Those things really piss me off. I mean — come on. What exactly is the point? To let the drivers behind you know that you’re a “real stud”? That you like the ladies? Are you so insecure in your sexuality that advertisement is required? Or maybe what you are really saying is that women are only good for one thing, and that message must be broadcast everywhere — including on a tire mud flap. After all, those uppity girls might start thinking they deserve something more than receptacle status of the mighty penis.
Oh was that too harsh? Don’t like to have your depictions of “sex” criticized? So riddle me this…why is that when people talk about “sex” what they really mean is the naked female body?
I wish more people would question why “sex” equates with the female body, not the male one, or why we conflate the ubiquitous porn symbol of this silhouette commonly located on truck’s mud flaps with “sex”. I mean, is she having sex? Is she wearing some kind of secret bat signal that is only visible with special glasses attached to the binding of Penthouse…you know…like the cheap 3Ds you have to tear out carefully lest the cheap perforation give way and bend the plastic film. Why can’t she just be relaxing on the beach, reading a book? Or maybe she’s doing post-dance cool off stretches. No wonder intellectual young girls grow up to be angry women.
But I think what is really going on is that when men say “sex sells” they’re trying to justify treating women like objects by calling a naked woman “sex”. Such a statement affirms in our culture that human beings with round breasts and round hips are only good for one thing – to stick a penis inside of them, usually as roughly as possible, to demonstrate “male power”. Think about that – a man only has “power” if he is hurting a woman. This is the message. This is what men are taught to believe about themselves, about each other.
When women question this, when women insist that they are human beings capable of all the things men do, men will reassert this message again and again, with all the force of rape, that women are meant for fucking, and for nothing else. That’s the message of the truck flaps. That’s the message of “sex sells”. Women are garbage bins for males to use and toss.
While men have been busy with their porn addictions and their hate of women on the internet, women have been very busy talking to each other, and paying attention to the horrid things men say and think about us. Women are fighting back now, with greater force and commitment than, say, 20 years ago. Back then, you rarely saw this type of pornified objectification questioned. Now, the questions are everywhere, and they are getting louder as more and more women’s voices join in the chorus. And men are threatening us, claiming that we are destroying them. Funny. How is protesting our own dehumanization destroying a man? Maybe because a man’s humanity is predicated on the dehumanization of a woman. Think about that for a bit while you’re trying to wrap and warp your brain into the torturous labyrinth of rationalizations that support the porn culture. It cannot exist without taking away the humanity of a woman.
Saying that women ARE sex, instead of women have sex, gives men the control of sexuality. Women, in this context, can’t be given control, because of the possibility that they will refuse men and deny what the man wants. It also assumes that sex itself is a penis going into a vagina. But that’s another post for another day.
Grow the hell up already, boys. Mommy left a long time ago. We are not here for your pleasure. We are here for ours. We are here for our own lives, our own survival, our own happiness. We are not going to sacrifice ourselves to support your peevish, destructive, anti-woman attitudes and actions. Welcome to the New World Order.
Aurora Novus 