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

Fifth, men have the power of owning. Historically, this powerhas been absolute; denied to some men by other men in times ofslavery and other persecution, but in the main upheld by armedforce and law. In many parts of the world, the male right to ownwomen and all that issues from them (children and labor) is stillabsolute, and no human rights considerations seem to apply tocaptive populations of women. In the United States in the last 140years, this right has been legally modified, but the letter of the law,even where somewhat enlightened, is not its spirit. Wife beatingand marital rape, pervasive here as elsewhere, are predicated on theconviction that a man’s ownership of his wife licenses whatever hewishes to do to her: her body belongs to him to use for his ownsexual release, to beat, to impregnate. T he male power of owning,by virtue of its historical centrality, is barely constrained by themodest legal restrictions put on it. True: a married woman in theUnited States today can own her own hairbrush and clothes, as shecould not through most of the nineteenth century; should she runaway from home, she is not likely to be hunted down like arunaway slave, as she would have been through most of thenineteenth century, nor will she be publicly flogged though inprivate she may still be beaten for her effrontery. But the power ofmale owning, like all male power, is not hindered by or confined tospecifics. T his power, like the others, is bigger than any of itsdiscrete manifestations. T he fifth tenet of male supremacy is thepresumption that the male’s right to own the female and her issue isnatural, predating history, postdating progress. W hatever he doesto effect or maintain ownership is also natural; it is actionoriginating in an ethic that is in no sense relative. T he power ofowning comes from the power of self defined as one who takes.Here the taking is elevated in significance: he takes, he keeps; oncehe has had, it is his. This relationship between the self that takesand ownership is precisely mirrored, for instance, in the relationshipbetween rape and marriage. Marriage as an institution developedfrom rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined asabduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking