Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

perhaps fourteen years old, essentially sold to him by her mother.As he noted in his diary, from her he wanted and obtained absolutesubmission as he had, all his life, understood and appreciated it.Fiddling with the hairs on an elephant’s nose isindecent when the elephant happens to be standingon the baby.John Gardner, On Moral FictionIn a woman-hating culture, it is particularly difficult to makecredible the claim that a crime committed against a woman mustmatter. The belief that women exist to be used by men is so old, sodeep set, so widely accepted, so commonplace in its everydayapplication, that it is rarely challenged, even by those who pridethemselves on and are recognized for their intellectual acumen andethical grace. Keening, wild, and wailing or sober, severe, andrigorous, feminists keep pointing to a woman who is real and doesexist and who must matter. Others look and see only insignificantshadows moving under the feet of those real people to whom realthings happen—men—so that in a room of a hundred “people, ” halfmen, half women, a male-defined observer will see fifty men andfifty shadows. Rape a shadow and watch it disappear. Rape ashadow, and does it matter? Sometimes, it appears that shadowspursue. They cannot be lost. They follow, nipping at the heels.Attributions of malice are made. Shadows become ominous,haunting. In histories and biographies, in philosophical and literaryessays, male-supremacist culture perpetuates the power of men overwomen by turning women into shadows. The shameful inequitiesof life are maintained by the distortions and manipulations pervasivein so-called nonfiction. What happens to men is portrayed asauthentic, significant, and what happens to women is left out orshown not to matter. Women are portrayed as the shadows thattamely follow or maliciously haunt men, never as the significantbeings who matter.