” of “family” courts that exist to destroy fathers and families); the war against fathers, against the roots of our civilization was part of the new elites’ multi-faceted war on traditions, deference, limits natural and Scriptural. In its skirts came the justification and then the celebration of androgyny and sexual perversion, of the return of the ethos of pagan Greece, resurgent since the Renaissance. Already in the early nineteenth century, the Romantic era in Anglo-American and then other European cultures showed increasing fascination with the exotic and the primitive, with passion and rapture, with states of possession. Writers exalted imagination and passion as the idols of a liberated humankind which would progress by modeling itself on, rather than ordering nature. To this day progressives sometimes critique, sometimes exploit science to advance their theories and dreams from evolution to the ‘gay gene’ to ‘global warming.’"
---
"In the hands of a maddened culture, genetics now allows babies to be developed in vitro by DNA taken out of cells in anyone’s body. The woman becomes a pod, the man is utterly unnecessary except as a drone and ATM machine, constantly stimulated to work, never satisfied in the ancient and fulfilling ways. “Your children will be like olive shoots surrounding your table. Happy is the man who fills his quiver with the children of youth. He will not be shamed when he speaks with enemies at the gate…”
But today fathers are broken and shamed in front of their children and reduced to “visitors” at the whim of their wives who betray them per the overt and indirect suasions of the media, courts and popular ‘health’ industry to pursue perfect satisfaction and “independence.” Shaming men and fathers is a major part the western culture and a primary sign of its mad and suicidal direction.
Popular culture is filled with warrior queens, fighter pilots, kick-boxing slut goddesses. Aphrodite, Athena and company have returned with a vengeance. With men irrelevant and appropriated into the androgynous fantasy, “panic and terror,” the children of Aphrodite and Ares (the war god) are the substance both of our popular culture and our geopolitics."
Dr. Narrett is a more educated man than I can ever aspire to be. Read his whole article - if you dare.
23 - Djiril
"How fundamentally unamerican for you to tell me what I can and cannot say. This is America, you don't tell me what I can and can't say, you don't pre-select who gets to talk about issues, and you don't get to stack the deck."
Way to take criticism! I hardly think objecting to what you say counts as telling you that you can't say it.
So what are your sources on this? You mentioned that there are studies on this subject:
"Every study on the subject has shown that women who buy into the inner-slut mentality of neofeminism are devastated. "
Can you tell us the names of some of these studies and where they are published?
24 - John Bambenek
For those who can't figure out that the Guttmacher Insitute is Planned Parenthood's research arm, and therefore, not likely to err on the side of the pro-life argument, I see no need to further throw out studies to people who can't even grasp simple facts.
Feel free to post on your own blogs your petty criticisms.
25 - Narc
I see no need to further throw out studies to people who can't even grasp simple facts.
A the Hatter said, you can't further throw out studies when you haven't thrown out any at all. Furthermore, you don't get to use the Guttmacher Institute study to attempt to make some point or another, then repudiate the study later. At least one Guttmacher report says that 25% of women report that one of the reasons they got an abortion is because of their health or the health of the fetus. That's hardly the 99% you claim. In fact "sexual convenience" isn't even listed. Either it says what you claim it does, or it didn't.