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

sensibility and power. Roland Barthes, with himself as the lover,essentially endorses the same view of the object’s value andpurpose:Enough that, in a flash, I should see the other in the guise of aninert object, like a kind of stuffed doll, for me to shift my desirefrom this annulled object to my desire itself; it is my desire Idesire, and the loved being is no more than its tool. 21T he object’s purpose is to be the means by which the lover, themale, experiences himself: his desire. Girls, who also play withdolls, only learn to change diapers or arrange hair.T he object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as menhave formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then aprovocation. T he object provokes its use. It provokes its usebecause of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. T hecarpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because heis not standing. W hen the object complains about the use to whichshe is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.Antifeminist H. L. Mencken, in a response to the first wave offeminism, offered this generous solution:T he way to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragistalarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls inthe world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and pull their teeth,and put them in khaki, and forbid them to wriggle on dancefloors,or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll theireyes. 22James Brain, an anthropologist who supports the second wave offeminism, asserts that women’s bodies in themselvescan seem to be signaling their readiness for sex at any time— aproblem to which no one has any totally adequate answer,unless one considers the orthodox Muslim solution of completelycovering a woman from head to foot in enveloping blackgarments to be one. 23