Wednesday, August 15, 2007

The World Without Men

Frantzman Weekly Newsletter 39
The World without Men
July 24th, 2007

Imagine a world without men. What would change? It seems quite obvious on the face of it. However it is worth exploring in order to understand the position of women in society. In the West a world without men would mean that some 50,000 sex workers in New York alone would be out of business. Semi-sexual services such as ‘Topless Golf’ and ‘Bikini Lawn Mowing(a service offered in Memphis)’, topless drive-thrus or the various restaurants such as ‘Hooters’ and others that offer mostly nude waitressing, would no longer have a clientele. How many women would suddenly no longer have ‘work’ in porn, prostitution and stripping and their various other forms, such as the sex-slave trade? Millions of women, perhaps tens of millions out of the half a billion people that live in the West and states with a Western culture. It would be a strange world wouldn’t it. In London alone on one day of walking around the city the author noted a number of index cards advertising ‘girls waiting to please you’ and ‘Polish supermodels’. One can’t enter a newsstand in England without noting that two thirds of the magazines are devoted to porn or ‘boob contests’. But it would all disappear without men. A massive industry would collapse. All those women who spend so much time posing nude and going to strip clubs to be ‘cool’ and dancing in ultra-tight shorts for men, would find themselves with nothing to do. A whole culture would evaporate. The reverberations would go far beyond the sex industry though. Women would no longer wear thong underwear and no longer wear high heels. Women might even stop spending hours making themselves up to look nice for men. The entire worldview of western women would have to change.

A world without men would illustrate the degree to which women in the West are completely enslaved to the notion of what they need to do for men. We speak of a society of ‘equality’ and Feminists spend most of their time whining that women aren’t paid equal to men, but they don’t seem to note the incredible transformation that would take place should one sex simply disappear and women be forced to fend for themselves in the world. It’s not just a matter of how they would fend for themselves but the massive changes that would happen in terms of how women would dress and behave without men around. All the women who ‘play stupid’ in order to attract men would suddenly have to re-tool their entire vocabulary.

But how would the situation of men in Western society change if women were to disappear? Imagine all the men waking up tomorrow without women around. What would they do differently? What would they wear differently? Well it turns out men’s clothing is incredibly comfortable, unlike wearing and walking in high-hells, so men wouldn’t alter anything. Men don’t work in a sex industry that requires the presence of women, so their jobs wouldn’t change. Millions wouldn’t be out of work because men don’t work in industries that are composed of solely female customers, unlike women who primarily work for men. The world of the man would not change at all in the West. This exposes the degree to which the West has lied to itself about ‘equality’. The fact that the roles of women and men are so disparate, as illustrated by the changes in the cultures and occupations of the two groups should one group not exist, shows the degree to which the Western view of women is primarily a lie. Women are not equal and although they appear equal under the law they have conspired on the most part in Western culture to degrade and disenfranchise themselves. In an attempt to show that they have been transformed from the women of the 1950s, who cared for their men by cooking and cleaning, women have simply replaced their role in society with a new one that enslaves them to men, the role of sex object. As women abandoned morals in the 1960s they suddenly found that men had such a vast choice of women to sleep with and because of abortion and birth control, never had to suffer the consequences, women find themselves sidelined in society, in a position that requires them to forever be on display, hoping to be noticed by men who no longer have any responsibility.

But the West is not the only place to blame in this respect. The opposite of the West in terms of the position of women in society has usually been Islam, at least in our popular perception. Since women are so ‘free’ in the west, certainly Islam would be the opposite. But imagine the same question posed regarding the Islamic world: the disappearance of men. How would the role of women change in the Islamic society without men. First of all we can be assured women would discard all the ridiculous clothing that Islam designed for women to wear. That’s not a surprise since we know that the clothing, the Burka, Abbaya, Chador, Purdah, veil, all the black clothing, was designed by men to act as a virtual prison for women when they leave the home, which is their prison. We know this because we have illustrations of what women wore in pre-Islamic times. In Egypt and Turkey we know how they dressed. In fact we know that in India and Indonesia just two hundred years ago they went about in comfortable clothing that allowed them to move about with ease in the hot climate. We also know today that they are now swathed in layers of black and hot clothing that restricts their movement and health as much as possible in those places. So we can be sure that women would no longer wear the ridiculous outfits imposed on them by an intensely male religion.

But clothing is not the only thing that would change. Women would no longer have to submit to the male rules forcing them not to leave the home, not to travel alone and other things, women would no longer be worth half of a man under the law and in testimony. As the only people in society Muslim women would do what they pleased and go about as they pleased. They would no longer be beaten by their husbands and have to ‘obey’ their husbands because of the requirements of their religion.

But, as we asked in the West, how would the position of men change in a Muslim society if women disappeared? The position would not change at all. Men would still dress as they do because Muslim men dress as they please already, they don’t have uncomfortable clothing imposed on them. Men would still go to work and go relax and smoke with men after work. They would still go to mosque and pray. Nothing would change in the male world of Islam because nothing is imposed on the man in regards to women. He doesn’t have to stay home, he isn’t required to receive permission to travel, he doesn’t have to cover himself up, he does whatever he wants today.


The West and Islam are not so different in this respect. In both societies the role of the women is directed entirely towards the man. Almost everything that takes place among Western and Muslim women is identical in terms of their subservience and obedience to the needs and desires of men. The situation of ‘Purdah’ or covering and modesty found among women in Pakistan is no different than the situation of strippers in the West, in both cases the woman is either covered or uncovered because of men and their desires, in one case the desire to keep other men from seeing one’s women and in the other case the desire to see women nude.

The ideal society, so far as equality goes, is the society where the role of women and their culture and dress would not change dramatically should men disappear. The ideal society in terms of equality would also be one where the position of men would change should women disappear, where both sexes influence and are obedient and devoted to one another. That would be a society in which both sexes have responsibilities in regards to one another. It would be a society in which both sexes have obligations towards one another.

Islamic and Western societies are examples of cultures where men have no responsibility. The western man may go to his whores and his strippers and impregnate many women and he has no responsibility towards any of it. He does whatever he wants in regards to women. He marries and divorces. His is a life devoted to himself and his selfishness. The Muslim society is composed of the man who does whatever he pleases while his wife stays home and is obedient and faithful. The Muslim men may take more wives, he may visit prostitutes and strip clubs, he may view porn, he may flirt with non-Muslim women and be alone with them as much as he pleases. The Muslim man, like the Western man has no responsibility. He has no obligations towards women. He doesn’t have to be honest to his wife. He doesn’t have to be faithful to her. He can discard her in divorce by saying “I divorce thee” three times(the ‘Triple Talaaq’ divorce). He may enter into temporary ‘Muta’ marriage should he feel the need to give religious sanction to his sexual appetites, a marriage that exists for merely an hour in the Shia form of Islam. His wife is just a beast, an object. But the woman in the West is also an object, as the poster in England describes it best; “hundreds of girls waiting to please you.” The position of the woman in Islam and the West exists for the man and the man has no responsibility in either society.

There may not be a society that would miss its women should they disappear and this is a tragedy. It is a tragedy that the world of the man in most societies is one in which he exists purely for himself and his own self interest. It is also, equally, a tragedy that the role of women in most societies whether ‘liberal’ or ‘fundamentalist’ is one in which they do everything to please men, whether it is wearing a Burka or a G-string.

Could we say that there are societies where this is not the case? It seems that there are. The conservative society expressed in many places does offer an alternative. It is an alternative where women dress modestly, not with Burkas, but with clothes that they enjoy wearing, ones that are not designed for the eyes of men. Men in the conservative society have self control and responsibility and obligation. They have guilt and a conscience. It is these qualities that make the conservative society one that values women and men in a more equitable way. Such a society is always lampooned as one in which the women are un-equal and suffer discrimination. But do they? They don’t grow up thinking the options in life involve the brothel, the strip club and the porn acting studio. Is there any greater discrimination against women then viewing them as beasts of sexual burden? The answer that Islam offers for the West is that the West’s ‘immorality’ shall be swept away and it should imitate Saudi Arabia. But is there any greater immorality in the world than the lands of the gulf Arabs? In these areas the men import foreign prostitutes to please them, they marry whoever they please, they divorce their wives when they become too old to please them, they drive fast cars and sit on the beach and go swimming, by contrast their wives are covered and kept at home, they cannot drive or go abroad, they cannot go swimming unless they go in their long black all-covering clothing. In a recent case in ‘moral’ Saudi Arabia a woman was gang raped by five men and she was punished by the court for being ‘alone with a man who was not her husband’ and sentenced to hundreds of lashes. In short a woman was raped and then whipped for being raped.

No comments: