Woman as blotting paper, lightning rod, sacrificial anode

[sam]

I came across this D.A. Clarke/DeAnander article while reading Stan Goff's Feral Scholar blog http://stangoff.com/?p=362#comments and thought it needed reprinting here. DeAnander's comments at the blog about lefty men's cognitive dissonance about the sex industry and the war against all oppressed peoples are also exceptional.

Scandals of Sexual Greed: the Catholic Church and pedophiles
by D.A. Clarke

During the eventful spring and summer of 2002, the American Catholic Church was rocked by a scandal. National media were publishing the embarrassing and shocking history of pedophile offenders among the priesthood and the Church hierarchy's role in protecting them.

The Church's official response to the scandals was not always constructive. On the progressive website TomPaine.com, journalist Richard Blow posted an op/ed denouncing the homophobic purge recommended by some conservative Catholic bishops and priests. Blow responds with appropriate ire to remarks by, for example, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory: "It is most importantly a struggle to make sure that the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men [and] that the candidates that we receive are healthy in every way." And Monsignor Eugene V. Clark states: "...in some seminaries in the United States, known homosexual young men have been accepted as candidates against every rule of church wisdom and church requirements. One need say no more of this as a breeding ground for later homosexual practice after ordination, and the manifest danger of man-boy relationships."

Blow contends, accurately enough, that attempts to associate pedophilia with homosexuality are groundless. As he puts it "gays are no more likely to abuse children than straights." The right wing of the Catholic Church is trying to exploit the scandals to pursue its own homophobic agenda.

They are factually as well as ethically wrong, claims Blow: the fault is not with homosexuality, it is with the doctrine of celibacy. "It is Catholic dogma; the church doctrine dictating that priests must be male and must be celibate. In trying to shut off the faucet of human sexuality, the Church has created an unhealthy atmosphere, a single-sex House of Usher, in which frustrated men engage in sexual behavior they would not otherwise resort to.

"Sexually speaking, the church is akin to a prison, where men who are not gay have sex with other men-and children-because they desperately need an outlet for their sexual desires" (www. tompaine. com/feature.cfm/ID/5517).

Blow (et al.) have revived the antique notion of men as helpless victims of their own raging hormonal imbalances-what has been called "the hydraulic theory" of male sexuality. Despite its inherent ludicrousness, this notion has served for centuries as a convenient excuse for everything from the rape of adult women to the murder of "unfaithful" wives to the abuse of children.

Blow refers to prison as an environment in which men behave in a way that they would not behave outside. But a feminist observer considering the pattern of male sexual aggression and related behaviors in all-male prisons is struck not by the difference of this system from the outside, but by its replication of the outside world, complete in every detail.

All these "inside" behaviors occur exactly as they do outside; the social pattern is identical. Men outside prison commit rapes and gang rapes (the U.S. has the 2nd highest reported rape rate in the world, only recently exceeded by that of South Africa). Men outside prison profit from the labor of enslaved prostitutes. Men outside prison demand the services of prostitutes. Men outside prison exact sexual and domestic services in exchange for "protection" from other men.

The only difference is the gender of the people being prostituted, gang-raped, forced to choose between sexual servitude to one strong-man and an even more dangerous existence as public sexual property of the whole neighborhood. These are experiences that women have traditionally endured and still endure wherever poverty, civil unrest, or other factors break down the frail web of democracy and conventional law and order.

Rape of men in prison upsets most people who are willing to think about it at all. One of the reasons it upsets people is because prison is in at least one respect "the world turn'd upside down." Our prison population is, for various shameful reasons, disproportionately Black (and other men of color). Young white men (especially if they are middle-class, not streetwise, or otherwise seem "soft") may become victims of sexual aggression from men of color.

By contrast in the outside world (despite persistent racist fantasies) men of color very rarely rape white women; men of all races mostly rape women of their own culture/language group, though white men exercise the option of raping women of color as well. Outside, the world is right-side up again. Though we have unwillingly learned (as a society) to tut-tut a bit over the rape and exploitation of women by men, it doesn't shock us nearly as much as what happens in men's prisons.

If men in prison rape other men and boys only because they "desperately need an outlet for their sexual desires," then how do we explain the incidence of rape outside prison? What explains the international traffic in sex slaves? Are we supposed to consider the rape of women and girls by men somehow more normal, wholesome, and tolerable than the rape of men by other men?

If men in prison rape young men or teenagers only because they are deprived of other "outlets" (a charming way to refer to the female population) then what explains the multi-million-dollar child porn industry in the so-called "normal" outside world? What explains the hundreds of thousands of respectable, "straight," married businessmen who take package sex tours to Thailand to screw little Thai kids at bargain prices? What explains the extensive Internet networks of pedophiles? The exploitation of runaway teenagers?

Are all these men abusing kids, raping women, seeking underage prostitutes, and flocking to websites offering "live dirty teen girls online," because they are not getting enough nookie?

Obviously many pundits think so, since this seems to be a favorite explanation of the misdeeds of corrupt priests. What's the solution? Equally obvious: abolish the pernicious doctrine of celibacy. Start marrying off the priesthood. If each man is provided with a compliant lifelong sexual servant-er, partner-of his own, then his wife can absorb any aggressive sexual energies he may contain, so that the larger community won't be harmed.

Woman as blotting paper; woman as lightning rod; woman as sacrificial anode. Any woman who has desperately negotiated and pleaded to keep an abusive husband or boyfriend's sexual attentions focused on her rather than her teenage daughter, knows what this is all about-putting her body between the dominant male and his chosen prey.

Behind these blandly respectable proposals to marry off the priests, to end the "barbaric" doctrine of celibacy, which "forces" men to abuse children, is an unspoken message: adult women are more expendable than little boys. Though we all know that adult men molest little girls as well, it's overwhelmingly the wide-eyed altar boy whom the political cartoonists (and the popular mind that they represent) imagine at risk from the predatory priest. To deflect all that predatory male sexual energy from harming him, we obviously need a legion of dutiful wives.

But what if there aren't enough women willing to marry all the priests who need to be "saved" from their own raging hormones? For the sake of a better society will we then have to establish official Church brothels to ensure our holy men get serviced often enough to defuse their "dangerous urges?" How, exactly, will we recruit for these brothels?

You see where this is leading. The claim is being made, implicitly if not yet explicitly, that priests share an entitlement claimed by secular males, the entitlement to sex on demand; and they must be provided for in this regard, if we're to hold them accountable for their actions. After all, every enlightened person knows that masturbation makes you go blind or mad, or both; so men cannot possibly be expected to make do.

Think hard now. When was the last time that a woman successfully claimed uncontrollable impulses of desire drove her to molest a little kid? When was the last time that someone defended such a woman on the grounds that she hadn't had any sex for a long time and there wouldn't be a problem if only someone would find a nice husband for her? Where are the scandals about our celibate communities of religious women? Aside from a few passionate lesbian affairs within the sisterhood, there's not much going on there.

Is anyone telling me that women don't have passionate sexual desires? That women have no sexual feelings, that we're all cold fish? I don't think so. Women have done (and suffered) extraordinary things not only for love, but for flaming desire as well.

But women, unlike men, do not grow up convinced that the whole world owes them a free fuck. Nor do we grow up convinced that everyone smaller, weaker, or lower on the social totem pole than ourselves is fair game. We may endure (or enjoy) sexual whims, itches, and grand obsessions much as men do, but our priorities are different.

When men of the Church-allegedly disciples of Christ-practice sexual predation, aggression, and domination it's particularly ironic. Presumably, for true believers, it is also deeply shocking. The teaching of Christ is to put ourselves second and our compassion and love for humankind first-love, please note, not appetite or lust. The doctrine of Christ instructs us to see in every human face the image of God and in every human being our brother or sister. What does that imply about molesting a kid?

Perhaps the most directly applicable utterance attributed to Christ is "inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, so ye have done it unto me." More than that one could hardly say in condemnation of a sexual predator in priestly robes.

Christ's teaching-to protect, respect, and honor the meek and the powerless-is a repudiation of the traditional, barbaric male opportunism, which regards everything weaker than oneself as potential ass. The model of sexuality expressed in our American pornography industry (the largest in the world), in our brothels, sex clubs, prisons, and also our college campuses, movies, literature, and all the rest, is traditional: opportunistic and instrumentalist. We are taught consistently, from a very early age, to regard other people as potential gratifiers of our own self-interested and self-referential desire. If the other person is disabled, drunk, underage, overly trusting, then so much the better: easy meat.

This is an era in which college boys find it amusing to drug their female colleagues and rape the unconscious body. Could we ask for a clearer example of the deliberate exploitation of power and advantage over another person? Or for a more unchristian attitude?

Fundamentally, ethically, there is no difference between molesting a child and rendering a woman helpless before molesting her, nor is there a difference between these acts and raping a weaker man in a prison cell or getting your cellmates to help you rape him. In each case, the opportunity exists and is taken advantage of-or is arranged and then taken advantage of-with cynical ease. It is done not because it should be done, but because the opportunist believes he can get away with it.

The problem with our priesthood is not that it's radically separated from the world, radically de-sexualized and different from daily life, it's that it's all too similar to daily life. The men of our priesthood are behaving entirely too much like men outside the priesthood.

The question we should be asking-what radical feminists have been asking for over 40 years is, "Why do so many men-including, unfortunately, priests whom we expect to adhere to a higher standard of behavior-feel entitled to make sexual use of anyone they can find at a disadvantage?" Why do male attendants molest mental patients? Why do male cops strip-search and molest female prisoners? Why do men rape their own daughters? Why do men want to rent women by the hour? Why do men want to view women filmed in scenarios of humiliation and apparent pain in pornographic magazines and videos? Why do men cover up for the sexual crimes committed by other men? What is the persistent connection between male sexuality and dominance, opportunism, aggression, and harm-and for Heaven's sake (or at least for women's and children's sake) what are we going to do about it?

"Marry them all off" hardly seems like the answer, unless we revive the laws that once made it legal for a husband forcibly to rape his wife, the great nookie shortage problem will not disappear just because a few marriage licenses are signed. Not every wife is willing to be a sexual convenience, available any time her husband "demands his rights."

No, if we are to have male priests, doctors, dentists, cops, teachers, professors, judges, bosses, day care workers-and priests-who can be trusted not to molest any body over which they attain momentary power, then we have to change something about the demand side, about our belief in the legitimacy of this sexual selfishness and greed. It's way past time we stopped telling women it's their duty to provide an endless supply of sex for men. It's about time we stopped raising our boys to be men who think they have a right to other people's bodies.

No progress can be made against a system of force and power until we can accurately name it and describe what's going on. As long as any system-be it white supremacy, the divine right of kings, or the various ways of "keeping women in their place"-is accepted as "natural," those who perpetrate the specific abuses implied and required by the system are absolved of their responsibility.

To define a lack of opportunity for sexual congress as an unnatural state, which justifies unnatural or antisocial behavior, we have first to define sex as a primary "need." This is the traditional ("hydraulic") approach to male sexual appetite: that it is equivalent to hunger or thirst. Having defined male sexuality as a primary "need," we create the system which, if we were allowed to name it, we might call "male sexual imperative" or "male sexual privilege"-the right to pre-empt the bodies of other persons to service an overriding "need." This assumption is so basic that it's never articulated until the notion of sexual scarcity is used to justify or excuse sexual predation.

"Our fellows were so sex-starved," a Soviet major told a British journalist at the time [regarding the frenzy of rape in which victorious Soviet troops indulged after the fall of Berlin], "that they often raped old women of sixty, seventy, or even eighty-much to these grandmothers' surprise, if not downright delight."

As James Welborn wrote (also on www. tompaine.com): "I've never had sex with a 14 year-old boy before, but I'm sure that if he and I were stranded on a desert island together with no hope of rescue, I'd eventually give the proposition some serious thought...."

Consent is not mentioned here. What is mentioned is that given a situation of sexual scarcity (the classic "desert island"), this otherwise apparently rational and civilized writer would "give the proposition some serious thought." Whose "proposition" would that be, exactly? Who would be making such a proposition? And to whom?

What would the 14-year-old boy think and feel about it? What if he wasn't exactly keen on being the handiest "outlet" for an adult male's sexual frustrations? Would he have any choice in the matter? If the taboo against intergenerational sex can be so easily discarded, dare we hope that constraints against coercion or rape would be preserved, particularly when we know how much coercion and rape take place not on desert islands?

It is interesting to note that, as he speculates on the point at which scarcity overcomes taboo, Welborn does not mull over his own chances and prospects if stranded on a desert island (or in a high security prison) with a much larger and stronger adult male. Nor does he ask himself whether he would find himself "seriously considering the proposition" with a 74-year-old man. His thought experiment, and I'm sure the thought experiment of the controversial Mirkin also, is limited to a "disturbing" scenario that is actually quite comfortable and familiar: the dominant male exacting sexual services from his social inferiors: peasants, women, juveniles, children.

The revelation of this long-festering scandal of child molestation and official cover-ups, which has wounded the Church so deeply, has in a curious oblique way revealed as well the depth of our belief in male sexual entitlement. When we blame these men's sexual predation on doctrinal celibacy, we implicitly endorse the ideology of entitlement, the conviction that it is reasonable or justified for men to use violence, coercion, dishonesty, and betrayal to get sex-if they can't get it any other way. The fault is not with the men, but with the system that frustrated their desires so badly that they "had no choice."

Men justify the use of force to allay sexual appetite much as one might justify the theft of a loaf of bread by a starving peasant. The salient differences are that one does not die from a lack of sex, that orgasm and the attendant physical release can be achieved without involving others, and that the peasant is not consuming the body and soul of another person in order to appease his or her hunger.

If we are to address (and redress) the offences committed out of sexual greed by men against women, kids, and other men, we need to name the ideology of male sexual entitlement and perceive it, for what it is. We dehumanize both men and women by regarding men as living hand grenades, wandering "sex bombs" under terrible pressure, ready to explode at any time-and women as some kind of necessary safety valves or professional bomb disposal experts. We dehumanize men by denying them volition and conscience and women by denying them the right to say no. The hydraulic theory of male sexuality in the end blames male sexual aggression not on men who aggress, but on anyone who says no to them-be it the Catholic Church, a "chilly" wife, or women in general.

There should be no place in a society for this kind of thinking; women (and kids and younger or weaker men) are not "outlets" for the sexual energies of alpha males; they are not a resource to be mined if unclaimed by a stronger male or unable to defend themselves; nor are they some kind of food to be consumed "at need." Men of conscience need to re-examine this easy, tacit assumption of natural rights over the bodies of other people.

Arguing that self-restraint is impossible, that men are victims of their own uncontrollable urges, that celibacy is the real problem-doesn't help one bit. It's too glib and too familiar an excuse.