Recently I saw a question being posed asking how the women in the forum felt about women having the right to go topless. That if, as a woman, you wanted to walk down your street with no clothes on top, like a man enjoys now, you would have the right to do so.
A plethora of responses ensued, mostly in favour since it is largely a feminist readership. I normally have an opinion on, well, everything, but I held off commenting on this one.
Mainly because I believe it will never happen. Am I pessimist? No. I believe I am a realist.
I am going to offend so many people by writing this. Please know I am not sorry.
You see, I believe men are threatened by women. And this is why.
When you strip back all the layers of intelligence and social conditioning, men are nothing more than walking dicks. They are the procreators, there to ensure survival of the species by inserting a seed into a woman. They walk through life literally fantasising about where they can stick their penises every few minutes of the day. I acknowledge that this is not a very scientific evaluation, but bear with me.
One study done in 2014 estimated that on average men think about sex 18 times a day and women 10 times a day. A far cry from the urban myth of men thinking about sex once every 7 seconds perhaps. But the sample size, it was criticised, was very small, hardly statistically significant. Additionally, it was noted that it is very difficult to monitor people’s thoughts. Often times when we are told not to think of something, we do nothing but think of it and conversely when we are told to become more aware of our thoughts, we forget to do just that. Ergo, accuracy of thought count is almost impossible.
No, I am taking my evidence from my own experience.
A quick poll of the men around me (husband, male friends, teenage son) told me that most men think about sex “loads”, “all the time” and “every waking moment”.
This is, I believe, because nature has instilled an instinct to ensure the survival of the species. It also endowed men with physical strength to fight off any threats.
Women are the nurturers. They are the ones endowed with the task of carrying the baby, nurturing it, and caring for it until it is ready to branch out on its own, equipped with the skills necessary for survival.
Nature very cleverly created love (although some disagree with this) to ensure that the man would feel an instinctual need to protect the woman and his family, to provide for her, during the time when she is caring for the child, a time when she could be considered vulnerable.
People have asked me if we are meant to be monogamous as a species. I would probably proffer not. I think that in order to survive as a species, monogamy is a poor strategy, but some animals, zebras for example, do practice monogamy even if one of the pair dies, so perhaps I am wrong. But when a male chooses his female (or females), in a lot of species, he will fight for and protect her, to ensure a strong gene pool. Hence the required muscle strength.
However, I digress. The problem is that back in the day of the neanderthal, or whenever, humans didn’t survive very long. And so men found they had the urge to sow their wild seed all over the joint. Again, this is natures way of ensuring survival of the species. They lusted after women, because they simply had to sow that seed. It’s primeval, primitive and very very effective.
Being able to sow their wild oats is very important to a man, be it consciously or subconsciously. It is also a mark of strength, power and virility. If your seed produced good, strong sons, this added to your status in your tribe since you were ensuring the survival of the species. If you could not produce children at all (now known as “shooting blanks”), you were an outcast, denigrated as weak.
But humans evolved. We ate meat (according to the Sam Neill advert) and our brains grew. We became intelligent, and could strategise and formulate theories and stuff. We developed insight and the ability to draw on old experiences to expand on new ones. Our sentience took over and we became a breed of animal that could think for itself and became aware of our own mortality. We became civilised apparently (evidence for which I am still trying to find) by not running around raping and pillaging and going to war (again, no evidence of this, but I’ll mention it for the sake of argument). We became religious because we feared death and the end of our own existence. Love and monogamy became the order of the day (well, in the western world – about a third of the world still practices polygamy). We evolved from cave dwellers to farmers to manufacturers to cyber dwellers and information traders.
But the burning instinct for a man to plant his seed in women is still very much alive. Nature and survival of the species demands it.
Yet, the evolution of societal mores dictate that wantonly planting seeds isn’t a good thing.
But the man can’t help it. He thinks about sex and plunging his penis into something more often than he would care to admit. He simply cannot help it. (Porn industry anyone!).
Men cannot control those thoughts. Because nature intended it to be like that. To survive.
Species survival is a bitch.
Bitch?
Oh yes.
Men can’t control their urges and their thoughts, and so they blame the woman. She, with her beautiful soft body, come-to-bed eyes, tinkling laugh, voluptuous breasts and moist thighs. She is just asking for it.
It is her fault.
She is a temptress. Men aren’t allowed to wantonly sow their wild oats, but they think about plunging their penises all day long. It’s tiring not to mention exceptionally (sexually) frustrating.
And so all temptation MUST be removed.
We can’t remove the woman, we need her, to sow our wild oats and ensure the survival of the species, but we can remove her constant play at tempting, and torturing, us.
And so woman began to be demonised.
The first mention of it, in my worldly experience, was when I was 4 years old and was sent to Sunday School (frankly, I think this was aimed at giving my parents some alone time since neither of them at the time were religious).
I was taught that Eve tempted Adam to bite the fruit from the tree of knowledge, because having knowledge, or sharing it, is a bad thing apparently and that due to this, they became conscious of their naked bodies, grabbed a fig leaf and covered themselves up. Eve had caused Adam to now see her as a sexual being, driven by his need to plunge his penis in her. God punished them (despite protests from Adam that it was all Eve’s fault) by banishing them from the garden of eden. Women had condemned man to eternally roam the earth fending for himself, without direct communication from god.
The little boy next to me said, “My dad said all women are evil.”
And there it was, my first notion that my gender determined the purity of my soul.
And in the society from which I cannot help but draw my experience, women have been paying for it ever since.
The bible and other books of scripture have demonised women in various forms ad infinitum, and those self same principles have been passed down and continue to inform the social mores of today.
Any manner of ways a woman is perceived to be tempting a man is met with societal condemnation:
- Breastfeeding your child in public? How dare you.
- Raped? Must have dressed revealingly or been walking on your own.
- Been born a woman? Let’s pop her in a burqua so she can’t tempt us.
- Wearing a skimpy outfit to a party? You are just looking for trouble.
- Have more than one sex partner? You are a slut.
- Have a head for business? You aren’t feminine (and therefore aren’t fuckable and a threat to my manliness).
All of these things are in place because, frankly, a man cannot control his thoughts and finds it difficult to control his urges. They expect us to manage their urges for them by not tempting them.
It’s like trying to lose weight, we remove all the high calorie foods from our pantries so we aren’t tempted. But we need food to eat. We cannot survive without it. Then someone walks in with a big fat, cream laden beautiful cake and you just have to take it, because you are driven to eat. It’s reductionist, I know, but you get the idea.
The men, who let’s face it, have pretty much run the earth from day dot because they were physically stronger than us women, have put in place as many protections from himself as possible. Because he can’t stop himself from thinking about sowing his seed. Because nature intended it to be that way.
And so when people ask if women should be given the right to walk down the street bare breasted, I chuckle.
Because it will be a very long time before that could ever happen. I would wager never.
Because it would drive the male population insane. They wouldn’t be able to think about anything else other than those beautiful rounded breasts bobbing up and down freely in front of them. Because those breasts lead to the promise of the promised land. And nature drives men to lust after the promised land. And, frankly, nothing else would get done.
Then, of course, there is the competition amongst women. We don’t want our men looking at another woman’s breasts. Because us women know instinctively that men are driven by instinct to sow their wild oats. We don’t want our men to look at another women’s breasts thinking they are better than ours, wishing like hell he could plunge his penis into the promised land of the other woman. That just would not do.
There is a reason women are particularly nasty to each other. It is because, subconsciously, instinctively, they view most women as competition. Competition who might one day tempt their men away from them – the man who is meant to protect them, and provide for them – leaving them vulnerable.
Like I said, survival of the species.
Until next time,
PS: I welcome any and all comments /debate that are offered with respect. If you feel the need to throw names and denigrate me then you should know I moderate the comments and will delete and block you. This is an opinion piece. This is not an excuse for poor behaviour, it is my explanation of it. It is my take on why women still, after thousands of years continue to be treated like second class citizens and subverted in the ways that they are. Feel free to disagree, but keep it clean and respectful.
That was superbly written.
Thank you Ren xx