What Everyone Knows But No-one Says
Among all
social groups, inequities--perceived or real--that are
not being addressed, let alone redressed, will
generate seething resentments, leading to anger,
culminating in violence. Consider this: Women have it.
Men want it. Social rules restrict men's alternatives
to women. Masturbating isn't manly. You can be
laughted at. Sex with other men is just--queer--and
you can be killed for that. Women set the
terms of sexual exchange when they're ready to trade,
and (if you believe in hidden matriarchy) even before
that. He pays. And
pays. Until he has nothing left to trade, like a
casino gambler losing his last quarter in the machine.
Still, he wants it. Still, she sets the terms of
exchange, if any. They're not
lying when they keep reminding us that 'ignorance is
bliss.' The
corollary
'knowledge is power' invites us to understand that we
can choose bliss or power but not both. Stated more
completely, the idea is that knowledge is--first--a
realization of one's own relationship to 'the powers
that be' (in this case the hidden matriarchy)
and--second--, out of frustration, an inducement to
acts of countervailing power, rebellion or guerilla
warfare, to the extent that's possible. Prostitution is
the most conscious acting out of the inequality
constructed by societies: that even though he trades
everything he has for use of a woman's mouth or
vagina. a man can never get it all--or even most of
it. At the end of the exchange, the women still has
all of it--ready for another exchange--and always will
have it and be ready. This is why
prostitution must be prohibited or at least kept under
wraps. It speaks too loudly of the underlying reality
that has probably been heard all too clearly by men
who murder prostitutes.
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None Say
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