Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Foolishness of Righteousness, The Problem with Men


All this self righteous talk about grown men having sex with boys.

I am not being glib. It is a crime. It needs to be dealt with, of course. What it does to the victims is horrendous. It’s good that stuff comes to light and it is taken care of.

All true.

But what a waste of time to point at an obvious disaster and say, “You’re so wrong! You’re so wrong! How could you have done that?”
This might make the self righteous feel better, but my question is always, “What on earth does self righteousness actually DO?”

Listen up ladies and parents of twelve year olds:

Men are insane. They are led by their sexual desires. If they were not, there would be no prom dates and no babies. Now, for some awful reason, men tend to LOCK IN on an object of desire at a certain time in their life.  Sometimes it’s girls. Sometimes it’s boys. Sometimes it’s rubber spatulas. Sometimes it’s shoes.  Sometimes, as they grow up, they get stuck on something from an earlier time. I have no idea why. I am simply grateful that I am garden variety grown up gay.

But this is the situation. Why aren’t we figuring out why men get hooked in like this? And why are we not taking down the stories of pedophiles, no matter how repellant, and then use them to figure out how to stop future men from becoming pedophiles, if this is possible?

And ethically, if you can somehow figure out how to figure out how a man goes down this path, maybe you can stop it?

I don’t know.

And then, if you could… would you then try to control other forms of sexuality?

It’s so tricky. 

But let’s get back to the real problem here.  This must be stopped and men are wired the way they are wired and somehow this all gets horribly screwed up and someone has to get on top of this problem. Yelling that it’s wrong is like saying fire is hot.

What about figuring out how this happens?  And then trying to ameliorate?

Or is it just too much fucking fun to have your crimes and your self righteous horror reactions to it?

People. Come on. You’re smarter than this.

Assuming that people are all normal and everything is going to be okay is naïve.  This world is not safe for your children. Scream all you want, I guess. But get scientific and solve your troubles. Please.

Call me a totalitarian (but the Socialist kind), but there is a way to manage society. Pay attention. Take notes. Find trends. Change the path.

In the meantime, Good luck.

1 comment:

Tandava (Carol Henning) said...

There are two books I've read recently about masculinity -- Naked and Erect, and Masculine Shame -- that, combined, may offer an answer to your question.

The problem is not with the way men are wired -- or, rather, it is partly with that wiring, and partly with the demands of our particular culture that denigrates the feminine.

Both books argue (along with a huge body of Jungian work, in general) that the masculine comes to know itself by separation from and control of the feminine. In intrapersonal terms, this means control of the body -- specifically the erection.

A bisexual male friend of mine once explained, "If women had 6-inch clitorises that went up and down on their own, they might see the world differently."

And I think this is true.

So the theory goes, the male psyche spends a lot of energy being fascinated with and attempting to control the male member (indeed the word "fascinate" comes from "phallus"; women have no such physical correlative, so our attention turns outward and we start manipulating each other, but that is another matter).

Add to this a rigid (no pun intended) definition of masculine as being "that which is specifically not feminine" and boys are taught to suppress any instinct that could be identified with the feminine/mother. So this includes emotional expression (other than anger and, later, lust), physical affection, etc. the suppression of which -- combined with an anxious need to control the phallus -- can terribly wound a young psyche.

So, it goes, the growing male mind ends up forever in pursuit of those lost parts of Self. At the time of suppression, it can happen that the young psyche gets fixated at whatever or whomever is near at hand and creates an associative symbolic connection with this lost part of Self.

If this is not brought to consciousness, the man will continue to pursue the symbol rather than do the necessary psychical work to release the suppressed part of himself.

Or so the theory goes.......