According to Malarek, much of what's causing (or at least reinforcing) unhealthy attitudes about women and sex is the Internet. Everyone knows the Internet is swimming in porn but what a lot of people don't know is that it doesn't have to stop at porn; if you're looking for a body to live out your fantasies on, you can find women who'll agree to do almost anything for money and the global nature of the Internet makes it easy for men to find these women anywhere in the world.
He goes on further to say that all this objectifies sex, turning it into a commodity to be bought and sold purely for the man's needs. The women aren't doing it because they want to (despite what most men hiring them think); about 96% of them are doing it because they have no choice either because they're caught with a pimp that won't release them or because they simply don't have the ability to raise the money they need in any other way in their given situation.
Worse, some of these women didn't even enter the "profession" willingly; some were drugged, kidnapped and sold into prostitution against their will. Why? Because the sex trade is growing faster than any other organized criminal enterprise right now, drug trafficking included. Why? Like any other business venture, it's profitable because there's a demand for it, and that demand is driven, in turn, by these "needing sex" myths men perpetuate for their own benefit.
"It's about men," Malarek says, "and men still control. [Prostitution is] probably the last bastion they control." So, these men are looking for control, not relationships. Porn does not teach relationship skills, only the mechanics of sex (and even in that it's often unrealistic or outright inaccurate); the only way to break that control is to bring about true equality between men and women by learning an appreciation for the beauty and value of loving relationships.
I haven't read his book (yet), but he said something while explaining this that really hit a nerve in me and prompted me to sit down to write this. He said:
We have to really start talking to boys, at very young ages, about relationships, about love . . . about being involved . . . We can no longer have sex education for kids and say, 'This is a penis, this is a vagina.' . . . they're way more sophisticated than that [thanks] to the Internet. You have to start talking to them about relationships; you have to start talking to them about the equality of young women, of all women and girls. You have to start talking to them about dignity.A lightbulb went on over my head the moment I heard that.
When I was in late elementary and early junior high, sex education was taught but it was still pretty sparse, focusing almost totally on the mechanics. We were actually given diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems and most of the discussion revolved around the biology of sex; from what I understand, aside from increased emphasis on sexually transmitted disease (particularly HIV), very little has changed in this regard today.
Even back in my day, long before the Internet, I always felt that this was a waste of time. By the time this was even brought to our attention, about 95% already knew how sex was done; the parts we didn't understand, how it affects people, the power of the emotional drive and so on wasn't even touched on. Today, with the Internet bombarding our young people with a plethora of sexual imagery, any class about the mechanics of sex today, to me, seems totally pointless.
I think it's time for total reform of sex education. It should start in Grade Six, I'd say. After a brief discussion about the mechanics (to dispel any myths) covering maybe a class, two at most, then the focus should shift on to the emotional impact of sex, the intimacy of the act, how it affects the judgment, the dangers of how early sex disorts judgment in a relationship, how to build a balanced, equal partnership, and so on.
In fact, people are so screwed up about relationships right now that I think this needs to be more than a subject covered as a segment of a bigger class like science (as it was in my day); it needs to be a subject in and of itself. Perhaps we could call it, "Relationship Education." It'd be a class that explores, not sex, but the emotional dynamics shared by two people who are intimately involved, learning to share each other's lives in a fair and equal way.
We can't stop young people from learning about sex and the domination of women through society; it's everywhere today. What we can do, however, is help them understand what to do with that knowledge and hopefully instill in them an appreciation for equal love, and dignity, for both partners in a relationship, man and woman (or between two men or two women in the case of homosexual relationships).
When my local library opens on Tuesday, I'm going to look for Mr. Malarek's book; I get the feeling he and I think a lot alike on this subject.
"For me, everything boils down to dignity: the dignity of another Human soul. If we don't have that, we lose everything." - Victor Malarek
