Women’s Porn

By One Man's Kingdom | Source | September 5, 2008

Every new season on public television seems to bring in a new suite of cop shows and career-woman dramas that relegate men to yet lower positions in the overall scheme of things. It is now nearly always a woman who is in a position of leadership, and a cadre of loyal lieutenant women that secure her place. The men are the labourers and the villains, though a few exceptions are made for the effeminate, fashion-conscious man who can be relied upon to be a faithful servant of the matriarch.

If this was only a case of women wanting to see themselves in authority, then I wouldn't have bothered remarking it. What is more significant is the grossly demeaning way in which the men are depicted and treated. The cop shows are the worst. Nearly every episode starts with the discovery of a female victim, and the perpetrator is soon discovered to be a man. Usually a sex offendor to boot. And a control-freak who is cruel to animals, and probably a right-wing homophobic fascist with a racist world-view. Not to mention an appalling dress-sense and an old-fashioned '50s attitude to women (God created an imperfect world around 1950, according to popular girl-power drama).

This modern-day redefining of the old-fashioned slime-ball has brought with it a parallel redefinition of the cop who takes things into her own hands. Dirty Harry is now a much dirtier Harriet. Any man who disrespects women - and that would appear to be most of us - is now ripe for the arrogant swagger of a 20 something police lieutenant, with bust bursting out of straining chemise, face freshly made-up and hair coiffed within the last 10 minutes. The air is thick with her venomous, inquisitorial pronouncements on the hapless male's motives, modus and general lack of worth to the world - and with each new season, the punk is feeling more stupidly lucky than the season before, and each new law-enforcement mistress is having her day made. TV men are getting quite the dealing to - pistol whippings, beatings and the odd killing to drive the point home. All of it, needless to say, carrying with it the obvious message that such violence towards men is fully justified.

It's not hard to form the opinion that modern women are lusting after absolute control over men, and are driving themselves into a frenzy at the prospect of doing to them whatever they like. There is a quality to it that reminds me of the pornographic imagery of women as creatures that men have traditionally lusted after; there is that same unmistakeable salivation at the prospect of a primal urge being given expression. Absent is any cerebral consideration of why this urge should be restrained - not by others, but by the lusting individual herself.

Allowing for the fact that we permit freedom of expression, it's only natural that genres of entertainment would evolve to serve all psychological cravings. Until recently, men's desire for the unconstrained sexual availabilty of women was the more overt - a parallel desire within women has never been previously so obvious. But we are seeing it now, emerging at precisely the time when women are feeling less fearful of any unfavourable consequence to giving vent to whatever it is they crave.

They crave control of our lives, just as we crave their reproductive capacity.

This is the yin and the yang of the male and the female, and what was once embodied in the institution of marriage - the exchange of a woman's child-bearing capability for a man's labour. The repugnance we feel at these images of women as our sneering overlords is probably akin to what many women experience when confronted with pornography. Each of us recognises our value being sold too cheaply, though most often the sentiment is instinctive rather than reasoned.

Ultimately, at the heart of every man, is the horror of having his labour taken from him by force. This is 'our rape'. If every women fears a rapist in every man, it is also true that every man fears the rapist in every woman.