Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 9. May 4 1981
Stop Alienating Men
Stop Alienating Men
Dear Sir,
This letter is composed in a moment of anger, so I mean everything I say. I have become more and more incensed by the attitude taken by "feminist" groups around this campus. I speak, with special reference to the rape forum and the various articles that have appeared in this newspaper. Apparently in my very being I am automatically to be condemned as a potential threat to any and all women.
I categorically refuse to assume the guilt of other men. I refuse to be alienated from support of the women's liberation movement because of my masculinity. Furthermore I deny the "fact" that I and most men are really capable of intentional rape. Sure it is a physical option, but is it an emotional one? In order to carry out any act there is an acompanying emotional state. If this emotional state is not present the potential physical act is not real but imaginary. The emotional state that is required for rape is not a common feature of anybody's life.
Of course these "feminist" movements don't seem to care a fuck what I feel. I am a man therefore I am a threat seems to be an automatic equation in their heads. This is nothing but pure cowardice. In this cowardice comes affirmation of the "male threat". If you refuse to be frightened of rape, or men, you affirm that there is no reality to this so called threat. Women must deny men the emotional prerequisite necessary for the physical act. This cannot possibly be borne out of a sense of threat and fear. You can't stop the loonies but you can "de-socialise" rape.
Depersonalization is the real threat. "Feminist" movements threaten me with it all the time. I am a person first, a man second. We have somehow inherited a myth that "man" is the opposite of "woman". This is total shit. The specific sex of a person plays (or ought to) a comparatively minor role in their experience. This was the whole point of women's liberation in the sixties and its been totally corrupted.
Germaine Greer introduced the real dumb concept of men hate women. She cites examples of obvious masochism and calls it male sadism. There are men who hate women (actually I've never met one, although I have met women that hate men). There are all sorts of loonies about. One thing I have noticed is the sexual arrogance of some women. If she offers it's an insult not to accept, but if he offers and she refuses it's too bad. Virtually all antipathy between the sexes is based in rejection either of oneself or of a parent.
What then is the pont of this letter? I want (and I'm not the only one) for the title "feminist" to go along with the whole concept of this Woman vs Man shit. Women must loose their fear both to say "no" and to say "please". Rape isn't a crime against women (there are women child molestors and homosexual rapes), it's a crime against a specific victim, a specific person (because it's the person part that suffers the most damage, nobody thinks of themselves as a representative of anything under such individual humiliation). Finally, women's movements must stop alienating men because the rejection results in antipathy.
Luv,
Peter