Satuja ja tarinoita

Thomas Ellisin kirjasta poimittu tarina kuvastaa nykynaisten empaattista luonteenlaatua.

Lorraine?s Favorite Story

I heard Lorraine tell the story twice at work. It was obviously one of her favorites. Lorraine was in her late 50s and worked for years on ranches in Texas before getting an administrative job at Compaq. She used to like it when new ranch hands got hired. These would be young guys 17 or 18 years old. Lorraine would show them the different types of farm chores to be done. She had one chore that she saved for special occasions. According to her, she would demonstrate to the guys how to castrate a caged bull, and then take the bloody testicles and throw them to some dogs that would fight viciously for the privilege of devouring them. She loved watching the reactions of these new ranch hands when they saw that. ?One guy even passed out,? she laughed. It?s one thing to be required to castrate a bull, it?s another to really enjoy it. There are some demented women around. I never noticed any examples like her in our Compaq sensitivity training films.

Well, Lorraine is just one woman, right? How can I project that onto all American women? It has to do with that whole John Wayne Bobbitt incident. A woman slices off a man?s penis and women everywhere are delighted. I guess it?s their idea of instant equality. The women at work all had big demented grins whenever they brought up the topic. It seemed really odd to me. I remember them sitting around and laughing. They all loved it. I was standing there wondering, ?What?s wrong with them??

Men don?t go around high-fiving each other whenever a woman is tortured. We don?t celebrate stories of rape we hear on the news. But all the women I talked to thought Lorena Bobbitt was some kind of heroine for castrating her husband. She took his severed penis and threw it in the street somewhere ? even better. The office girls just assumed her actions must have been justified. Obviously he was a real jerk or she wouldn?t have been driven to do that. What courage she had. It was a moment of pure joy to them. They also delighted in our male discomfort with the topic. By expressing their delight they collectively castrate us all. It?s emasculation by proxy.

There?s more. I was visiting a girl named Elizabeth a few days after the whole Bobbitt incident. Elizabeth was one of the nicest, most affectionate, positive girls I?d been out with in a long time. She was intelligent, into history, not weird on any religions, not feminist. Just nice. Elizabeth and I were curled up together on the couch with the TV on, and there was a news update about the Bobbitt incident. Suddenly this wonderful positive girl sits up as says ?Oh God, I?m sooo glad she did that. He really deserved it.? As a matter of fact, he did not deserve it. It did not even occur to my nice affectionate Elizabeth that her comment might offend me or that I might disagree that castration was such a wonderful tool for dealing with marital problems. Any woman who thinks Lorena Bobbitt was justified in her actions is basically stating that she herself reserves the right to castrate a man if she so chooses. It must be an even better rush than castrating a bull.

Using the part of my brain that is missing from females, I switched gender roles to imagine what would happen if they showed some guy on TV who had cut off his wife?s nose or breast and flung it in the street. What if I had expressed delight over it with Elizabeth in my arms? What if I had said, ?Ha! I bet the bitch had it coming!? She would be horrified. I would be thrown out, and rightfully so. But I stayed calm and let the moment pass. The alternative would have been to have a huge fight and never talk to her again. And she was the nicest girl I?d met in years.