I’m late on this story; it’s been around the no-longer-liberal blogosphere since the end of December. H/T Avedon @ the Slideshow (who, fair warning, is no fan of Obama or Clinton and is a PUMA/DCS hater).
Who is Dennis Prager? you might be asking. He’s a conservative columnist and radio host. He’s also a man, apparently, with a habit*. In late December he published a two-part (so far) series called When a Woman Isn’t in the Mood I & II. I wouldn’t even bother normally, as Prager’s not someone on my radar, but it’s just such a compelling explanation of what patriarchy means and how it is perpetrated that I just had to dissect the first one. That these articles could even be published in this day and age, even from a conservative Republican, is all the evidence you need to see exactly how entrenched the whole system is. Let’s begin, shall we?
It starts right away with a bang (pun intended). See if you can guess what’s wrong with these two paragraphs:
The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is “not in the mood” and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.
There are marriages with the opposite problem — a wife who is frustrated and hurt because her husband is rarely in the mood. But, as important and as destructive as that problem is, it has different causes and different solutions, and is therefore not addressed here. What is addressed is the far more common problem of “He wants, she doesn’t want.”
But incredibly, he follows that little jewel up with this astonishing piece of rhetoric, which is what led me to consider these articles part of the Patriarchy Playbook. To wit:
First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife’s refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men’s natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman’s nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.
You got that? It’s just the way men are to value a women’s sexual availability as the most important aspect of her being. That’s how he knows she loves him, for cryin’ out loud, by her availability. It’s, like, natural and shit. If women understood that, then of course they would acquiesce and make their vaginas available whenever their husbands asked for it. But of course, they don’t realize this, the poor dumb cows, so that’s why they withhold sex, thinking, quite erroneously, that their feelings actually matter. Oh yeah, and fem’nine sexu’l agency iz teh funy.
It gets so much better. And by better I mean I laughed or I would have torn my eyes out. Maybe I should tear my eyes out. Maybe change would happen if people where gouging their eyes out all over the place. Oh wait, that’s been tried. See Flagellants, hunger strikes, and self-immolation. Oh well, blogging it is then. Here’s what women need to know about men and why they need to know it, according to Prager:
