Men protect women, a man once told me indignantly.
Sure,
some do.
Who do they protect them from?
Other women?
Children?
Wild rutabagas? *
Rampaging rabbits?
Helen Potrebenko
* A kind of swede
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Men protect women, a man once told me indignantly.
Sure,
some do.
Who do they protect them from?
Other women?
Children?
Wild rutabagas? *
Rampaging rabbits?
Helen Potrebenko
* A kind of swede
3 replies on “Better You Should Learn Wen Do”
The blunt implication of this scrap of doggerel masquerading as poetry is that women only need protection from men. Which a moment of thought shows to be nonsense.
What about protection once ill or injured? (genderless)?
Or from myriad natural disasters (genderless) other than “rampaging rabbits”?
Or from bad politics (of both genders, or of none)?
Or from economic predators (of both genders)?
Anyone who thinks that men or women need protection from men only–who feels that all other threats are worthy only of this sort of ridicule–has led such an incredibly hermetic life that perhaps their interaction with society indeed should be limited to poetry. Or, as in the present case, to some substitute for poetry.
We do not know exactly what comment or question the man who initiates this ‘verse’ is responding to, but the woman who replies makes a point that is not made often enough.
Human beings could stand to have protection from many things. But, even in The New Millennium, many men believe that providing for the safety of the women in their lives is an important role. And a significant aspect of that role is to protect “their” women (or possibly any female they judge to be at risk) from other men. And most women (I could probably say “all”) have been victimized by men to some degree — whether it be a grope on the subway or an obscene phone call to a slap in the face or a beating or being raped or killed. Men’s strength aids them — in protecting women from the strength of men. It’s the luck of the draw, for any women who has contact with men, which type of guys she’ll meet.
men must perpetuate this because otherwise their strength has no purpose: to neither destroy nor to protect.
by protecting women men allow themselves to attack women: they know that other men will be there providing protection.
we now have a set up in which men cannot exit and must continue for to stop would cause deep displacement to the male psyche and their strength would have no purpose.
this is very sad. but there is a way out. start treating women as women and stop seeing them as little girls.