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

variable. It is determined more by how she conducts herself than byother people’s predispositions toward her. ” 30 If she does not wantit, she does not get it. If she gets it, she wants it. Tripp describes awoman’s rugged, willful descent to the bottom: “To take an extremeexample, not even in the most chauvinistic societies is a wife adrudge on her wedding day, or for some time following. It is as ifshe only slowly works her way down to this level (admittedly withthe help of social pressures). . . ” 31Requisite to this view is T ripp’sconviction, based on faith, not fact: “Nor in any era has theindividual woman suffered low status whenever she has been‘willful’ or has simply had the power—be it political, financial, orsocial—to express her independence or even her own choices. ” 32 Asimple exercise of individual will can supposedly establish a womanas an exception to what is acknowledged as the generally demoralizedstatus of her kind. A failure to exercise this will is a bona fidechoice: since one can, if one does not, then one has chosen not to.T he use of the exception (with reference to women more imaginedthan not) to reconcile all the rest to the rule is clearly shown forwhat it is in this resourceful example from R. H. Tawney’sEquality, an analysis of class oppression in England:It is possible that intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves tothe inconveniences of their position, by reflecting that, thoughmost of them will live and die as tadpoles and nothing more,the more fortunate of the species will one day shed their tails,distend their mouths and stomachs, hop nimbly on to dry land,and croak addresses to their former friends on the virtues bymeans of which tadpoles of character and capacity can rise to befrogs. This conception of society may be described, perhaps, asthe Tadpole Philosophy, since the consolation which it offersfor social evils consists in the statement that exceptionalindividuals can succeed in evading them . 33Women, alas, become Mrs. Frog or frog’s girl. Should the femaleaspire to be a frog in her own right—as an intellectual or artist orlawyer or anything outside the realm of femininity (harlotry andsubmission)—she will be, as Mary Wollstonecraft described,