The Dialectic of Sex

 

What woman can afford to frown when a passing stranger violates her privacy at will? If she responds to his, "Baby you're looking good today!" with "No better than when I didn't know you," he will grumble, "What's eating that bitch?" Or worse. Very often the real nature of these seemingly friendly remarks emerges when the child or the woman does not smile as she should: "Dirty old scum bag. I wouldn't screw you even if you had a smile on your puss!"... "Nasty little brat. If I were your father I would spank you so hard you wouldn't know what hit you!"... Their violence is amazing.

The oppressed groups must also appear to like their oppression-smiling and simpering though they may feel like hell inside. The smile is the child/woman equivalent of the shuffle; it indicates acquiescence of the victim to his own oppression.

In my own case, I had to train myself out of that phony smile, which is like a nervous tic on every teenage girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My "dream" action for the women's liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their "pleasing" smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them. Likewise children's liberation would demand an end to all fondling not dictated by the child itself. (This of course would predicate a society in which fondling in general was no longer frowned upon; often the only demonstration of affection a child now receives is of this phony kind, which he may still consider better than nothing.) Many men can't understand that their easy intimacies come as no privilege. Do they ever consider that the real person inside that baby or female animal may not choose to be fondled then, or by them, or even noticed? Imagine this man's own consternation were some stranger to approach him on the street in a similar manner — patting, gurgling, muttering baby talk.