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

All children view things as animate. As Jean Piaget’s work indevelopmental psychology has shown, children hear the windwhisper and the trees cry. As Bruno Bettelheim expresses it: “T othe child, there is no clear line separating objects from living things;and whatever has life has life very much like our ow n. ” 2 But adultmen treat women, and often girls, and sometimes other males, asobjects. Adult men are convinced and sincere in their perception ofadult women in particular as objects. This perception of womentranscends categories of sexual orientation, political philosophy,nationality, class, race, and so forth. How does it happen that themale child whose sense of life is so vivid that he imparts humanityto sun and stone changes into the adult male who cannot grant oreven imagine the common humanity of women?In The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone shows that the boy hasa choice: remain loyal to the mother who is in reality degraded,without authority against the father, unable to protect the childfrom the father’s violence or the violence of other adult men, orbecome a man, one who has the power and the right to hurt, to useforce, to use his will and physical strength over and against womenand children. Be the mother— do the housework— or be thefather— carry a big stick. Be the mother— be fucked— or be thefather— do the fucking. T he boy has a choice. T he boy chooses tobecome a man because it is better to be a man than a woman.Becoming a man requires that the boy learn to be indifferent tothe fate of women. Indifference requires that the boy learn toexperience women as objects. T he poet, the mystic, the prophet,the so-called sensitive man of any stripe, will still hear the windwhisper and the trees cry. But to him, women will be mute. H e willhave learned to be deaf to the sounds, sighs, whispers, screams ofwomen in order to ally himself with other men in the hope that theywill not treat him as a child, that is, as one who belongs with thewomen.A boy, or his mother, is threatened, hit, or molested. A boyexperiences male force as its victim or as a witness. This nearlyuniversal event is described by John Stoltenberg is an essay,“Eroticism and Violence in the Father-Son Relationship”: