#MeToo

The following article is based on personal experience and ideas such as:

Even in public domains, I often witness situations where one person truly “makes minced meat” of another person. What I mean is ugly insults, often even ending in physical violence, noisy accusations and thus an incredible way in which someone is made to look small and vulnerable. Mostly these scenes are very emotional and for me they are often rather hard to understand. They often happen between people who apparently know each other quite well.

I always find it atrocious. It does not matter if we are talking a man and a woman (his wife), a “German” and an immigrant, a white person and a coloured person, a father and a son, or a lady and her elderly mother. Or vice versa. The problem is always that one person dresses down another person. It is totally independent of the sex or the relationship between the two persons concerned.

Sorry, but the #MeToo discussion is really something that annoys me. Using violence against other persons is a bad thing and definitely not allowed – and it does not matter at all if it is directed against men or women (or, even worse: children). It is totally irrelevant why violence happens.

But the current discussion that has been going on for years already is – as so often when we moralize and are being ethical – far too short-sighted. Let me try to describe the general situation. Naturally, it is no different in the sexual sector than in our social life.

Even when we play as small children, we are trained to win. You either have to throw someone out or you have to take someone else’s toy bricks. It is always about cheating someone out of something and eventually destroying him/her.

The result is clear:
One will win, the others will lose. And consequently, everyone wants to be the winner.

Here is a small story:

A short time ago, a lady who is looking after refugees on a voluntary basis told us how surprised she had been that
“she had to teach the Massai parlour games in order to keep them occupied. They do not even know such parlour games as ludo!”

It seems that the Massai, unlike us, have not grown up with destructive parlour games. I often feel that this is really easy to see. And that they are special in that the way they think and act differ from ours.

We, on the other hand, always must (or want to) be the most beautiful, fastest, best, most attractive,… It is the principle “The winner takes it all”. Our society wants eager consumers. Consumption is our hobby. And even in the earliest parlour games stage, the methods you may use are subtle. The only thing you must not do is cheat. Mind you, “not cheating” mainly means “getting away with it”.

This is how, from early on, we learn to think and feel, this is how we are socialized. In our lives, everything – from the outset – is about advancement, power, career, money, material advantages, positions, ownership and the many conveniences of our cultural world. The natural world is “out”, the cultural world is “in”.

Everything is about how we can, by manipulating other people and our environment, gain some advantages. When doing this, it is important that we look innocent. That includes when we shove others out of the way or accumulate property and goods. What does that mean? My house, my car, my boat, my bike, my family, my husband, my wife, my dog, my cat,…

The problem is that communication becomes violence-oriented. We generally learn to use it to our advantage. Women and men are not too different in that respect. How often was I, as a child, manipulated by adults (of both sexes) towards doing something I did not want to do and yet eventually did? Occasionally, such behaviour caused quite a bit of damage.

Except: what does this knowledge help if we are not prepared to be honest and change our communication to become violence-free?

So the first problem is that we all – men and women – were socialized in this way and that our children and grandchildren are still socialized in exactly the same way. For instance, we believe that our happiness is dependent on our sitting on the throne over others. We want the biggest slice of the cake on our plate; we want the biggest car and the nicest living room. Otherwise we will be unhappy.

We have to be the big winners and have all the power. We are trained to win. We want other people to do what we say. Otherwise we will make them look smaller.

We want to rise in the hierarchy and have others serving under us. The principle is: “Kiss up, kick down”. Very early, we also learn, practice and develop methods and strategies that we apply successfully in all areas. And if it is successful in the job, why not also in our sexual lives? How can anybody expect us to show behaviour between the sexes that is different from our behaviour in “normal life”?

Greed is perhaps inherited or acquired, and it can certainly become maniacal. However, sex is an instinct and thus beyond ratio. If “normal greed” is already a strong driver towards evil behaviour, then what will sexual desire make us do? Or in other words: if someone is already a pig in normal life, how can you expect him to be an angel in his sexual life?

On the other hand, sexuality was and still is something evil and abominable in our moralizing society. It is considered some kind of sinful behaviour that needs to be controlled by the cerebellum according to the moral code. Because humans assume that they are totally responsible for what they do and consequently have to manage “leading an honourable life and stand above instincts” (as I see it, it has been neurologically proved that this is utter nonsense).

And then comes the instinct. Let me cite Brecht and his: Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit. And “over and out” for morals and ethics. In some cultures, they try to solve the problem by forcing all females to cover their entire bodies. Well, perhaps this helps men, but does that mean it is a solution?

Now here is what I suspect: due to the biological difference between men and women (woman can become pregnant, men cannot), a sexual cultural imprint of men and women evolved over the millennia in our western cultural sphere. Social norms lived by men and women seem to have developed rather independent of each other.
Statistically spoken, I would say that the sexuality of the sexes developed asymmetrically over the millennia – which is not only true for the development of morals, but also for how people think and feel. More and more, women were made to become those who say no and refuse. After all, the interaction between man and woman has a lot more consequences for a woman than for a man, and that is not only because they can become pregnant.

Maybe there are also some genetic differences between the sexes, but that is something I leave to the psychologists and anthropologists to discuss. I do not think it is very relevant.

The social rules and regulations around a woman’s pregnancy varied. Not long ago, it was strictly forbidden for a woman to announce who was the father of her illegitimate child in France (in order to protect the man’s marriage)! Incidentally, this was in total contrast to German law. Here, the mother of an illegitimate child was obliged to announce who the father of her child was (in order to make sure the illegitimate child was not going to starve)! The catholic church even introduced celibacy because the pregnancies caused by their priests became too expensive. In those days, priests were rather popular among the woman, because they had a high social status, many were quite well off and they always had enough to eat.

Consequently, man became more and more the minstrel who wooed the aristocratic (and understandably hesitant) lady. The woman became the “god-like creature” who had to be conquered. She was stuck between being a saint and a harlot, was supposed to be both. Man, as the provider of the family, became the patriarch and the woman became the guardian of the family.

For women, it was virtuous not to have sex – whereas for men it was great to have conquered as many women as possible. Even for sheer numerical reasons, this development must lead to a paradoxical situation. The number of “men looking for sex” is higher than the number of “women prepared to have sex”.

Probably as a logical consequence of this discrepancy, prostitution developed. Sexual satisfaction is granted for money – based on clear service level agreements. They call it the world’s oldest business model, because it is so normal that it must always have existed.

The asymmetry is particularly pronounced if we are talking sexual practices that have the reputation of being “perverse”. For instance, if a man needs sexual and other debasement as part of his instinct, then he will see the Domina (and pay for it). If a woman looks for debasement, she can come to a gang-bang event (and carry quite a bit of money home in the bargain).

Prostitution is something that exists in many dimensions. If I do not earn enough building automobiles in the day shift and consequently apply for the night shift (which will ruin my health) in order to earn more, is that not prostitution? If I take an additional job as garage assistant because I do not earn enough money as a policeman, then what is that? Aren’t many modern work models nothing other than prostitution?

I founded my own enterprise because I wanted nobody else to tell me where I need to work. While employed as a “dependent worker”, it happened all the time that I had to spend five days every week away from my family. On business trips. Wasn’t that, too, prostitution? What is worse: selling my time or selling my body?

Topics like these are still taboo in our society and therefore they document our hypocrisy. And we continue to lie! When it comes to sex, the very things that are otherwise quite normal are suddenly evil!

It is particularly bad in war. During my childhood, I had quite a few relatives who had been injured in the war. They were people whose bodies had been wounded and often also their souls. These people who were crippled as a consequence of violence in war did not need “MeToo” posters. They were a living accusation. The message was part of their body:

Look at me, and you will see that I, too, lost a leg, an arm or an eye in the war.

These injuries, too, were caused by the mania in our society where violence is accepted and legitimized as a means towards an end, even in super-industrial dimensions. We improve armament and build mass-destruction devices. And we hope that those weapons, like war itself, will be exported, rather than used at home. Which is probably an illusion.

But we could not care less. Instead of opposing and fighting violence, we get worked up about men mostly having the problem of wanting sex while women mostly have the problem of wishing to avoid it.

The solution is simple: men are said to have a much “stronger sexual desire” than woman between the legs. The moral accusation is that they have no self-discipline. And that they use their power. But then: is there anyone who does not use their power?

The defamation continues. They have even come up with pathological terms: Satyriasis for men (allegedly quite common) and Nymphomania (said to be the exception in women). And both are defined as illness. You can find them in the medical lexicon of bad deceases that need to be treated.

Well, if that is how you look at it, then most men need a therapy. There are some “nice” men who deny their sexual appetence. They complain about the majority of their politically incorrect gender. Some of them even believe in their own denials. They are just the worst of them. They remind me of homosexuals who do not wish to or cannot accept their (as they themselves see it: wrong) sexual orientation and then are particularly ruthless in their arguments against homosexuals.

Thus, the man-woman-model we live has a lusty man’s side that desperately looks for sex. And those evil devils will then (naturally) apply the very same patterns that have proved to be a success when sexually conquering the virtuous women.

And now, again, they start crucifying, condemning and lying. Regardless of the fact that it is actually quite simple. The less violence we have in the social frame, the less sexual abuse will we have. In a peaceful society, there will be no rape. And the more violence determines the social framework, the more rape there will be. In war, where we have the maximum of violence, it becomes a matter of course.
Here is the message of my article:

Let us build a violence-free society. Then you will have no sexual violence, either!   
Using accusations, discrediting, even more joy in punishment and revenge and the old strategies for promoting individual and collective interests, you will not improve anything. Instead, you will only create new frontiers and moralism.

Thus, it is easy to explain that, in a social world and in social systems where success is mainly realized through using power, position, violence and intrigue/trick-oriented communication and material promises, sexual success, too, will naturally be sought and realized with exactly these same strategies.

This is naturally true for political and church-oriented systems. It is no surprise that those are the places where sexual abuse is most abundant. Just like we now seem to witness it in the EU parliament. What exactly are the methods a simple party member needs to apply in order to manage the leap from the district party association to the European Parliament or into the Federal Cabinet?

How is the lonely representative in Strassbourgh or Brussels or Bonn or Berlin – far from home – supposed to satisfy his sexual hunger? Due to the workload of a representative, it all also has to be done extremely efficiently – i.e., with minimum time. There are only two ways to get sex:
Either pay or use your position and power!

Besides, I am not sure if you need to feel too sympathetic towards all the “victims” who now put “MeToo” stickers on their desks. To me, it seems quite possible that some ladies might have done quite some diligent weighing of priorities Perhaps some actually took this absolutely legitimate (not forbidden) path towards personal advantage and power quite deliberately.

And with such a sticker on your desk, you can also again draw a little attention to yourself – which, after all, is quite an important currency in politics.
However, I hope you will not now want to punish the women who quite deliberately and willingly made use of the “sexual dependency” of men for their own purposes? For instance because this is unrighteous behaviour against the competing men? Even if the idea might actually seem justifiable, such measures would really drive me over the top…

Back to what this is about:    
Apparently, the more the system is determined by power structures, the more sexual abuse there is. That sounds logical. Then it is only natural that successful strategies that were applied in normal life over many years and decades (for instance if you wanted a party career) are also applied when there is “sexual interest”. Especially if the pressure to succeed, due to the instinct, is even bigger in the sexual area than in the normal area of greed. Well, we apply what we learned …

As I see it, this will naturally not be restricted to the hetero-sexual area (where certainly the majority of victims are women, which I truly regret), but also in homosexual and paedophiliac sectors. And then, men and children will also be the victims. And I feel even more sympathy for the children than for the men and women. Because children mostly have absolutely no way to protect themselves against such violence. For me, taking advantage of someone who is absolutely helpless is quite criminal.

Now let me turn my thesis around:    
If MeToo means that, by means of evil threat, using positions of power, violence-oriented communication, threatening of negative consequences in case of denial and rewards in case of acceptance, some people have been made to do things they would otherwise not willingly have done, then everybody should probably wear quite a few MeToo stickers. This is true for all sectors of life – not just for the sexual sphere.

I, too, could easily put a few MeToo stickers on my desk. For things – totally outside the sexual sector – I was forced to do (or where this is how it felt to me) and for which, even if I am not ashamed of them, I still feel slightly angry about. In those cases, it annoys me how I have been made to bend my will and how I fell victim to the evil method that was successfully used on me.

Let me emphasize that, with this article, I do not at all want to justify or belittle “sexual abuse” (the use of emotional or physical power for sexual ends). All I want to do is remind you that, in our lives, we are constantly made to do things we do not wish to do through the use of violence. Some of our really important decisions and activities that we do not approve of are still forced on us through pressure or threats from the outside (the powerful) as a matter of course in this country. So: we are all #MeToo!

And, first and foremost, we must remove this common violence structure from our lives in order to become violence-free in our sexual interactions, as well. For instance by violence-free communication. Let us start with utopia and let it become a real option!

It might be a totally different question if
“the ideal of a harmonic cooperation between the sexes is possible and desirable at all”.
But that is a totally different topic.

At least, I cannot think of any sincere procedure or practicable process that would, with the current mental concepts, guarantee such cooperation. How can sexual interaction – for instance in the socially legitimate environments of a marriage – be organized in an ethically perfect way? I can imagine that things that seem quite possible in a business relationship concerning sexual services is not quite as easy in an actual partnership.

But now I moved long enough on thin ice and will continue to write about men and women in a later article. I could also formulate a proposition that supports the “harmonious cooperation” in a marriage by introducing “formal processes. “The sexual interaction as a general marriage contract like a partnership declaration” could be the title of a wonderfully cynical article.

But first, I will again write about electronic bikes… or some other harmless topic. And after that perhaps about sex. There are more than enough topics ldft to write about.

RMD
(Translated by EG)