For a lot of women, going to work, going out on a date and even going home may feel like the sheep lying down with the lion, and not in that dreamy biblical harmony-among-all way, more in this 17th century France way.
They say that in times past, a calf, a goat and their sister sheep, kept company with a proud lion, lord of the neighbourhood, and pooled their gains and losses.
The goat caught a buck in her noose loop knot trap. She sent for her associates. Once gathered, the lion counted on his fingernails and said:
We are four to share this prey.
Then he divided the buck into four parts; taking for himself, as the noble among them, the best quarter.
This quarter is mine by right, he said, and the reason is, that my name is lion.
To that, there was nothing to say.
The second part, by right, the lion continued, should also come to me. This right, as you know, is the right of the strongest. As the most valiant, I am entitled to the third quarter. And if one of you tries to touch the fourth part, I’ll strangle them, just like that.
It’s true that from money to sex, men have been taking more than their share. There is much for women to hashtag about. But we are not in fact sheep. We are adults with fully formed minds. Sure some bits of our brains may have been socialized toward sheep-ness, but we are thinking, discerning beings, so we owe ourselves the effort to transcend our conditioning.
Scads of sleazy lions populate the entertainment industry (as one example). When women decide that’s where they want to be, they are already on notice that they will encounter a lot of predators: that there will be movie directors who require nudity, and not the necessary-for-a-good-movie kind, but the gratuitous and gross (and virtually always and only female) sort; that there will be men who are over-inebriated with their own power and who therefore won’t notice when you are giving them non-verbal cues that you’re not enjoying their attention; that there will be men whose idea of funny is boorish and infantile; and I could continue this list of inappropriate, non-threatening and non-illegal behavior. Because, to be crystal clear, I am not talking about behavior like what Harvey W put women through.
Or, to look beyond the entertainment industry at the wider world of the lion kingdom, what the women at the Ford plant suffer.
I’m talking about all the stupid, offensive and, above all, tiresome behavior we put up with.
Of course the men should behave better. But it is also incumbent on women to stand up for themselves, and I don’t mean by complaining ex post facto, I mean stop participating in the dynamic in the moment.
Taking off my clothes in this scene is not going to advance my career the way I want and isn’t fun. Don’t speak to me that way. I’m not enjoying this sex. You may be famous and powerful, but I still have a choice not to engage with you. No. No. No.
We need to risk being bitches to stop letting men be lions.
What are these fableogs?
By Mina Samuels on January 18, 2018.
Exported from Medium on March 17, 2018.