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Conversations with Men: You’re White, So Put Down Your Lunch and Give Me a Blow Job
I’m baaack. Not that it matters to online readers, since we all transcend time and place here, but I’m back in China after 3 incredibly long weeks in the US.
Get set. I’m about to drag another one screaming from the vault. While I have much to talk about that is more current or more recently on my mind or related to events during my travels, I think it was my trip back to Asia the other day via a Taiwanese airline, sitting beside a few Taiwanese folk on the long first leg of the trip, and then spending an exhausting 9-hour layover in the Taipei airport in the middle of the night, that stirred up some memories.
I lived in Taiwan for a couple of years in the early part of this century, and it was rough. As rough as living in mainland China? Jeez, that’s hard to say. China is probably worse in many ways. But Taiwan is no picnic either. I was younger, fresher, less apocalyptic than I am now. I still had so much to learn then. And learn I did. Taiwan was full of hard lessons that have helped shape me, helped turn me into the tough, middle-aged, jaded, hard-to-disappoint-further, been-there-done-that woman that I am today.
Before I get into the story, I want to talk a little about this thing called ‘white privilege’. First, I’ll just say that ‘white privilege’ is a thing, but I want to talk specifically about what it means and where it applies. You see, even though it is a real thing – for men – it is also a buzzword used by Western people to shut other people (mostly women, mostly white women) up. Westerners forget that they usually cannot apply Western socio-political models to non-Western countries. We are taught that in all cases and in all places, whites rule. But on the ground, in individual countries, it is easy to see that that isn’t actually true. Racism isn’t a black and white issue like misogyny is. The ‘white privilege’ trope is Western liberal-speak / non-think, and typically it is people who have never lived – and I mean, really lived – in a non-white-ruled country who scream the loudest about this non-existent, international white privilege, and also who point the finger at white women to shoulder all of the blame for what white men have done throughout history.
So, I’ll tell you how this works based on my experience living and working for about 8 years among the ‘real people’ (not staying in 5-star hotels working for international corporations and making 6, 7, or 8 figures a year) in countries with non-white rule. There is no such thing as ‘white privilege’ in a country where there are no white nationals and no whites in political office or policy shops. There are countries where white men came in and wreaked havoc on local populations (especially the women), ruled for a while, and then left. While there, they would have had white privilege, and now that they don’t rule, they don’t. The race that rules has to have political, legal, and economic power in that country. They don’t have to have to be the demographic majority, they just have to have the political, legal, and economic power. And extremely important, racial privilege is predominantly a male thing. Nowhere do women have political, legal or economic power to rival men. The only time a woman can have any claim to racial privilege is among women, and even then, the power isn’t that great. Women just don’t have much power. Period. And race does not win over sex. A woman of the ruling race does not have power or advantage over a man of the non-ruling race. That is true everywhere in the world. We see that with the recent horrors in Germany. Muslim men have relentlessly attacked white women in a country where there is ‘white privilege’, but the crimes are being hushed up. It’s as if they didn’t happen. The women have been blamed and controlled and continue to suffer and are terrified. The non-white men have been coddled and are allowed to stay and continue what they’re doing. People feel sorry for them. Penis trumps vagina, regardless of race. Always. Always. Always.
In Taiwan, there is Asian privilege, and it applies to the Taiwanese males of the country (except in groups of women, where Taiwanese women will have Asian privilege over non-Asian, non-Taiwanese women). White men may be given some respect or consideration because they are men and because their success and riches are envied by the world. White women are not respected, however. They will get attention, but it is not the enviable kind. The attention a white woman is given is based solely on what women everywhere in the world get attention for: their physical attributes – specifically, their fuckability– which is decidedly not power. ‘Sexual power’ – a term invented by men and lib-fems to mean attention from and ability to distract men due to being highly fuckable – is not power.
And so with that out of the way, I bring you another tale from the Conversations with Men series and White Girl series. Enjoy, enjoy!
~~~
Rewind to 2004: I had spent my first 14 months in Taiwan as a workaholic living in the small, over-crowded, and very polluted city of Taipei. I had worked 6-7 days a week. I had a primary job that secured me my work visa, and a whole bunch of little jobs on the side in publishing, editing, writing and teaching. Part-way through 2004, I decided to cut back on the work and started studying Mandarin formally and regularly. There were aspects of this life that I liked, but there was a lot that was unacceptable and that I wouldn’t put up with nowadays. Even with the work-focus change, and with the increase in free time that went with it, life didn’t improve that much, and that was 100% due to the racism-misogyny, white whore special that I was experiencing, but not quite seeing for what it was.
I had been living near Liberty Square (not the name when I lived there), which is a fabulous little park with winding paths surrounding three major monuments/buildings, including the National Theatre and the National Concert Hall. It’s a great place at any time of day for exercise, meeting up with friends, or quiet contemplation.
Or at least I thought it was until one day at noon.
With my greater free time in my second year there, I sometimes went to this park to find a quiet bench on which to eat my lunch and read. I was in the middle of doing just that when a man came up to me. He approached slowly with his wallet out. Without any attempt at verbal communication, he began indicating through body language that he wanted me to suck his dick, and that he would pay me for it. I noticed a male friend of his waiting in the distance to see what would happen. Was he offering me money for the both of them? Just him? I had no idea. I told him to get lost and used a hand motion to indicate I was sweeping him away from me. He persisted. Insisted. Took the (pitifully low amount of) money out of his wallet and started shaking it in my face. Pointed at his groin. Pointed aggressively at my mouth. Friend in the distance, laughing and looking eager, nervous, antsy. I couldn’t get rid of him. For some reason, he had decided that I, with short hair and no make-up, in my trousers and short-sleeved, men’s buttoned shirt and sensible shoes, sitting on a bench eating my lunch, with a book in one hand, was obviously on prostitution duty. I will tell you this. There could have been no mistaking me for a prostitute. It was simply this:
I was a white woman.
He was male and the dominant race.
I existed as a whore to service his cock, just like all white women in the world.
I knew I was in danger. Even though I was not yet clued into the idea that I was experiencing misogyny and racism on a daily basis, instead of just ‘bad luck’, I did know that I was in serious danger. I quickly left the bench, lunch and book in hand and ran. I ran like hell. Despite it being broad daylight with lots of people around, I wasn’t safe. And strangely, almost all of the ‘Asian man assaults’ I have experienced have been in broad daylight with people around and not giving a shit. Sometimes watching me be assaulted. Apathetically. White whore. Look at what they do in our country. They make trouble.
Needless to say, the park was ruined for me. Lunch never happened there again.
I’ve been talking to folks recently about the Burning Times and the whole thing about dicks in a box. And as I was writing this post, I thought wryly, when a woman orders a boxed lunch*, she definitely doesn’t want dick on the menu… Not related, but the mind does what it does.
*aka ‘packed lunch’ or ‘brown bag lunch’
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Conversations with Men: The Cambodian
In my last ‘conversations with men’ post about the rape holiday, I mentioned that I would pull another experience from my Cambodian visit. In the former, I was an observer. In this story, I was an object.
Women are constantly divided and divided again. It is a male strategy to prevent women from joining against them in solidarity to fight back in a serious way. But scores of women get on board for a variety of reasons in order to show their sisters that the dissimilarities and points of disagreement are much more important than their common experiences and needs.
Despite being the violent and sadistic sex, there is a great deal of evidence that men of different races, socioeconomic classes, religions, and political leanings are always quite able to come together – and even bond – over a single common cause: abusing, torturing, terrorizing and destroying women and girls. It is a pity that women cannot come together over the single common cause of liberating themselves from men, their violence, and their parasitic tendencies.
And it is with this thinking that I present a conversation from several years ago. Reviewing my two experiences well after the fact made me realize that despite the many differences between me and the young, female, Cambodian prostitute, we both shared the reality that we were objects. We were both seen by men, first and foremost, as bodies to be used.
~~~
Rewind to 2003: I was in the middle of a two-week trip by myself to Cambodia. It is very common for travellers, especially if you’re alone, to hire motorcycle guides in the larger areas. These drivers are often connected to guest houses, and you can hire them for single trips or pay a flat fee for a period time. While in Phnom Penh, I hired a driver who was able to speak some English (I don’t speak Khmer, and those few Cambodians who speak French are quite old now). I did a number of things, including seeing some of the historic sites, checking out one of the riverside, local clubs for some live music (no other foreigners there), and on one of the days, spending an afternoon by the water in the shade eating durian.
Through conversation, I was able to get an inside look into the life of a typical, low-earning, young man. And I also was reminded of my place as a woman.
At that point in my life, I sported very short hair, so I had to provide an answer as to why. Surprisingly, I wasn’t asked why I never wore skirts or dresses. After many more years living in China, I’ve come to expect and hate this whole line of questioning about hair, clothes, husbandlessness, childlessness. But at the time, I was still in my first year in Asia.
But then we moved on to other things.
Dude took on an air of sadness. He said he was too poor to get married. he had to share a room with several other guys. And he had to go to prostitutes.
Yeah, he lost me there. One thing I do hate about traditional cultures is the mandatory marriage thing and the idea that you need to have X amount of money in order to live up to expectations and procure a slave. But I don’t feel sorry for the MEN. I feel sorry for the women. Being sold into slavery – which is exactly what marriage was and still is – is not something I agree with or think is part of a healthy society. And in traditional cultures, if a woman can’t get married, there aren’t a lot of other options for her to support herself. Further, she becomes vulnerable to all men when she isn’t owned by one man. It’s a racket that men designed. Women are screwed no matter what happens. But married men benefit, so who gives a shit, eh?
But the marriage thing wasn’t where dude lost me. It was the ‘had to go to prostitutes’ comment. Men believe they must have sex. And they believe that if they can’t get it from their personal whore (wife/girlfriend/family member), then they must get if from a public whore. And then there is outright, payment-free rape of strangers, which I won’t get into in this post. The thing is, nobody has ever died from not having sex. And I say this as someone who, for much of my life, has had a demanding sex drive that no man (or woman, for that matter) I’ve known could match. Ever. And yet, despite almost never getting what I wanted – quality or quantity – and then eventually just ditching men altogether when I came to my senses about ‘how shit works’ in both the greater world and in my own world, I never felt I was entitled to sex. And I haven’t died from the lack. Presto magic. So take it from me, men don’t need sex.
And then the conversation got worse.
Dude got it in his head that he should have sex with me. The suggestion was put out there. He didn’t actually offer to pay me for sex. No. The idea was that I could continue to pay for his driving services as well as the food we were consuming, and he could have sex with me. It was almost as if he were offering himself up as a prostitute (although he didn’t ask for extra money), except for one very, very significant difference.
This difference lies in the sexes of the people in my last story versus this current story.
Women generally don’t offer themselves as prostitutes because they like sex or want random sex with strangers. Prostitutes are generally desperate, vulnerable women with a history of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. Both men and sex are dangerous to women, and men generally don’t cater (let alone acknowledge) women’s sexual needs. Don’t believe me? Well there is a shit ton of evidence on all. I don’t need to provide statistics. Spend five seconds on Google.
Men seldom offer themselves as prostitutes to WOMEN. To men, yes. That is more common and I don’t really care about that dynamic. When a man, like in my scenario, suggests sex to a woman, he is looking to get off. And in this case, especially, a) he didn’t suggest a monetary exchange, and b) in most cultures, especially traditional ones like Cambodia, men don’t service women – they use them. And if they give something, it is never without the expectation of something in return. So this dude wasn’t offering me anything. He was expecting something.
Of course, I said, “No.”
Everything about this exchange was repulsive. There was fear that he would attack me because I said no (luckily, that didn’t happen – HIV rates were at an all-time high in Cambodia at that time – and nobody wants to be raped anyways). I realized that none of my ‘privilege’ could erase the fact that I was still a woman and thus was under the thumb and at the whim of this guy and every single man on the planet regardless of their status among other men. I realized that because he, a man, brought up sex, no matter how this guy had framed it, he was insulting me: to offer me money would be to tell me I was a piece of meat, but to not offer me money told me that I wasn’t worth paying for and I should give it away like (they think) all ‘free’ Western white women do.
I went away from that conversation with another piece chipped off my tiny block of female self-confidence and then added to the growing pile of evidence of male yuck.
Why I’d Rather Deal With Women
If we remove from the population all those men and women with unfixable and publicly dangerous mental health problems such as personality disorders (psychopaths and narcissistic personality disordered individuals, specifically), I can easily make the blanket statement that I’d rather deal with women exclusively in all areas of life. I’d even go so far as to say that my life would improve immeasurably, and I wouldn’t shed a single tear, if I never saw another male – adult or child – ever again in my life. Just thinking about it fills me with this wistfulness, this longing, this impression of wings unfurling and endless possibilities and freedom. And then I remember that it’s an impossible dream, and I sink back into the cocoon I call ‘survival mode’ that is what awakened feminists must live in, daily.
I’m sure many people have their backs up, their knickers in a twist, and knives sharpened at what I’ve just intimated. Defensive retorts after a split second of recognition on the lips of women. Threats of violence, misogynist slurs, and haughty, mansplanatory rationalizations in the minds of men. I see you all.
But I don’t care. My fantasy world without men is a safe world. A good world. A sane world. A healthy world. In my fantasy, it is that way. If it were to become reality, I have no doubt it would indeed be safe, good, sane and healthy. Because this fantasy is borne of 43 years of experience of the violence, fear, hurt, damage, threats, filth, disrespect, insanity, cruelty, coldness, incomprehensibility, greed, pride, othering, dehumanizing, and death, death, death that is the male gift to the world. No amount of rationalizing or lies or rare exceptions provided by men or the women who support them in serious denial can controvert thousands of years of evidence, nevermind the evidence of one 43-year-long life.
Again, removing the most dangerous of men and women and looking at the average person, I can say the following confidently. Dealing with the average woman is much different – and better – than dealing with the average man.
The absolute, most important difference between dealing with men and dealing with women is safety. I don’t feel safe with strange men, but I also don’t feel safe with men I know. Anything can and does happen. Betrayal can happen in the blink of an eye depending on how his dick feels that day, how he interprets your non-verbals in relation to his ‘needs’, or how threatened he is by your intelligence, talent, attitude or confidence. Any of these variables can lead to his violence against you. I’ve never felt unsafe with a woman, stranger or known. Men can’t understand this feeling of unsafeness. Men don’t look over their shoulders. Men don’t evaluate options or potential outcomes for travel or just getting from Point A to Point B prior to setting out. Men don’t worry about having their identities or home locations known. Men don’t worry about friendships with women or what it means to accept help from them, whether there is an unspoken or unacceptable price to pay down the line. I’d rather a female delivery person or electrician enter my home than a male. I’d rather have a meeting with a female client than a male. Safety issues touch every aspect of your life. And women are safer to deal with.
Men make everything filthy and dehumanizing. This is, of course, tied to safety – with men, sex and violence cannot be separated. I can contemplate any neutral scenario or even a potentially sexual scenario, and as soon as I imagine a man entering that scenario, it is ruined. I have an automatic pulse of revulsion, of anger, of fear. They sexualize everything, including the unsexual or neutral. And in a potentially sexual situation, the way they sexualize is degrading, humiliating, unequal, and can make you feel dirty. Their presence automatically imposes hierarchy on a situation where no hierarchy exists. If it is a discussion, the entrance of a man changes the dynamic for the worse. He becomes the sun around which everyone orbits. If I think about a roomful of women in a state of undress, it doesn’t have to be sexual at all. Just human. Functional. Natural. It could be sexual – but in a clean, joyous, equal way. I think this is how sex would be between women living without the taint of Patriarchy ‘dirtifying’ everything. As it is, I think many lesbians look for ‘dirty sex’ and that is a marker of Patriarchal conditioning. But anyways, the thought of a man entering any kind of dynamic makes it filthy for me. I’m still trying to analyze this in a way that I can express, but it first struck me tangibly that I felt that way when I was about 30 and still trying to hold onto the idea that men were at least part of my sexual landscape. It’s material for another post.
Women don’t impose insanity or irrationality upon situations. Perhaps it’s because women have natural (yes, I said it – natural!) tendencies to listen, empathize, sympathize, relate and cooperate, but negotiations with a woman (who doesn’t fit into the mental illness categories described above) seldom become ridiculous. It’s actually very easy to develop consensus with women or to work together on a project when the taint of Patriarchy is as absent as possible. With men, on the other hand, things can be crazy. Dominance is always present. There is always a power-play, and the less you wish to be dominated, the more insane, irrational (and violent) a situation with a man can become. Men don’t cooperate – they dominate. If they can’t dominate, they get violent one way or another, and often will abandon or sabotage a project if they don’t get their own way.
Women are concerned with health. I like dealing with women because they think about health in a different way. Men don’t think about health because the women in their lives do it for them. Women will talk about health and problems and how they are related and will share information. I think this is a remnant from older times when wise women and healers and those of their persuasion had some prominence. When men took over (and by took over, I mean discredited and often tortured and killed these women) the health realm, they turned it into a business. It became another field in which to dominate women, and a new realm for greed, profit, sadistic experimentation (power) and prominence/fame. Although I’ve worked in health policy, health research, and worked extensively with and for doctors, I find the whole world revolting and frightening. I truly think there is an opportunity for women to take it back and return to the old ways.
—
Our world is currently one where dealing exclusively and authentically with women is roadblocked by men in multiple ways. The effects of this have been serious. With men in the way, we have lost our safety, our purity (not to be confused with the religious bullshit concept of purity), our sanity, and our health. If only fantasy could become reality.
Not Afraid of the Bears
I hate the city.
Sure, there are moments. Moments when you realize that there are certain things only a city can offer you. Like you’re tired of the ubiquitous Chinese food where you live and tired of your own home cooking, and crave some semi-authentic food from another part of the globe. A large city can provide you with that. You are also more likely to find open-minded people who like to use their brains and who eschew traditionalism and religion. That is harder to find in smaller places.
But I still hate the city.
I grew up in Canada. I have lived in most of the largest cities there. Having lived in large Chinese cities, and spent time in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, and London, these ‘tiny’ Canadian cities are villages in comparison.
I’ve also lived in plenty of smaller places. I deliberately chose a small, relatively isolated, Canadian town for my undergraduate experience. It was mostly for research opportunities and to get the hell away from my abusive, NPD mother, but I have to admit that the kilometers of forest, lakes, and fresh air called to me.
Similarly, when I went to grad school in the US, I chose a very small town – still for the research opportunities – but there were mountains and forest in close proximity.
I’ve also lived in the Yukon in Canada’s North. Pristine rivers, lakes, forests. Pure air. Silence. Anti-intellectual and cliquey, but nature reigns supreme there.
In all of these places, hiking and other outdoor activities were a given – one of the perks of living there. But I didn’t take advantage of the locations as much as I could or should have. Afraid of bears or other wild animals? No, actually. There are plenty of things you can do to co-exist with animals that, for the most part, aren’t deliberately looking for you.
In all these places, I was afraid of the men. The existence of men, and the threat of attack or rape is what kept me out of the forests and hiking by myself. Men are the only animals that will deliberately hunt you down or opportunistically target you, and hurt you for pleasure.
I remember, as an undergraduate, one day enthusiastically heading off onto the hiking trails in the forest behind the college. There had been reports of bears, especially at that time of year. But my thoughts weren’t on them at all. Within minutes of starting my hike, I was plagued with doubts about being in the forest alone, and then, as if reading my mind, out of nowhere, men on mountain bikes took over my trail. Scared the shit out of me. Men, in a group – scariest thing on the planet. A panic attack resulting from knowing that they could do whatever they wanted to me with impunity turned me around towards the safety of my research lab.
At that time, I forgot that there is no safety indoors either. Like all women, while I’ve experienced a lot of harassment, violence and sexual assault in public, all of the violent rapes I’ve experienced have happened in my own bed at home or indoors while travelling. This is women’s experience, women’s reality.
Will there ever come a day when a woman can leave her home and not have to feel afraid? Will there ever come a day when a woman can stay in her home and not have to feel afraid? Just the threat of what can happen is unacceptable. The threats are based on reality and they have power. They do.
It’s not the bears we have to worry about.
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