Glenden BrownThe Burden of Owning a Penis
One of the great things about living in today’s America is the freedom the whackjobs feel to express themselves - hence today’s classic LTEin the Trib from Dwight Sheldon Adams.
It starts off innocuously enough:
Kimberly Massengale (”Strapless generalizations,” Forum, Oct. 3) needs to be a man for a day before she makes judgments about us and the way we think.
I would say that’s not a bad statement - although I don’t think men and women think that differently. We’re not different species or anything.Â
It goes sadly, badly and madly downhill from there:
Let’s be brutally honest: The male brain is a scary place to be. If suddenly thrust into the male mind with no practice at controlling it, most women would be repulsed by how feminine sexuality affects a man.
Of course women would be shocked because, women are innocent and pure and never have a sexual thought. Right? Wrong, moron! FWIW, I’m not sure I want to be in Dwight’s brain - my brain isn’t really a scary place to be. I rather doubt women would be all that shocked. After all, they’ve seen a bunch of horndog hooting and hollering at them when they go jogging or walk down the street.
Whether anyone likes it or not, when you dress immodestly, you are activating certain parts of the male brain. This is a neurological fact. When viewing a woman in immodest clothing, most men will engage the part of their brain that is driven by sex appeal.
Yeah, because men never fetishize anything about women - like their feet or their shoes or their earlobes or ankles. It’s only those immodestly dressed sluts who turn on men’s sexual brains. Men never think sexual thoughts unless some wanton harlot wanders around exposing her succulent flesh. And it’s all the fault of those wanton, sluts with their arms and legs who drive poor, innocent men into sexual frenzies. Men just can’t help themselves with all those trashy sluts around and before you know, boing, the sex brain takes over and a man is a victim of his penis - and of course that slut who tempted him with her immodest, tight fitting turtle neck that revealed that she actually owns a pair of boobies.
Then there are those of us who work to control our imaginations. The more immodestly you dress, though, the harder it becomes for the man to control that part of himself. Many of us will deal only with modest girls, just to avoid the hassle.
Maybe women should be issued tarps to cover their wanton slutty selves before going into public. You know, maybe the good ole burka isn’t such a bad idea. If nothing of the female form is visible, then poor hapless males won’t run any risk of being out of control.
Those who enjoy a woman who exposes herself are allowing themselves to fall prey to the male brain’s sexual mechanism. Put simply, males who enjoy strapless gowns but refuse to acknowledge the sexual stimulation that female exposure provides are lying to themselves and everyone else.
Dwight Sheldon Adams
North Salt Lake
I hate it when men fall prey to their oversexed brains! Of course, males who enjoy strapless gowns fall into two categories -those enjoy seeing women in strapless gowns and those enjoy wearing them. Which group is ole Dwight talking about? Inquiring minds want to know!
One doesn’t really know where to start. Hugo Schwyzer likes to talk about the myth of male weakness - the idea that men are totally victims of their hormones, unable to control their raging, lustful selves. A great many misdeeds are covered by this myth, including rape. The “she was asking for it” defense is designed to take advantage of that myth, to put the burden on women. If she hadn’t shown her sexy self, his lust wouldn’t have raged out of control and he wouldn’t have had to rape her.Â
Good ole Dwight is offering us a steaming pile of crap dressed in the language of pretend science (neurological facts - yeah right you simpleton).  His argument, literally, is men can’t help ourselves and women have to help us help our bad selves. We are just sex crazed horn dogs. Smart women keep covered from head to toe so nothing about them can inflame male lust. Women make sure we never think they might have breasts, buttocks, arms, legs. Maybe they don’t even wear make up lest we think they might be painted harlots under the burqas.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Men do (or at least should) have the ability to control themselves. If Dwight is having problems perhaps that’s something he needs to work on.
(Now I’m going to pick out the random comment following Dwight’s letter that bothers me)
Just because I choose to dress “modestly” doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of my body. It’s my body and I’ll show it to who I want to.
(I really have to stop reading the comments on the Trib website, they just make me mad)
Thanks for letting me get that out. Carry on…
October 8th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Sounds like Dwight is struggling with his God-Given imagination. Poor soul.
I think Dwight would be shocked if he were shoved into a woman’s brain.
He needs to put down the bible and read some zoology or sociobiology.
Among other things, he would learn that the female human reproductive tract belongs in a category with other mammals that assume the presence of competing male sperm.
Women are not more predisposed to monogamy than men. IOW, women don’t dress provocatively because they don’t know what it does to men. They know exactly what it does to men. This power is a compensating factor for their diminutive physical strength.
Its OK to lust after women Dwight, just as long as you are respectful. No means no. But there’s no harm in trying…unless you’re haunted by some perverted human construct of God peering over your conscience like an infected sore that won’t heal.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:38 am
You do not own a penis, a penis owns you.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Not everyone suffers from penis weakness Jeff. I stand as case in point. No wives, no kids. Full Penis free angency.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:35 am
I think visual stimulation does, in fact, have a larger effect on men than women, but I have never experienced some sort of Jekyll and Hyde transformation upon experiencing such stimulation. No snarling, or raving, and I hardly ever drool anymore.
Pieces like this serve to remind us how much effort, and how many words, a person will use to avoid the simple, self realization of “Hey, I’m an asshole!”
October 8th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I wouldn’t say that my being married and having kids makes for a “weak” penis. I’d say it proves that the little fella works from time to time.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Hey Cliff; Ha ha, that or God has deemed to make you barren. Poor you huh? Ever consider you may just have been lucky?
So silly. Babies come from vaginas. Penis’ enters vaginas, come, and impregnate them. Without this Demonstrable Truth, that God hath apparently made, none of us would be here. The run up to this reality is generally unrestrained lust on both sexes part. Biology.
Fucking is a family value, for most of human history, you couldn’t have people, or a biological family, without it.
What Dwight is describing is the entire reason extreme Muslim men put their women in burkas. They already beat you to the tarp idea Glendon. What is to be made of the tribes that have simply placed women in one giant hut, men in another, as living quarters, and a third provided for making whoopee?! At other times besides amore’, the cultural norm is to stay out of each others way.
The old saying goes along away to defining civilzed discourse between the sexes, and orientations.
“Gentlemen never compel a lady, and Ladies never provoke Gentlemen”.
Place yourself in the context, and once consensual, what happens next is private.
March 10th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
One of the great things about living in today’s America is the freedom the jerks feel to express themselves, putting words in other peoples’ mouths so that they can then call them “whackjobs.”
And I love it how everyone on here jumps down my throat as if they know me personally and can extrapolate volumes of information about my supposed sexual malignance from a tiny newspaper comment.
Isn’t it great how we have the right to create an entire blog post 10 times the length of what we’re talking about, pretending that we can rightfully expand another person’s claims and put words in his mouth? Then we forget that the newspaper that the person submitted his article to had a 200 word maximum and reserved the right to edit and modify his comments. Isn’t that great? Then we neglect to check the original author’s own comments on the page dedicated to his newspaper submission, to read his expansion and explanation of his original post! How delightful! Come on, guys.
Truth be told, I have less trouble with immodestly-dressed women than most people I know. I am simply man enough to admit that it has an effect, will always have an effect, and that women should be more responsible with themselves. How would they feel if men walked around stimulating them tactilely all the time (grabbing their breasts, etc.), no matter how miniscule that stimulation might be? Women would be OUTRAGED. Men have just gotten used to it. We shouldn’t have.
You should respect the fact that some of us are more comfortable allowing women to be primarily HUMAN BEINGS, and their gender secondarily. I know women have breasts, buttocks, and vaginas. I like that they do. It’s nice to be stimulated and to be able to appreciate them. But some of them go too far when they say “look at my breasts” with their clothes and “respect me for my mind” with their mouths. I have known too many men who succumbed to their lusts, and I’m sick of it. They were like starving men having feasts paraded in front of them constantly. It was their fault they took what wasn’t theirs, but who can truly blame them for eating? And however strong you and I may be, there are men out there who are not so strong, and there are A LOT of them. Unfortunately, before they get treatment, they end up raping someone, or ruining their families with pornography addiction or adultery, or molesting, or any number of other grievous errors. Is it so wrong for me to ask that we tone things down to reduce the likelihood of them losing control?
Immodesty won’t cause rape most of the time. But I know personally of times when it is probable that it did. The rape was the man’s fault. Period. But women would be safer if they were more careful. If a woman is out walking in a dark alley late at night, we don’t say it’s her fault if she’s raped. But we still say that walking in a dark alley late at night was stupid and possibly even wrong. Modesty falls under the same rule.
And, for the record, the neurological effect of a male observing an immodest woman (according to the standards of his established culture in which he was raised) IS different and noteable in contrast with the neurological effect of a female observing an immodest man. Don’t use the “let’s defy his scientific credibility argument just for fun” argument just because you don’t know. And thanks for the undeserved ad hominem attack. Who’s the simpleton, you moron? You guys are a bunch of negligent retards who just like to bash bash bash. Oh, whoops! I’m falling into the same category as you are by bashing you. So I’ll tell you what. I’ll do what you haven’t:
First, you can e-mail me at sed_lon@yahoo.com to defend yourselves, so that I’m not turning you into my own personal straw man by pretending you’ve said things and felt things that you haven’t. Second, I’ll add this little accommodation: I think that the majority of you are well-meaning. I’m sorry that you felt the need to personally attack a defenseless entity about whom you knew nothing. I hope I don’t do the same to you when you say something that I disagree with. Hopefully we can all come together in a spirit of expression and unified decision-making to come to a good conclusion as to what we can agree and disagree on and still respect one another.
Thanks.
Dwight Sheldon Adams
March 11th, 2008 at 11:27 am
[...] in point, this morning while checking comments, I found a response to a post I wrote in October entitled “The Burden of Owning a Penis.” The response appears to [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I agree that immodesty does not cause rape. The victim of rape doesn’t ask for it, except in some cases of uninformed consent, including date rape and statutory rape. Nevertheless, immodesty is still a problem. Women shouldn’t whore themselves out so much. It’s annoying.
If women want respect, they shouldn’t dress like sluts. If they do want to dress themselves up like a piece of meat, they shouldn’t complain about being ogled.
Obviously, civilized men are perfectly capable of controlling their urges and treating women with respect even if those women are tramps. But it’s still impolite for women to flaunt their wares. Women should respect those around them enough to put a shirt on now and then.