Blame, Shame, and Reign
- Larry Conley
- Jul 11, 2019
- 27 min read
Updated: Jul 12, 2019
Blame and shame are tools of a malicious power play used to make women vulnerable to patriarchal males seeking to reign over them! This noxious culture arose 28 centuries ago via Greek and Hebrew myths that presented women as the culprits in all the pain, strife, suffering, and dangers of Earthly existence. I call this power play, Blame, Shame, and Reign [BS&R] because the three steps are all part of a war on women which has pervaded our lives and our societies since the 8th century BCE! A contemporary variation on BS&R is “rape culture.” While rape is atrocious, BS&R has far more pervasive intentions.BS&R denies women’s humanity; decries women’s sexuality and beauty; and defies all claims regarding women’s bodily autonomy. From the perspective of BS&R, women are the ultimate other – alluring and treacherous – who must be controlled and dominated in every way possible.
BS&R is no relic of a bygone age or fever dream of sexual libertarians. It is on the march in the USA! Consider this on 15 May 2019: “Alabama’s Republican governor said in a statement Wednesday that she disagrees with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and that the legislation she signed is a testament to "Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God." Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio stopped short of outright bans; they enacted so-called heartbeat bills. Utah and Arkansas voted to limit the procedure to the middle of the second trimester. Alabama’s law is the first outright ban on abortion. Thus, eight American states where reactionary Neoconfederates hold power are actively disparaging or outright denying the full equality and human autonomy of women and girls in twenty-first century America. For centuries, women have been the targets of a never-ending power play of raging jealousy, unwarranted suspicion, blatant authoritarianism, and vicious hate. The recent denials of pregnant females’ bodily autonomy show the persistence of power-play into present-day America.
The principal proponents of BS&R today call themselves *conservatives*, and they are striving to conserve something. They are striving to conserve an unjust, malicious, social order which devalues women because they are women.
Professor Robert Reich appropriately quotes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in this regard:
Fifty-nine years ago, I encountered BS&R for the first time, but I did not call it by that name. I was a ninth-grader sitting in a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine [CCD] class when a thoroughly indoctrinated minion of BS&R sought to infect my classmates and I. A few minutes into his spontaneous attack on my female classmates about petting and French Kissing; I called foul. Then and there, I vowed upon the altar of truth an unrelenting opposition to misogyny, prudery, and all forms of patriarchal attacks on and oppression of women. I swore from that point on I would take a stand for the full equality of women and men because it is true. I pledged to stand up for the rectitude of any and every adult consensual sexual act because it is right, and I vowed to stand against the precepts and practices of patriarchy because that was and is the right thing to do.
The essay that follows is in service of that never rescinded vow. I rejected and still reject all aspects of the malign campaign I have come to call BS&R. Women, in general, deserve no blame, should feel no shame, and men, in general, have no right to reign over women. All of us, regardless of our genitalia, are equally human and all of us gain from loving interactions of either a sexual or nonsexual nature. Finally, each of us is an individual, and the full measure of each of us is more than our biological sexual identity; we are individuals with positives and negatives we have earned in the course of living our lives. Come on people, now smile on your sister and your brother! Everybody get together – respect, love, and help one another – right now!
Misogyny, prudery, and patriarchy have produced the Blame, Shame, and Reign power play that contaminates and twists human societies into persecution engines as far as women are concerned. First, women are assigned the responsibility or held at fault for the difficulties of this life [Blame]. Second, they are defamed, degraded, and held in contempt for being women, especially attractive, sexually alluring women [Shame]. Finally, men assert the right to exercise sovereignty, power, and authority; over women and to dominate, control, rule, govern, and command them [Reign].
While it is difficult if not impossible to identify the precise date and place an ideology emerged from the stream of human consciousness, misogyny arose sometime in the eighth century BCE and somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean region. In that century and region, myths arose in Greece and Judea that described the ‘Fall of Man.’ Each of these myths blamed women for the Fall and all subsequent troubles, hardships, misery, suffering, and death. One concerned Pandora and the other concerned Eve. Both of these slanderous tales oozed into blood and bone of Western civilization much as the 82 noxious chemical compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, dumped in Love Canal, leached their toxic contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.
While myths from both Greece and Judea are tributaries to the immense river of misogyny flowing through contemporary culture. Their toxins took different forms. In ancient Greek mythology, the female character who best fits this general model is Pandora, the female sent by Zeus to end the Golden Age and to punish humans for Prometheus’s theft of fire. When she opens the jar of death, pain, and other evils upon the world, Pandora is a relatively straightforward presentation of the beautiful woman as a mechanism for disaster—a mere instrument of divine vengeance. The name, Pandora, is a Greek word that means: the "all-gifted," "all-giving," or the “all-endowed." The Greek myth described her as ‘kalon kakon’ in English the ‘beautiful evil.’ She was called a ‘gift to men an evil thing for their delight.’ Her beauty was said to compare to that of the goddesses, as follows:
“From her comes all the race of womankind
The deadly female race and the tribe of wives
Who live with mortal men and bring them harm.”
So, the Greeks launched the canard that female beauty is a dangerous lure that will initially delight and eventually harm men. Such a vicious slander is one of the most widespread versions of a misogynistic trope. Heterosexual males project their desire for exceptionally attractive women onto the women and then present women as particularly lustful. Since males can experience desire as mysterious, bewildering, and overwhelming, beautiful women must be destructive and deceptive, perhaps possessed of magical witch-like powers.
The Greeks must have felt that the Pandora myth did not drive home the point of “the beautiful evil.” So, they rolled out the myth of Helen of Troy, the most famous adulterous wife in the Western tradition. The character and myth of Helen spring from cultural anxieties about female beauty and female sexuality centered on the figure of the Parthenos—the female of marriageable age.
Helen is portrayed as a female constantly in the transitional state between girlhood in her Father’s home and womanhood in her husband’s. Helen repeatedly crosses over from one household to another: “many-manned Helen,” as Aeschylus calls her. Helen was (and is) the locus for exploring the questions of whether beautiful women are always necessarily bad, and whether the sexual desirability of females is always a force of destruction. Helen is also—unlike modern versions of the promiscuous or adulterous woman—always presented as at least semi-divine, the ever-young, ever-beautiful daughter of Zeus, worshiped at cult centers all over Greece, especially in her native Sparta. Modern versions of misogyny usually do not account for the possibility that “bad” women might also be goddesses.
The three-phase power play relies on the canards of promiscuity and adultery as pretexts for blame and opportunities for shame. Helen represents the classic version of this toxic outlook. This set of patriarchal conventions from antiquity have by no means disappeared from our own culture. Sexual liberty is right; all forms of anti-sexual, beauty-bashing, and woman-castigating precepts and practices are wrong. They were wrong in ancient times, and they are wrong in contemporary times as well.
The Jewish thinking arose and flourished in a mental and cultural universe that differed vastly from that of the Greeks and the Romans. A sense of sin pervaded the Jewish world and a deity that was both grandiose and extraordinarily petty dominated it. In Ezekiel, the ‘censorious G-O-D’, says women accused of idolatry, adultery, and harlotry [allowing Assyrians and Egyptians to press and fondle their breasts] shall drink a cup of horror and desolation.
This self-righteous deity goes to declare its intention to “cause lewdness to cease in the land” by perpetrating crimes against humanity on these sexually uninhibited, free-thinking women. Declaring:
“And I will set my jealousy against thee. And they will deal furiously with thee; They will take away thy and thine ears. And the host shall stone them and dispatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters and burn up their houses.”
Incidentally, there is no indication that Hebrew men who may have pressed and fondled the breasts of Assyrian or Egyptian women would drink from any comparable cup of horror and desolation.
Ecclesiastes sums up the Old Testament view of women for anyone slow on the uptake: “From cloth cometh a moth and from women wickedness.” Combined with the threat of their angry God, this assertion presents the deranged maliciousness of misogyny and prudery in all their seething vileness for your serious consideration! Is it any wonder that I vowed unrelenting opposition?
The following picture came up when I searched for “lewd women.” However, lewd women looked or acted according to the Judaism of the 8th century BCE; I do not believe the Draconian punishments described above could ever be an appropriate response:
Only a prude would call this picture or the woman in it wicked. Prudes are entitled to their absurd opinions, but they are not entitled to use the force of law or the power of custom to compel others to accept and abide by their warped view of the nature of beauty. In my opinion, a beautiful female is a joyous sight when and wherever she chooses to appear before us.
An obscure heresy in the tumultuous world of eighth-century BCE Judaism, Christianity took Judaism’s fixation on sin and coupled it with shame focused on the human body. Shame was completely alien to the Greeks and the Romans. This emergent Jewish sect, decided and preached that shame at their nakedness was the first transgression of Adam and Eve – ‘they saw that they were naked.’ In the third century CE, Neoplatonic philosophy advanced the idea of a single supreme source of goodness and being in the universe from which all other things descend. Every iteration of an idea or form becomes less complete and less perfect. Thus, the corrupt nature of the flesh went to the core of Christianity. Consequently, as Christianity pervaded the classical world, shame gained a vice-grip on human sexuality, and that continues to the present time.
This development gave misogyny a new and noxious power because it made human existence an exercise in the most directly personal kind of evil. Saint Paul put it succinctly: “I thank God through Jesus Christ Our Lord. So then with the mind, I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” Paul declared open war on the human body, and because men adeptly shift blame, rather than accept it, they made women the main enemies of the pure and just. This insane war persists in every salvo of prudery, misogyny, and methods and measures of diminishing, demeaning, and dominating women and their bodies. The so-called intimate areas vulva, vagina, breasts, plus the anus [of both sexes] are considered obscene, and prudery, misogyny, and patriarchy demand their concealment in many places today because of the libel written by Saint Paul all those centuries ago. In no case, is this hysteria more evident than in connection with the vagina! It is both the locus of obscenity and the foulest of slurs.
As Jack Holland says in Misogyny – The World’s Oldest Prejudice:
“I grew up in Northern Ireland, a world away from Punjab, North Korea, and East Africa. But it was a place where the word ‘cunt’ expressed the worst contempt one person could feel for another. If you loathed or despised a person, ‘cunt’ said it all.”
Although the message Mr. Holland conveys is abhorrent, the widespread prevalence of this or closely akin attitudes is even more so. Holland is not condoning the usage of ‘cunt’ as the worst possible epithet; he is merely describing its use as such.
I strenuously reject this use of cunt as does Holland. For me, it and its synonym – pussy, should be compliments rather than insults. Unfortunately, my affirmative view is distinctly a minority perspective as this Usage alert from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cunt?s=t makes clear
“All senses of this word are vulgar slang and are very strongly tabooed and censored. The meanings that refer to a woman and a contemptible person are used with disparaging intent and are perceived as highly insulting and demeaning. There are many words used to refer to people in sexual terms. However, to call a person a cunt, especially a woman, is one of the most hateful and powerful examples of verbal abuse in the English language.”
Being a commonplace does not make a perspective sound. Widespread usage of the words cunt or pussy as insults does not make actual cunts/pussies ugly, disgusting, objectionable, or anything of the sort. The truth is that cunts/pussies are wondrous, often gorgeous, robust, fonts of life, and wells of pleasure.
From a sound and proper perspective, ‘cunt’ means Constantly Undervalued Natural Treasure. Cunts look like flowers. All are different, beautiful, and tasty. Any woman who has seen her vulva in a mirror should thrill at its beauty. Any male who has stroked, smelled, seen, and tasted one should consider himself both fortunate and honored. We should love cunts/vulvas – they deserve nothing else and nothing less.
The vulva is the external female genitalia. It is what many think of when people think of a woman’s cunt. Vulvas vary in appearance just as women and girls do, but often vulvas are beautiful, gorgeous, enchanting sights and in a sense, their own excuse for being. Vulvas are normal, natural, and beautiful, whatever the misogynistic, prudish, patriarchal culture pervading Western societies try to sell to the unwary, credulous, or zealous. While no basis exists for considering cunts as ugly or loathsome, there are abundant reasons to regard cunts as lovely, luscious, and lovesome!
Similarly, the synonym pussy properly understood means - “Precious Utterly Sublime Succulent Yummy,” as the photo below illustrates.
If one can shake off centuries of spurious, noxious cultural conditioning there exists no rational, defensible basis for treating the words cunt and pussy as slurs, epithets or otherwise demeaning terms. The reality they describe and the real people who have them are overwhelmingly lovely, luscious, lovesome, and deserve nothing but tenderness, compliments, and caresses! The argument made here is not that any woman is commendable and superior simply because she is a female, but that no women deserve condemnation and denigration mainly because they are females. Women are individuals, and their ultimate merit or demerit is proven by their actions and attitudes, not by the shape or nature of their genitalia.
The Spring of 2019 will mark the 59th anniversary of my declaration of independence from Catholicism, Christianity, and supernaturalism generally. It also was the start of my six-decades assault on the vile misogyny and pervasive prudery infesting our culture. When my 30-something CCD teacher began another of the tirades against “bad girls” so common in that place and that time, neither he nor I knew sparks were about to fly. Many of the teenage girls he was threatening with eternal damnation for sexiness and sexual explorations, were the princesses of my nights and my partners in the pursuit of earthly delights, I had to stand up and call crap on his rap! His shock quickly gave way to outrage, and I got to continue the argument with the parish pastor. At that point, I told the pastor I had no use for this drivel and did not believe in any of the blather about deities, demons, Heaven, and Hell.
In the course of this exchange and the immediate aftermath, it became clear to me that my local Catholic Church, with the probable support of most of the adult members of both sexes, was running a full-out shame and blame campaign aimed directly at my female, teenage coreligionists who were the objects of my carnal desires. Sadly, my community was not atypical. All over the United States, authority figures perpetrated similar unwarranted slanders of young women with the probable full complicity of the young women’s families!
Some research [using books] let me know what I have found again using the Internet. “In past centuries, men hailed as Church Fathers, Patriarchs, Popes, and even Saints boldly expressed their view that females are inferior and loathsome, and they explained at length why God shared their perspective.”
Here are a dozen despicable examples:
1. Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c 160-225) On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1: “In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband, and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex, and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death, you merited, even the Son of God had to die - Woman, you are the gate to hell.”
2. Saint Clement of Alexandria, Christian theologian (c150-215): The Instructor: Nor are the women to smear their faces with the ensnaring devices of wily cunning. The Instructor [Christ] orders them to go forth “in becoming apparel, and adorn themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, subject to their own husbands.”
3. Tertullian, “Woman is a temple built over a sewer.”
4. Saint Clement of Alexandria: “[Women’s] very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame.”
5. Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430): “What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve, the temptress that we must beware of in any woman… I fail to see what use women can be to men if one excludes the function of bearing children.”
6. Saint Albertus Magnus, Dominican theologian: “Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore, she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. Thus, in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive a woman toward every evil, just as reason impels a man toward all good.”
7. Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546), “The word and works of God is quite clear that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”
8. John Calvin, Reformer (1509-1564): Commentary on Genesis, p. 172: “Thus the woman, who had perversely exceeded her proper bounds, is forced back to her own position. She had, indeed, previously been subject to her husband, but that was a liberal and gentle subjection; now, however, she is cast into servitude.”
9. John Dod: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments, Puritan guidebook, first published in 1603, “The second duty of the wife is constant obedience and subjection.”
10. Official Faith and Message Statement of Southern Baptist Convention, Summer 1998, (15.7 million members) “A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”
11. St. Jerome (4th and 5th Centuries, well-known scholar): "Woman is the root of all evil.”
12. St. John Chrysostom (4th and 5th Centuries, Bishop of Constantinople): "It does not profit a man to marry. For what is a woman but an enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic danger, delectable mischief, a fault in nature, painted with beautiful colors? The whole of her body is nothing less than phlegm, blood, bile, rheum and the fluid of digested food, if you consider what is stored up behind those lovely eyes, the angle of the nose, the mouth and the cheeks you will agree that the well-proportioned body is only a whitened sepulcher."
The main currents of Christianity have produced a steady diet of misogyny for over 2000 years! Due to Christianity’s assiduous campaign of cultural conquest, its vile view of women pervaded and still infests Western culture. This bigotry originated in the Iron Age texts of the Bible itself. The Judeo-Christian tradition of building up men by tearing down women goes back to the most ancient parts of the biblical collection, to the opening pages of Genesis, and continues unabated through the New Testament. Futurist Sara Robinson points out, “traditional rules that govern male-female relationships are grounded more in property rights than civil rights. Men essentially have ownership of women, whose lives are scripted to serve an end—bearing offspring. It is very important to men that they know whose progeny they are raising.
Due to this property rights perspective, traditional male-crafted sexual morality focuses primarily on stigmatizing female sexuality, repressing female sexual adventurism, hiding the beauty and desirability of women, controlling women’s reproductive functions, and maintaining their “purity” and value as assets. Traditional gender roles and rules evolved on the presumption that women must prove their worth by bearing children for the men they “belong to.” Modern contraception radically changed an imposed, one-sided social compact that has been enforced for literally thousands of years.
Think about it and give credit where it is due. None of us would be alive but for the wonder of a cunt. Every worthy action and valued achievement of humankind would not have been possible except for the gracious gifts bestowed by millions of cunts. Many of the most rapturous moments in each of our fleeting lives would not have happened if there were no cunts. The reflexive undervaluing of cunts leads to them being actively defamed, unjustly shamed, and outrageously blamed. This centuries-old smear campaign was wrong when it began, and it has become even viler through its long, infamous history. It is high time, and long passed to demand a halt. All people of goodwill and fair mind must give cunts/pussies the respect and reverence they deserve, that 21st-century America has light-years to go is made clear by Tumblr’s self-inflicted debacle:
“Don't upload images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples — this includes content that is so photorealistic that it could be mistaken for featuring real-life humans (nice try, though). Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine. Don’t upload any content, including images, videos, GIFs, or illustrations, that depicts sex acts. For more information about what this guideline prohibits and how to appeal decisions about adult content, check out our help desk.” Last Modified: 2018-12-17 https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/community
Georgina Ustik, a former Tumblr employee, recalls a working environment that was welcoming, and full of people who were proud to be a part of a culture that promoted the normalization of sex-positive thinking and imagery.
Georgina emphatically denounced this of the ban on “female-presenting nipples,. It’s ridiculous. Nipples are just little pink patches of skin. Everyone has them. And to especially say that “female nipples” are not allowed is so pointedly falling under backward patriarchal views on female anatomy.”
I completely agree with the statement in the preceding image. I also contend that the appreciation and respect all women deserve makes slut-shaming and victim-blaming any woman intolerable. Nudity is not disgraceful; sexuality is not sinful; sexual activity is not degrading. Prudery and the proponents of modesty are the enablers of patriarchy. They actively perpetrate a centuries-old smear campaign against the most admirable and lovable half of humankind. Both the campaign and those who sustain it must be rigorously disputed and resoundingly refuted!
Note that “real-life human genitals” are also banned. In other words, the CEO of Tumblr believes and decreed that a C.U.N.T. or a P.U.S.S.Y., or “female nipples and content that depicts sex acts” are as harmful and threatening as [1] Terrorism, [2] Hate Speech, [3] Harm to Minors, [4] Promotion or Glorification of Self-Harm, [5] Violent Content and Threats, Gore and Mutilation, and [6] Deceptive or Fraudulent Links. This prudish, misogynistic, patriarchal lunacy disgraces Tumblr, but it did not originate with and does not abide only in Tumblr.
Misogyny is not synonymous with discrimination ‘on the basis’ of sex. It is possible to hold a sexist attitude with good intentions toward women and thus be overly protective due to the mistaken and antiquated view that women are weaker, fragile, or passive. Such a perspective could lead to men earnestly seek to protect women from hassles and possible harm of pursuing independence. Misogyny, on the other hand, is malicious and generally advocates harm and contempt for women. Thus, misogyny is both mistaken and malicious. It demeans, denounces, and destroys women whenever it holds sway.
Blatant and subtle institutionalized and social misogyny is still encountered everywhere in the world. This malignity can manifest itself in laws regulating reproduction (specifically birth control and abortion) which prevent a woman from fully controlling her life, social barriers to accessing political and economic power, rape culture and acceptance of domestic abuse. It is largely a consequence of human history. Old habits die hard. Human history is largely a history of misogyny; it has only been in the last 200 years that women in any country have begun to find any measure of equality. The crucibles in which misogyny formed and flourished are the prominent religious creeds of humankind.
“Whether the Talmud is comparing women to slaves and cattle and calling them a “bag full of excrement,” or Exodus and Genesis reducing them to property that can be “sold” or “raped,” the ideas in orthodox Abrahamic religions are repulsively misogynistic. Leviticus reduces the women’s value to 60% of the men’s, while Islamic scriptures are cited for sanctioning women’s testimony as half of that of men. Religion’s obsession with controlling women and restricting their role in society by reducing them to bodies or objects aren’t limited to the Abrahamic religions.” https://nation.com.pk/23-Jul-2015/orthodox-religion-s-misogyny
“Mahabharata and Ramayana [Hindu scriptures] declare women as “root of all evil” whose biggest desire is to transgress the “restraints assigned to them.” Even the Anguttara Nikaya [a Buddhist scripture] deems “irritability, jealousy, greed and unintelligence” as exclusively feminine characteristics.”
Confucians argued that the family was a microcosm of the state, and just as a male emperor rules the state with the mandate of Heaven, the father possessed a natural authority that legitimized the social superiority of men in any social context. The “woman’s way” was to assume the roles of wife and mother. The proper place for women was in the home, where they were largely responsible for the upbringing and education of children. The chief virtue proper to women were obedience: first to her father, then to her husband, and finally to her grown son. Such views led eventually to such misogynistic practices as foot-binding (for the erotic pleasure of men), which began in the Tang dynasty (7th -10th centuries), and the “cult of chastity.”
All three Abrahamic religions have historically devalued women; in fact, blaming Eve for the fall of humanity perfectly demonstrates the role assigned to women in these religions. Think of the origin myth: one woman, a deity, a devil, and a dude – guess who got the blame and bore the shame. The woman – of course!
Judaism traditionally prohibits women from being priests or rabbis (Leviticus 21:1), which continues today in Orthodox Judaism and, to a lesser extent, in Conservative Judaism. The menstrual blood is considered a defilement; a menstruating woman was "put apart for her uncleanness," and a man was not allowed to approach the altar if he had touched menstrual blood without ritual washing (Leviticus 15:19-33).
Raped virgin women were to be married by their rapist once he paid fifty shekels of silver to her father (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and any vows made by a woman could be nullified by her father or her husband (Numbers 30:3-15). Having multiple wives was also accepted (Deuteronomy 21:15–17, Genesis 4:19–24, and 2 Samuel 3:2–5), whereas there are no known examples of Jewish wives having multiple husbands. Adultery led one to be put to death (Leviticus 20:10), and the daughters of priests who were whores were also to be burned to death (Leviticus 21:9). It was also better to offer women to be raped rather than have a man be raped (Judges 19:24). The extramarital intercourse of a married man is not per se a crime in biblical or later Jewish law. The theory of Israelite marriage: made the wife was the husband's possession, and adultery constituted a violation of the husband's exclusive right to her; the wife, as the husband's possession, had no such right to him. Adultery is prohibited for both sexes.
Of the various scriptures available for review The Dao De Jing, alone, seems to express a strong preference for distinctly “feminine” virtues, such as yielding, softness, fertility, and non-aggression, and suggests that these are, in the long run, both healthier and more effective in the furtherance of personal interests. Thus, Daoist philosophy in contrast to popularly practiced Daoist religion is the most benign toward women of the humankind’s major creeds. Additionally, Sikhism is one of the few religions that explicitly believes in gender equality, and followers of Sikhism have disassociated themselves from the Indian caste system.
"I respect women like Gloria Steinem, who paved the way. But when you say 'feminist' now, there is a message that if you are sexy and you acknowledge that part of your personality publicly, then it's somehow an affront to women. And I reject that." ~ Megyn Kelly
As do I, Megyn! Some who style themselves ‘Feminist’ do seem at times to look askance at sexy, beautiful women and the celebration of their sexual allure. Beautiful, sexy females, whatever the hue of their skin, their ethnicity, ancestry, careers, sexual preference, marital status, or other characteristics, grace our times and our places. They are to be cherished and celebrated, not chided and censured. Along with Megyn’s picture above those that follow of Gabriella Union, Emanuela de Paula, Cheyenne Silver, Laura Takizawa, and Julia Ann exemplify this abiding truth.
As the five preceding photos demonstrate, complexion and ethnicity are no barriers to beauty and sexiness in women. Only bigotry twists the mind and distorts one's aesthetic sense to give substance to such silliness.
In the natural world, physical attributes, like beauty and sexiness, wax and wane with time. The beauty and sexiness of every woman grow more pronounced and prominent as she matures. They blossom strongly in the later teenage years and, in optimal cases, flourish through the fifties. Then, as with any natural attributes, they begin to recede and reduce. Such procession does not change the fact that every woman is a full and equal human being before, during, and after the blooming of their beauty and sexiness. It simply means that sexiness and beauty are real qualities that deserve admiration when they emerge and flourish and fond remembrance when they recede and diminish.
Censorship of both the word 'cunt' and the organ to which it refers arises from and sustains a general fear of - and disgust for - the vagina itself. The myth of the 'vagina dentata' manifests this fear in stark terms - symbolizing the ludicrous male fear that vaginas are tools of castration (the femme castratrice). These seemingly pervasive fears of castration compounded by an inherited cultural belief of sexual entitlement function as foundational pillars of misogyny. Patriarchies respond by attempting to control women's "dangerous" sexuality and dominate women's bodies. Repetitive, ridiculous attacks on women around the world are deeply rooted in the persistent myth of the toothed vagina and what it represents. A depiction of this lunatic belief appears below.
In my prime, various wonderful women did me the honor and gave me the pleasure of viewing their bare vaginas nestled in the core of beautiful female bodies of every human hue. They allowed me to pay homage with my hands, mouth, tongue, penis. I can state without reservation that the “toothed vagina” is a noxious myth and nothing but a myth. Vaginas in my personal experience as confirmed by extensive photo and video research are not toothed, nor are they ugly. Vaginas are a feast for the senses. They look lovely; they smell wonderful; they taste ambrosial, and they feel delightful! When treated with the tender loving care they so richly deserve, they unleash a series of sounds that are the true “Ode to Joy” and regularly and recurrently impress on me how wonderful it is to be a living human male in the company of beautiful, uninhibited, exquisite human females!
What a long, strange trip it has been! Fifty-nine years ago, this Spring, I stood up to a sneaky shame and blame campaign attacking my female classmates. I denounced the malice in the creed behind it that too many of my contemporaries took for granted, and candidly announced my rejection of the belief system in which this malice has thrived in the guise of divine pronouncements.
The myths of deities and devils; of the Fall of humankind due to the suggestibility and seductiveness of the first female, rather than the incompetence of the purportedly all-powerful, all-knowing, ubiquitous, deity and/or the cunning and treachery of a superhuman devil, or the ambition and arrogance of an all too human dude.
While I have learned much in the nearly six full decades that have passed, I affirm only a few incontrovertible truths: Females are fully human and completely equal to males. Males would do good for all of humankind by shaking off the myths of misogyny, unlearning the prejudices of prudery, and renouncing the privileges of patriarchy. All of us should shower the people we love with love, and if we cannot be with the ones, we hold dear, we should shower love on the ones who are near!
Look at this model. Nothing shown or their real-life counterparts are filthy, shameful, ugly, disgusting, or abhorrent in any way or sense.
All those negative attributes are nothing but malicious myths. The people who have vaginas, cunts, pussies deserve recognition for the wonders they are; they deserve respect; they deserve to explore and enjoy their sexuality with us or without us. Life has its perils and pitfalls, but misogyny, prudery, and patriarchy are not natural hazards. They are the malign effects of human artifice. Therefore, we can come together and cum together and as liberated human beings put an end to these unnatural and unnecessary dangers and toxins.
We should be honest about human sexuality. In truth, all human beings are also sexual beings! The loving practice of intimately pleasuring one another brings us closer to proper regard for our common humanity. Pussy, yoni, cunt, vagina, or vulva, whatever we call this wondrous feature of female anatomy it is a precious place and a wondrous space. In the Tantric tradition, the word yoni is used to name the whole of the vulva, and it directly translates as ‘sacred cave.’ Here one meets the splendor of the essential feminine in all its glory, wonder, and comeliness. All humans enter this life by way of a woman’s vagina and vulva. These unjustly maligned organs are a source of love, pleasure, and joy for females and those who love them and behave lovingly with and toward them. Among all the flowers that have bloomed or ever will bloom, the flowers between the legs of women present the most beautiful sight, most intoxicating scent, most succulent taste, and most nectarous juice extant on planet Earth!
Now, the issue of giving women and their Constantly Undervalued Natural Treasures the credence and credit they deserve is, for me, largely a matter of principle, not practice. That is fine because as Martin observed all those years ago on 7 March 1965: "A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true." I am still a man, and I am still honored to stand for what is right, to take a stand up for justice, and speak out for that which is true! The women [and girls] who have brightened and still light up my life deserve nothing less.
Lest people think this argument focuses excessively on sexuality, remember that the underpinning of all the centuries of malevolence directed at females in our culture has roots in the dread and defamation of women as women and of female beauty and sexiness as some sort of curse. Humans are not ethereal beings; they are physical beings with this foundational characteristic used as an indictment of their very being, females must be freed of this calumny before all the other deprivations crumble. To allay any doubt that the indictment referenced above represents a clear and present danger to the freedom and rights of women, consider the following:
When Egyptian actress Rania Youssef stepped out at the Cairo International Film Festival in a semitransparent creation, it seemed like a normal occurrence. However instead of landing on best-dressed lists, Youssef got accused in a lawsuit of “inciting debauchery” and violating Egypt’s values.
It’s hard to imagine a Western celebrity being forced to apologize in a similar situation, but in Egypt, Youssef’s case is not without precedent. In 2017, Shaimaa Ahmed was reportedly jailed after the release of her music video “I Have Issues,” which featured the singer scantily clad and consuming a banana. Forced to serve a year for the kind of on-screen antics that are common in American media, her story and hammer home a sobering point.
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