An addendum...

Aha! A chance to expound upon an earlier post! I think as I peruse my email.

To be fair, most women that I am friends with enjoy dressing up in skanky outfits on Halloween. It's not like the costume manufacturers are trying to force women to dress like whores - they're just meeting the extremely large demand for whorish costumes on Halloween. In fact, the only girls I know who don't dress up like whores for Halloween are either too insecure about their appearance or in relationships and don't want to make their boyfriends jealous.

Of course, it's stupid, because it makes some women feel bad about themselves and creates a socially accepted framework that women's appearance matters much more than is healthy. But I still don't understand why it's worth blaming a Patriarchy when we could just blame stupid people for being obsessed with physical appearance and sexuality

This was a comment that was left in the What kind of Whore would you like to be today? That is both common and gives me the opportunity to explain why it's wrong.

To answer the first point, do women enjoy dressing up in whorish costumes for Halloween? Sure they do, some women, as we all know, really seem to enjoy making themselves available for the male-gaze.

I think it's important to ask ourselves why they 'enjoy' it. And for THAT I'm going to refer you to The Sword of Power. The theory is long and drawn out but quite frankly what it rests on is the ideal that women are taught to portray sexual availability at all times, for all men.

It's a bargain that we are asked to strike by The Patriarchy. Quite simply it goes like this. Women know, very well, that they have no power. We are taught this quite effectively in school, (all of this is explained in The Sword of Power) we are taught this by our parents, we are taught this by law enforcement, by clothing, by advertisements, by porn, by models and my the fashion industry. But most of all we are taught this by boys, boys that are cruel and can cause us great humiliation and fear.

Unless we use our bodies to cater to them

This lesson is taught to us very young. And we retain it, we remember it. If we make our bodies available to men, to every man at every time we are granted a certain amount of protection from men. When men are busy getting in our pants they're not calling us names or belittling us or even being violent with us. Most batterers are sweet and kind when they want to get fucked. Groups of men whom we cater to and talk to and show our bodies to aren’t screaming horrible things to us when we look away. We learn that our bodies, and more specifically, making our bodies available to men is what is needed to protect ourselves from their wrath.

Some women believe that this is empowerment; some women believe that they are taking some sort of control, some sort of power, but that belief is an illusion. The women who are dressing like whores are doing so because they have bought that illusion hook, line and sinker. They believe that showing their tits and baring it all will give them power they remember the lessons from their youth and haven't come to realize that they are still not in power, even when they expose everything to men.

So, while there are women who appear to enjoy dressing this way it's an enjoyment that is dependent completely upon the men around her. It's a means to retain something that resembles power. If there are no men around she's not likely to be vacuuming the house in stilettos and a mini-skirt. That display is there for men. Because that's what men have told us we need to do to escape their wrath.

A woman who is dressing to show men that she is available to him is probably not going to have to contend with screams of, "Dyke", "Cunt", and "Bitch". She probably won’t be called “frigid” or a “prude”, she won’t have her sexuality assaulted by when she becomes what men want. There is some perceived protection in it.

Those who don't follow the protocol will be picked apart mercilessly. They'll be attacked over their weight, "Gee, she doesn't need to eat another burger" their clothes, "Damn woman, why don't you show a little leg sometimes, you dress like a dyke". Anything and everything is fair play to a woman who is not conforming to being sexually available and showing that she is sexually available.

This mindset is nicely available in the comments next sentence,

In fact, the only girls I know who don't dress up like whores for Halloween are either too insecure about their appearance or in relationships and don't want to make their boyfriends jealous.

There it is, in black and white. I don't want to make you feel bad, but I am going to use your words here because, quite frankly, they are all over the place. Your opinion is a very popular one and I’m going to try to show why, even though it’s popular, it’s wrong and shortsighted.

According to this sentence, women are either insecure about making themselves sexually available or already have made themselves sexually available and therefore shouldn't advertise it lest they make their partners jealous. The inherent idea in this sentence is that if we, as women, are NOT dressing up like whores for Halloween, if we're NOT parading our bodies around for the male gaze then we're obviously either insecure or we're already someone else’s property.

And who in the hell wants to be called insecure? This is the same tactic as the ones that boys used in 6th grade, only now, it's all grown up. See, here's the problem, the statement implies that it's perfectly normal and logical for women to parade themselves around as a human buffet for male consumption, those that don't are only NOT doing it because there is something wrong with them. Some character flaw.

This is the sound of a chair being called a chair.

Our commenter then goes on to redeem himself, somewhat. But see, here's the problem, what he has already said in the first sentence has already been read by the lizard brain which understands the presuppositions immediately. However, I suspect that the thought was there, and it was sincere, even if the commenter doesn't realize that there are other thoughts up there that speak just as loudly, perhaps even more loudly than the thoughts he expressed in the first sentence of the second paragraph.

Of course, it's stupid, because it makes some women feel bad about themselves and creates a socially accepted framework that women's appearance matters much more than is healthy

Yes, it does all of that. But again, we find that there is a presupposition in this statement. Those of you who are new at presuppositions, take a moment to see if you can find it.

Waiting....

Ok, I'll go ahead and note the presupposition as a question, "So, exactly how much is a woman supposed to obsess over her appearance? Is a woman who doesn't worry about what she's wearing still healthy? "

None of these things were intended to be said, at least not on the surface, but the presupposition is there, and when I find one of these little suckers I like to determine, in my head, what it's saying about what I really believe.

Here's the point, why should a woman worry about what she's wearing at all? If women are not the sex-class then what she wears should be given just as much thought as what a man is wearing (which tends to be next to nothing). Why does it matter at all what she wears?

The Patriarchy.

But I still don't understand why it's worth blaming a Patriarchy when we could just blame stupid people for being obsessed with physical appearance and sexuality

Because, it is the Patriarchy that is upholding this fallacy, this idea that women must make themselves available for sex whenever a given man wants it. This is especially true for women who fit the male definition for 'attractive', they are constantly told, "Why don't you show a little bit of leg? You know, you're so pretty and you never flaunt it" Obviously, 'flaunt' means, 'let every man know that your body and your skin is open to their perusal at all times'.

Women aren't benefiting from it.

"Well, yes they are BB!" Some would say, "They're getting male attention" and so they are. There is one other thing they're getting: perceived protection from other males. If she's with one male she's already taken and therefore it's taboo for other males to holler, hoot, scream or touch her, NOT because she doesn't LIKE it (it is generally assumed that she does like it, or, at the least, that she doesn't mind very much, and, if she does mind it's most likely because she has a low self-esteem) but because she is the equivalent of a chair who currently has someone using it.

What does it say about society when women feel so forced to succumb to what males want to see? What does it say about us when women are forced to be the vision of porny-ness to any male who happens to be within eyeshot? What does it say that the acceptable attire for even a business woman is a skirt? Something that shows her as being of an inherent lower status as the men she sits with in the boardroom?

Furthermore, what does it say about our society when those women who don’t conform are told that they’re ‘self-conscious’ or that they have ‘low self-esteem’?

When we succumb to the temptation to wear these costumes at Halloween or at any time of the year, we succumb to the temptation to conform so that we're not the butt of the joke, so that we're not in danger of men because we remember the times when we were.

I don't blame the stupid people for this. Those stupid people are generally the women, it is THEY who are obsessed with how they look but the pressure is coming in HUGE amounts from The Patriarchy. These women are only doing what men have trained them to do, and THAT is all about The Patriarchy.

The Patriarchy is the system that allows this sort of thing to flourish. The Patriarchy is the system that encourages women to behave in the ways that men like and while the easiest offenders to point at are Porn (which is ALL about The Patriarchy) there are many, many other arms to the octopus.

Women ARE the sex-class and this becomes evident to anyone on Halloween. The fact that on THAT night alone a woman is able to become anything she wants, a Doctor, a President, a Scientist and that the women are just becoming so many whores says something very clear to me...Stockholm's Syndrome.

~Biting Beaver