Bingo.

I’m sorry. I should have known better. It will not happen again.

Really, I don’t know why the rest of you good people bother to read and respond to his garble. I have no desire to prove or disprove my ability or inability to read teenage text messaging.

As for my experience, of which I speak too often I think, I believe that the paradigm of shame occured thusly:

I was shamed for being a female
I was shamed for my sexuality as a female
I was not taught to see myself as a full human, capable of making a meaningful contribution or worthy of any effort toward improvement. This being another factor of shame; “Do not bother us with your needs and problems.”

Ronald Reagan came into office the year I first became pregnant and started his moral war on single mothers, specifcially teenage ‘unwed’ mothers and women on welfare. THe meta-message was clear: Women are only worthy in roles that we men deem worthy and when deem them unworthy, they will be abandoned, shamed and punished.

How fitting. Kept me cemented to a man’s side.

So shame got me there. What kept me there?

Although on two occasions over the course of the early years, I had an opportunity to leave him and did leave temporarily in times of extreme crisis, both times I returned as quickly as i had an opportunity. Again shame, kept me there. Although I was encouraged to get my own place, I had to consider welfare as my jobless status and lack of experience would not land me a paying job.

Welfare mothers were whores. I couldn’t cross that line, the fear of even further social abandonment was overwhelming. Not that i had any status in my position at the time, but looking at a crevice below from no matter how low one stands, is still a crevice.

So in some sense shame kept me there as well.

Consider that I was offered a short respite twice and that in all the people that I came in contact with through my then husband, I repeatedly was praised in my ‘decision’ to stay home or to ’stick it out’ with the marriage.

Also, might I add that quite a few times, people who probably could have helped relieved themselves of feeling any obligation by blaming and shaming me, only further driving me backward into the abyss.

So praise kept me there sure, but shame played a larger role in bringing there, keeping me there and also allowing others to dismiss my circumstances and any feelings of responsibility they might have had.

Those in control of a class of people always have the priviledge of making light of themselves, of joking and ridiculing, because they know it will little effect their position of power and in fact, often serves to blanket their actual control. It allows those oppressed to let off a little ’steam’ if you will as well and be under the illusion that they aren’t quite as oppressed as they thought.

Jokes about men usually circle around incompetency in the home life, whether feeling adequate compassion for others, or being inept in carrying out tasks that are stereotypically that of the women, such as the father who fumbles taking care of the baby or the husband who can’t manage to do the dishes.

Such ‘jokes’ serve only as qualifiers of the patriarchical construct, that men and women have distinctly, somehow, instinctively seperate roles that cannot be changed. Such serves men well and keeps women in their place.

He also says: “but have you even taken a look at little boys’ “action figures”/dolls? THAT’S an unrealistic image of beauty.”

Someone else posted about this above and since you apparently didn’t bother to read that, I’ll put it in my own words again. First off, get the verb in the title? “ACTION Figure” in other words, they are dolls in roles of doing great things, fighting evil, saving the mother ship, committing acts of bravery and heroism at every turn. In fact, since the fall of the old G.I. Joe doll, most all action figures are hard plastic figures formed with their costume and clothes INTACT, in other words, their role and purpose is not to be clothed or to accentuate body parts in any other way than to affirm the hero/macho role.

Obversely, one can see with the never dying Barbie and all her imitators, particularly the new “Brat Dolls” with their answer to cultural diversity, that the focus of their function lies strictly with dress-up, appearance, make-up, high heels, boots and other acouterments meant to affirm the feminine role of eye candy. These dolls fight no battles, commit no acts of heroism, do not work against evil, save the weak or actually do anything but wear clothes and purses, prance on ponies and drive pink cars.

He says again: “Hell, compare how often you see commercials for penis enlargement vs breast enlargement.”

There are no ads on teevee for penis enlargement, but there are plenty of ads for penile erection aids and not enough for condoms. Ads do exist for plastic surgery, but they are cloaked and euphemistic, because of course, women’s bodies are secrets of shame and lust and not to be spoken about in living rooms in front of the kiddies.

How many ads are there for aids for women’s sexual dysfunction? Exactly, who cares what women need, its all about the guy.

And while we’re on that topic, dontcha think its just a wee bit disingenuous to push erectile dysfuction aids while at the same time telling women they must forgo sex until after marriage and only for procreation? (We all know that’s the goal of the anti-choicers).

And finally: “Blaming your own ill deeds (or that of other women, who you want to exculpate because it’s rhetorically convenient) on a illusory patriarchy is a mixture of learned helplessness (born of laziness as much as oppression) and bigotry.”

What ill deeds do you speak of?

THe power imbalance that exists in this society will always have its victims. Women are human and not made to tolerate ill treatment and when they do, they do not cope well and cannot function well. The same holds true for those other groups and then women of color, who have things going at them both ways.

Those who exercise the ability and have the interest in obtaining services and favors from others by the use of violence, shame and coercion have little desire to acknowledge the effect of their actions on the receiver thereof.

To engage in such an exercise of recognition would be to grant the other party humanity. The granting of humanity and dignity to the group one oppresses would call upon the illegitimacy of such behavior. Thus it is no surprise to anyone here that someone such as yourself, would come here and say, as we hear everywhere else from men like you, all our lives that our experiences and perceptions are invalid and not worthy of consideration.

The power imbalance you deny is most obvious in your dismissal in that you have the dillusion, given to you by your dominant status in society, that your opinion counts and is correct and can be applied to any group you please, regardless of how little you understand their experience.

To you, our experience can be summed up in a little paragraph, borne of your testerone laden, white priviledged experience, even though you probably never even wore a high heel shoe for three seconds of your life, much less experience one scintilla of a minute of being a female in any form whatsoever.

Until you take the time to listen to those like us and consider ways in which you do hold priviledge, your arguments are meaningless diatribe.