I used to want a harem. I wanted to have dozens of women who wanted to please no one but me. I was 12 at the time and starting to recognize my attraction to women and I figured that having more of them was smart, you know, in case I got bored. I’m a single child and I wasn’t about to share. Besides, who wants a woman that someone else has touched? I certainly didn’t. Fortunately, I turned 14 and realized I’d spent 24 months living in a media-inspired delusion.
Wanna hear something sad? Most of the world never woke up from that dream.
I can spend two years typing non-stop and not even scrape the surface of the ways we objectify women. From foot binding to modern advertising, most of what we do and see is directed at a patriarchy and reinforces the idea that women are to be lauded and hoarded while men are to be defined by the women they get. Because of this international ideology that is more often than not rooted in religion (See: Bible, Qur’an, etc..), we get situations where birth control law is determined by men, what women can and cannot wear is determined by men, and in many countries, who a woman can marry is determined by men.
The men are therefore treated like the rulers while the women are treated like the currency by which the men prove their rule. This isn’t the way it should be for any of us.