peacocks and lilies

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:

This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

If you say no, you don’t love him. That’s how all men take it according to Prager. Oh, and you’re virtually cutting off his dick if you deny him, you little Lorena Bobbit, you. Geez, and you turned him into a beggar to boot? WHERE IS YOUR HUMANITY, MAN? Plus, men and women are so different that women don’t see receiving sex as evidence of love. I say we’re being short changed if that’s the case. I want equal sexual rights too, dag nabbit! I want to feel loved every single time a man has sex with me. I don’t want to ever be denied.

I know what you’re thinking. So does Prager:

When first told this about men, women generally react in one or more of five ways:

1. You have to be kidding. That certainly isn’t my way of knowing if he loves me. There have to be deeper ways than sex for me to show my husband that I love him.

2. If this is true, men really are animals.

3. Not my man. He knows I love him by the kind and loving way I treat him.

4. You have it backwards. If he truly loved me, he wouldn’t expect sex when I’m not in the mood.

5. I know this and that’s why I rarely say no to sex.

Let’s deal with each of these responses.

1-4 are perfectly good responses, though #4 pretty much nails it. #5 is the product of male fantasy, period. Only the Phyllis Schlafly’s of the world, and the ladies of Saddleback Church. Well, prostitutes, though really, what’s the difference?

The subtext here, since this audience is actually largely male (it is Townhall.com): BUT! All a man has to do is show his wife this article and she will practically  cut her vagina out and give it to him on a silver platter (Look you! The head of John the Baptist!).

The rest of the article is devoted to his “debunking” of 1-4, and now that he has shared the game rules, he reviews the game plan. I’ll just quote the relevant paragraphs from each section. Numero Uno: You have to be kidding.

But the question that should matter to a woman who loves her man is not whether this proposition speaks poorly or well of male nature. It is whether it is true. And it is true beyond anything she can imagine. A woman who often deprives her husband of her body is guaranteed to injure him and to injure the marriage — no matter what her female friends say, no matter what a sympathetic therapist says, and no matter what her man says.

Bolding mine. Here we have a Patriarch admitting to patriarchy! What’s truer than you can ever imagine, dear woman, is the extent to which what you want doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what anyone else tells you, this is truer than they can ever be. What’s more, it’s objectively true that under a patriarchy, a male is entitled to sex with his wife. When she puts herself ahead of her husband’s needs and authority, she’s assaulting him and the marriage. She’s injuring them. It’s like her vagina has a fist in it and it reaches out and punches the man right in the face.

The way I see it, Prager’s mouth has a fist in it and he’s reaching out to put the smack down on women. Kinda like this:

Numero Dos: If this is true, men really are animals.

And another admission/confession/rule you should know:

Correct. Compared to most women’s sexual nature, men’s sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature. Telling your husband to control it is a fine idea. But he already does. Every man who is sexually faithful to his wife already engages in daily heroic self-control. He has married knowing he will have to deny his sexual nature’s desire for variety for the rest of his life. To ask that he also regularly deny himself sex with the one woman in the world with whom he is permitted sex is asking far too much. Deny him enough times and he may try to fill this need with another woman. If he is too moral to ever do that, he will match your sexual withdrawal with emotional and other forms of withdrawal.

There is nothing you can do about it because men are animals, they know they’re animals, they act like animals and there’s is no reason they should change that. (If that’s the case, I’ll start referring to myself as Farmer Anna Belle, instead of Jake’s wife. ) The ultimate defense against change is pulled: It’s God’s will! You got that? God wants the world like this. He wants a world where what you want doesn’t matter and you have to show your husband you love him by screwing him every time he wants to. A man is already being heroic by tolerating your singular ass, so return the favor and be every women all the time. If God and Guilt didn’t convince you, maybe his cheating will. He’s an animal after all.

Numero tres: Not my man. He knows I love him by the kind and loving way I treat him.

The importance of mutual kindness to a marriage is impossible to overstate. But while necessary, it is not sufficient. Women can understand this by applying the same rule to men. Most women will readily acknowledge that it is certainly not enough for a man to be kind to her. If it were, women would rarely reject kind men as husband material. But as much as a woman wants a kind man, she wants more than that. If a man is, let us say, lacking in ambition or just doesn’t want to work hard, few women will love him no matter how kind he is. In fact, most women would happily give up some kindness for hard work and ambition. A kind man with little ambition is not masculine, therefore not desirable to most women.

Where to begin… Well, first off, I’m sensing some rejection issues. Early subtext seems to be: Well, we let you pick and you don’t pick kind guys, so I rebut your kindness argument! Kinda circular and definitely weird. But then he seems to transition to an acknowledgment/confession that sex is, DUH!, a woman’s JOB. Or it’s like her job because her vagina is as important to his well-being as his job is to her well-being. Um, Excuse me, Mr. Prager? Misogyny and sexism? Tsk, tsk. Most women work. I could support myself without my husband, in fact I have. For many years in fact. It wasn’t always easy. If my husband lost his job I wouldn’t start offering my vagina to a man with a job, so what was that you where saying earlier about cheating, Mr. Prager? Um, yeah.

Finally, Numero quatro: You have it backward. I really can’t believe it. This paltry response to the most reasoned argument of them all?

Every rational and decent man knows there are times when he should not initiate sex. In a marriage of good communication, a man would either know when those times are or his wife would tell him (and she needs to — women should not expect men to read their minds. He is her man, not her mother.)

But, to repeat the key point, rejection of sex should happen infrequently. And it should almost never be dependent on mood — see Part II next week.

WTF? First, does this mean we are to report periods and yeast infections, so our fragile husbands will know not to ask for it and thus be “injured?” But really, that last line is what it’s about, the heart of patriarchy: What you want doesn’t matter. Silly girl, the availability of your vagina to the men who want it is more important than your thoughts and feelings,or well-being for that matter. That’s the whole point of patriarchy.

I should stop here, but his comments on Numero cinco ( I know this and that’s why I rarely say no to my husband. ) are sooooo relevant:

This is a wise woman. She knows a sexually fulfilled husband is a happy husband. (At the same time, men need to recognize that complete sexual fulfillment is unattainable in this world.) And because a happy husband loves his wife more, this cycle of love produces a happy home.

In Part II, I will explain in detail why mood should play little or no role in a woman’s determining whether she has sex with her husband.

I conclude Part I with this clarification: Everything written here applies under two conditions: 1. The woman is married to a good man. 2. She wants him to be a happy husband. If either condition is not present, nothing written here matters. But if you are a woman who loves your husband, what is written here can be the most important thing you will read concerning your marriage. Because chances are the man you love won’t tell you.

A happy man is what matters. This is the point of the playbook, of the system itself.

Prager’s words here produce a creepy confession and an example of bad grammar, which I can’t help but point out. Parenthetically speaking, a man can never access enough vaginas to make him happy. Sentence fragment ending. Boo-ya.

~~~

*I’m not familiar with this website, it just had some interesting info on Prager and prostitution.