Theme Song
Among the tales of abstinence-only education curriculum are the Lesson of the Clear Tape, and the Lesson of the Chewing Gum.
The Lesson of Clear Tape presents a classroom of girls with a single piece of clear tape. They stick it to their clothes, then take it off and pass it to the next girl. After every girl has done this, the teacher examines the tape, points out that it’s filthy with hair, lint, dirt, whatever, and it no longer sticks well to anything. The girls are then told they are like a fresh piece of tape, and every sexual relationship they have makes them more filthy and less sticky, and they won’t be able to keep a good husband if they’ve been used too much.
The Lesson of the Chewing Gum is similar. The first girl is given some gum to chew. Then she’s told to pass that gum to the next girl, and the next girl should chew it. Presumably the response is disgust and refusal. “You are like a piece of gum. Once anyone has chewed you, everyone else will be disgusted by you.” etc. Imagine being the sixth girl in line, presented with a piece of gum five other girls have already chewed (assuming that anyone after the first obliged the teacher’s request).
These lessons are child abuse. Harnessing shame and disgust to pathologize normal behavior and reduce humans to objects is terrible. Parents that would let their daughters be subject to this are severely lacking in several ways.
These lessons are aimed at girls, but boys aren’t blind. We can see them too.
Men Are Trash, Except Worse
Any boy with two brain cells to rub together quickly realizes how men fit into this equation. When a woman has sex and becomes worthless, it’s because she had sex with a man. Every intimate interaction with a man makes a woman progressively dirtier and less desirable. Men destroy purity, beauty, and value. We are corruptors.
No wonder women don’t want men around, don’t want men to touch them, are afraid of our very presence. Our affection is what degrades them. Our filthy hands and mouths and penises are what reduce them to chewed-up gum. We have no choice in the matter, there is no grace period wherein a post-pubescent male was ever a piece of clean tape. No matter a guy’s intentions, any sexual contact with one is eternally polluting. We are the dirt and hair that ruins the tape.
This is horrifying if you care about women.
And no, it’s not just a church or rural thing, this message is pervasive throughout society. “Men Are Trash” isn’t a Christian slogan.
Men Are Legit Scary
Shitty thing is, there’s good reason for women to be scared around men anyway. Women were subjected to male dominance for millennia. In many countries, they still are.
Men are twisted by evolution into violence-machines. Wars are a male phenomenon. The vast majority of violent crime is committed by young men. ~100% of the rapes that anyone cares about are committed by men. There’s good reason prisons are segregated by sex, and public areas have safe spaces men can’t enter.
This means women aren’t safe from pollution as long as any men are around. Every man is Schrodinger’s Rapist, and it’s impossible to not be one. As long as you have a penis, you are by your nature a toxic element wherever you go.
One Of The Good Ones
I assume being toxic would suck for anyone. Being stuck with scrupulosity makes it extra crappy (although now that I think about it, maybe the scrupulosity is caused by internalizing toxicity messaging, rather than being independent of it? Eh, who knows). If you love women, and you want to be loved by women, and more than anything else you want to not be a monster, what can you do?
For starters, you shuffle your damn feet. Maybe you spend two decades as a feminist, being the best ally you can (lol….). You do everything possible to put women at ease, make them laugh, commiserate with them, be fun and charming. You do everything you can to make yourself useful and valuable. Because, you see, you have this aura of toxicity about you, it’s constantly repelling everyone, and so you have to do constant work to overcome it.
Be fun. Be witty. Be interesting. Be self-sufficient. Be skilled. Be attractive. Be hard-working. Be long-suffering and uncomplaining. Be healthy.
And don’t ever stop. Because the toxic aura never sleeps. It’s a constant attrition, and if you take a break for too long, it will wear away the veneer you built up, and people will see the true face beneath. The ugly, radioactive thing that pollutes what it touches and corrupts what it cares for.
Some day you will run out of energy, and you won’t be able to produce enough value to those around you to overcome the latent toxicity. When there’s nothing left pushing against that, no force tricking them into staying near you, they’ll leave and you’ll be alone again, at last, forever.
But that day is not today.
I know I’ve not yet produced the long-promised final post of my “What Went Right?” series that started a couple months ago. I realized I had to write this first, for context.