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A survey of 901 Internet business customers buying items for their pets showed a gap between males and females in 2005. MIM suspects that the finding that 45% of female pet owners find pets cuter than the opposite sex versus only 24% male pet owners saying the same thing is true. There are various forms of evidence pointing to a gap--the most well-known being male consumption of pornography versus female consumption.
The survey asked what female pet owners thought about their pets versus their romantic partners. 56% of females also indicated that pets are more affectionate than men, as opposed to 41% of males saying the same about wimmin. (There was no indication of a survey of gays or lesbians.) (1)
Different roads to equality
The initial idea of many politicized men is that wimmin are sexually repressed versions of themselves. Hence, if social atmosphere changes, and men attack the "double standard," then wimmin will display the same desire as men. The pets problem to these followers of pop psych theories is an example of the repression of wimmin where they are not allowed to admit their sexual drives in public.
Ideologically, this idea is egalitarian and also opposed to post-modernism, because it assumes the ability to communicate between men and wimmin. The trouble comes in the application, because there are at least two good reasons that wimmin are not just repressed versions of men. One could be biology connected to reproduction that says males are driven to spread their sperm while females are choosier, because their eggs cannot be spread as easily.
Another reason for a gap could be that there is no biology or anything to repress for either men or wimmin. Perhaps men like sex because it is domination--social brainwashing. If this latter theory is true, then the demand that wimmin just stop being repressed and reach equality will backfire and serve domination.
MIM opposes the theory that wimmin are just repressed versions of men. Alternatively, if we adopt the theory, we could say that desire ends when the repression ends. Either way, the pop psychology ideas of a Reich or Marcuse should eat the political dust.
Experience in the 1920s Soviet Union
Claudie Broyelle claims that the Soviet Union in its initial "Golden Age," experimented sexually in a way to make wimmin more like men. Something like the pop psych view was in vogue.
These ideas acquired force of law and enabled men to exercise enormous ideological pressure on women in attempts to force them to relinquish their 'archaic sentimentality'. This is admirably illustrated in a survey made among Komsomol (Communist Youth) members at the beginning of the twenties. The question, 'Is the abolition of prostitution a problem for young men?' elicited the common reply that the young men had no need to turn to prostitutes, because 'we can have all the Komsomol girls we want for nothing'. This encouraged the revival of a reactionary movement among women, who, when asked the same question, would reply with a demand to reopen the brothels, which in their eyes gave them greater 'security'.(2)
MIM would say something backfired there, because pop psych about wimmin being sexually repressed is not true. Ideologically, on the surface, the pop psych idea is egalitarian, but an ideological stand can not usually overcome a scientific truth, unless the truth is marginal or a situation of forces that are nearly equal. Here we see an example where an ideology of equality leads to an increase in domination.
When it came down to it, no one voiced that there was a real gap in desire between males and females in the Soviet Union. When confronted with each other in a new political and social situation, the two genders did not accurately assess each other and then draw up plans accordingly.
MIM is saying the gap in desires has to be accounted for consistently. Another approach to equality says that maybe sex is sadist by men or maybe the MacKinnon theory is wrong, so real equality is making wimmin equally sadist with men. This is in fact what has happened. There is indeed a certain egalitarian idea behind sending wimmin troops to Iraq for example and having them participate equally in sexually torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. This is an example, again, where the equality is only within a nation, and not really an example of gender equality. Quite the contrary, some female biology people --the global minority called Amerikan wimmin--have been transformed into men. So this road to equality also involved an ideological stand for equality but it led to domination. Only the MIM line has even started to pin down the question of patriarchy in the imperialist countries.
Note:
1. http://www.shopzilla.com/content/release.xpml?rel=167
2. Claudie Broyelle, Women's Liberation in China (NJ: Humanities Press, 1977),
p. 145.