"I couldn't have condescended better myself," say the Heartless Bitches in the audience.

[xenologer]

I'm going on vacation for a couple of days with archmage_brian, and we are going to King's Island in Ohio to play on rollercoasters. His parents are helping with this, since we have no money (the natural result of our primary wage-earner working for a non-profit on commission, bless my bleeding liberal heart).

There are many cool things on LJ, and I cannot respond to them all. However, this one stuck out.

Thanks to crysthewolf for linking this. You know why.

Honestly, there's a lot that's still bothering me right now. If I told you a shirtless fat man made kissy noises at me while I passed him on the street, you wouldn't be surprised (and it happened a couple of weeks ago). If I told you that a man was hitting on me and wouldn't spare the time to listen to how this affects me before insisting that he respects my mind and individuality, you'd say, "But virginia_fell, that makes no sense. If he cared about your thoughts and feelings, he'd want to know what they were. You're talking crazy-talk. You need to develop this character better, because his motivations make no sense."

So imagine this. It will make things clearer.

You are a manly hunter. You go out and prove your worth by performing certain arcane rituals taught to you by your father, handed down from his father and his father before him. When you have proven your manly worth with a string of completed tests and tasks, you will have earned a woman.

You will get this woman by looking at her. She is there to be looked at (by you or someone like you), and desired (by you or someone like you), and won (by you or someone like you) through the series of manly warrior hunter tests and tasks. When you are done looking at her, you must check your macho checklist. When you have completed all of the items, you will receive Woman.

Because Woman is not a hunter, Woman is given to the one who looks at her, wants her, and earns her. There are a limited number of Woman-things available, but thankfully you're only competing with other men for this scarce resource. You can win! We promise!

So keep looking, manly hunter. If you look and want and chase just a little longer, she will have no choice but to come to you, her manly manly hunter who won her.

That's how it works!

There's no misogyny here. If you hated women, you wouldn't be working so hard to get one. If you hated women, you wouldn't place such a high value on having one of your very own. If you didn't respect women, you'd find something else to spend your energy winning and maintaining. If you thought of her as a prized thing, a reward for your labors, an object, you would...

Well, actually, it would still look like this.

But that's not misogynist, right? You love women.