The Origins of Douchedom

Have you ever gotten your period so hardcore you wish you could drop kick your uterus into submission? The crimson tide drowns me out every single month with it's cramps and lethargy, but I can't once say that I've been hit with bitchy "PMSing". While it's plausible that someone experiencing the exruciating pains that no man will ever understand even if he were shot might be inclined to bitch, I still call bullshit on PMSing. The only time I've been unreasonably bitchy in reaction to something physical is when I'm hungry (so stop consistently eating EVERY SINGLE ONE of my goddamn LEFTOVERS, disgusting bitch of a housemate! ugh. i'm sorry, i just can't even get into this right now.)

Anyhoo, the reason I call bullshit on PMSing is because I think people will attest anything feminine as inducing hysterical bitchiness. Even though men are bitches, "bitch" is still intrinsically female, and I know this is because of the original meaning of the word, but this isn't the first female=crazy lingo to impregnate our language with anti-woman sentiments. "Lunatic" originates from the root "luna", referencing the moon, an archaically female symbol. We are told that our periods move by the moon, like the tides; "lunatic" is literally defined as "affected by the moon", or by transitive property, "woman".

"Hysteria" as we know it is almost synonymous with "crazy bitchness", meaning "an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear"; but it's root is synonymous with "of the womb" (hence, "hysterectomy"="removing the uterus"). What's interesting is that this is hysteria as we know it, but what about hysteria as ye-olde-English-speakers knew it? As I know this hysteria, it is said to be when a woman gets all uppity cuz her man couldn't hit that right. The cure was, um, a, er, "pelvic massage". Ha! Men had to go to grimey hookers on street corners while women just went to their doctors (who I'm imagining looked like that Cuban doctor in "Sicko")!

But Victorian era fantasies aside, there are still more liguistic fallacies. We say someone looks "ravishing" if they, well, if they look good, I guess; but to "ravish" means essentially the same thing as to "rape". So to look ravishing is, then, what? To look rape-worthy? To make the boys uncontrolled around you? Other familiar words like "rapture" hold the dual meaning of the sexual abduction and sexual ecstacy or enchantment, the desirable definitions of which are all attested to have come about after the oppressive. At one point, the root of "oppress" even served to mean "rape".

That's how I always viewed rape: as the ultimate oppression of someone else. I've heard a broken-into diary described as "mind rape", and I've described anything that forces me to submit to another's desires which contradict my own as "rape". Some people say that no one can "force" anyone to do anything, but I also call BS on this. People are manipulated everyday into doing that which they do not want to do. We are oppressed by the mutation of nasty words like "rapture" into sexy words, like "rapture". It suggests a universal mind-changing from a woman's point of view, maybe what she hates is actually what she desires. These words rape all women by telling us that we have a disadvantage, an unsound mind, because we menstrate and don't orgasm in the one min - er - short time it takes you to orgasm.

I've read a lot recently about the meaning of "rape" and where to draw the definitive lines; but to me, rape is anytime someone is manipulated into sex. That doesn't stop at "no means no", women (and possibly men) are raped everyday when they are guilted into sex. If a man puts loads and loads of effort into courting you altuistically, then brings it all up again when you're fooling around to make you feel you "owe" them something, even if you don't want to, then this is rape even if you say yes. If you are someone who says yes, going against your own will: it is because the man preyed on your insecurity of how you come off to others, or even a worry of what he will say about you. I can't help but feel that nowadays, men are looking more for someone to manipulate than someone who will openly engage in anything.

So many guys I know show off about "how far" they went with chicks that normally don't put out. It's the idea that they broke her, the rape factor, that amazes their audience. The system of baseball analogies even helps them arbitrarily rate each hook-up, to see who gets the furthest. This pissing contest has gone so far that "pick-up" artists like this mega-douche "Mystery" are selling books and teaching seminars about how to "get" any woman in bed; and he justifies it all with his Wikipedia knowledge of evolution, saying that the circuits of his brain are programmed (if it's so essentially human, why must you use computer terminology?) to make him wants lots and lots of different women, and the circuits of her brain are programmed to make her scratch her hand when she begins falling for a man's trickery.

He's not the only one to abide by this fucked up defense of rapturous activity, as he's not the only douche to continue to live against humanity's consistent urges for the opposite. The fact is, that if women were not considered objects to be had, most "gray-area" rapes wouldn't happen. I call bullshit to saying that a woman shouldn't get black-out drunk in order not to be raped, as well as the idea that men "don't know" whether or not a woman wants to have sex when she's black-out drunk. First of all, people who are black-out drunk, without fail, either puke or pass out...what kind of a douche, except a score-keeping rapist douche, would sincerely want to have sex with that? Second of all, if I can boldly claim that some women, even when they say yes, are being raped by fears of societical impropriety or rejection, I can kind of see young frat boys having the same fear. Maybe being exposed to this wacky game of baseball from age eight makes us all believe we must abide by it to some degree...and hearing wacky, homophobic (if all men solely want to spread their seed and all women solely want to be taken care of by rich men, then it further strengthens allegations that homosexuality is not natural - giving clout to religious thoughts over science) interpretations of evolution as defining our implicit human nature just fucks us all up even more.

If "gray-area" rapes were not necessarily prosecuted with the threat of criminal imprisonment looming above, there is a chance an honest understanding of rape in the context of modern society can pull through, as well as an opportunity to change "gray" to "non-existent" through some sort of rehabilitation. With criminal trial, confused students are forced to view their actions as either right or wrong, themselves being 100% responsible or completely innocent, and once the trial is over, so is its discussion. Juries may find a rapist innocent if they think the crime is not worthy of the punishment and if a rapist is not convicted, the raped feel guilty and victimized simultaneously. It's the judicial system which deals with rape that has failed the young boys who drown deeper and deeper into the abyss of douchedom everyday, but more excruciatingly, the young girls they oppress.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008