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

all that is valued, rewarded, credible, out of the diminishing realmof his own capacity to care. Women must be kept out becausewherever there are women, there is one haunting, vivid m em orywith numberless smothering tentacles: he is that child, powerlessagainst the adult male, afraid of him, humiliated by him.Boys become men to escape being victims by definition. Girlswould become men if girls could, because it would mean freedomfrom: freedom from rape most of the time; freedom from continuouspetty insult and violent devaluation of self; freedom from debilitatingeconomic and emotional dependence on someone else; freedomfrom the male aggression channeled against women in intimacy andthroughout the culture.But male aggression is rapacious. It spills over, not accidentally,but purposefully. There is war. Older men create wars. O lder menkill boys by generating and financing wars. Boys fight wars. Boysdie in wars. O lder men hate boys because boys still have the smellof women on them. War purifies, washes off the female stink. T heblood of death, so hallowed, so celebrated, overcomes the blood oflife, so abhorred, so defamed. T he ones who survive the bloodbathwill never again risk the empathy with women they experienced aschildren for fear of being found out and punished for good: killedthis time by the male gangs, found in all spheres of life, that enforcethe male code. T he child is dead. T he boy has become a man.M e n d e v e l o p a strong loyalty to violence. Men must come toterms with violence because it is the prime component of maleidentity. Institutionalized in sports, the military, acculturatedsexuality, the history and mythology of heroism, it is taught to boysuntil they become its advocates— men, not women. Men becomeadvocates of that which they most fear. In advocacy they experiencemastery of fear. In mastery of fear they experience freedom. Mentransform their fear of male violence into a metaphysical com mitmentto male violence. Violence itself becomes the central definitionof any experience that is profound and significant. So, in Love's