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“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
Nov
1
The perfect gift for that boyfriend who loves to see you suffer
Filed Under assholes, beauty myths, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, sex and sexuality, sexual exploitation and harassment, violence against women and girls, women’s health | Posted by Cara |
This is by far the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in a long time: on reasons why women might want to consider having her hymen surgically reconstructed.
Thanks to Lauredhel for breaking it down so beautifully. I wouldn’t have the stomach or the patience to do it myself.
This is absolutely one of those things that we can file under rape culture. Not because a woman losing her virginity to a man is akin to rape, or because purposely breaking a hymen is the same as rape. First penetrative sex can certainly be painful (whether or not you have a hymen in tact, which in fact many if not most women these days do not). But your sexual partner (in this case, your husband, of course) is supposed to care when you’re in pain, slow down, be gentle, ask if you’re okay, ask if you want to continue, and STOP if you don’t. He is not supposed to see that you’re in pain and then pound it in harder, or get off on the fact that his oh-so-impressive erection is making you bleed. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have sex with such a man, and I don’t want to.
Just LOOK at this shit:
Marina’s second “wedding” night was a rather painful experience for her. On the contrary, her boyfriend enjoyed every minute if it.
What the fuck? I don’t care what kind of kinky fetish you’re into, getting off on the fact that you are actually hurting your girlfriend during sex is wrong. This is, in fact about rape. It’s our rape culture that tells us women feeling pain during sex isn’t something to avoid, it’s something to get off on. It’s rape culture telling men that they have a right to the bodies of their female significant others — apparently extending to the right to cause her physical pain. It’s the rape culture that tells us men’s sexual pleasure comes first, at the expense of female sexual pleasure, in spite of female sexual pain and the expense of the female right to sexual autonomy — and that a “good” woman will accept this happily. Without rape culture, the kinds of views espoused in this article (as though they’re benign!) would not even exist.
Encouraging men to look forward to breaking their sexual partner’s hymen, not only in spite of her pain, but in fact very much because of it, is promoting violence against women. Period.
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“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
*shudder*
“In a time long past, a bride’s hymen being intact was the only way of determining her chastity. However, religious people and feminists tend to refer to the procedure as a form of deception.”
When was the last time feminists got bundled in with religious zealots?
I had no idea such a surgery even existed.
“It’s our rape culture that tells us women feeling pain during sex isn’t something to avoid, it’s something to get off on.”
This is a direct consequence of mainstream porn. Or it’s the agent behind mainstream porn. Either way, porn only perpetuatues it, validates it and makes it acceptable. And that’s why I am against it.
I think that the agent behind mainstream porn is more like it. I don’t think that porn dictates people’s sexual tastes, I think that it reflects them and then just makes them more acceptable.
In any case, I think that to blame it entirely on porn would be an over-simplification. It’s much deeper and much more complex than that. And I actually think that this type of behavior has more to do with seeing women as property than with seeing women as sexually passive. But yes, porn certainly plays a role.
Someone over at Feministe pointed out what a weird surgery this is by reminding us that the hymen is basically unnecessary. Whoever the commenter was likened it to getting your wisdom teeth re-installed. I thought it was a pretty apt comparison.
Sadism, based on hate/fear of people one doesn’t (want to) understand, is what it sounds like. A few men want to treat women like that because some girl wouldn’t go out with them in high school or something. So they come up with fantasies like that and then some sicko doctor finds a way to profit off it while cancer is still not defeated. Someone commenting on another blog wondered if stuff like this is the ground from which other and worse forms of mutilation could grow. I wonder that myself, and offer it as an answer to those who smugly say, “well, look at the people over in (you name it), they *have* to see blood to satisfy their honor”, as if to excuse the voluntary-ness of such things here. It gives honor a bad name!
If that is mainstream porn, it goes back a ways. A book that really sickened me when I was young was a reprint of a porn mag from the 1870’s. A nice pastoral scene with a man and woman suddenly turned into a bloodbath because she hadn’t done it before, and everyone just took this for granted then–and apparently now, if there’s surgery to make that sort of thing happen. I can’t believe it, I still can’t. A procedure to prevent pain and so on would probably be simpler to devise–maybe even done at home. But remaking the culture so crap like this can’t take root, that is going to be the big load to move.
[departs to wash out mind]