I ran across that phrase – “man, as utility device” – while I was following the comments to an article on The Spearhead – Decoding The Behavior Of American Women. Codebuster, the author of the comment, had this to say:
Even more insidious than hypergamy in the sense of women choosing better is hypogamy in the sense of women choosing less. Let’s face it… women do often seem to go out of their way to choose bottom-feeders. But in the end, both hypergamy and hypogamy are ultimately related to the same one thing… man as utility device. When a woman chooses an idiot with neither looks nor brains, she is ultimately only choosing him because he is more predictable, less likely to stray and less likely to threaten her delusions of moral of superiority.
Men, we are told, select the women they will pursue solely on the basis of their lust. Do I prefer blondes, brunettes or redheads? Do I prefer a pretty “girlish” face, or a sexy “womanly” face? Do I prefer big, ripe, womanly tits, or do I prefer small, girlish boobies that are less likely to sag when my love-object grows older? Do I prefer slim, shapely legs, or do I prefer a ripe, sexy ass? Expressing any of these preferences would be held as evidence that I am “objectifying” women, seeing women only as sex objects, judging them only by their physical assets. There’s a special word for that, “lookism.”
And yet, somehow, it’s “not sexist” when a woman dresses to show off her curves, in a silky blouse unbuttoned to show off her cleavage and a short skirt to show off her legs, with paint and powder to enhance her looks and perfume to enhance the bait … and goes to the office dressed like that. Showing off her goodies in the workplace is “empowering.” Admiring the view, though, is “sexual harassment,” unless you are one of the favored few that she wants to attract.
What makes you one of the favored few? Her perception of your utility. If she doesn’t see you as valuable and useful, and usable, you’re a sexist creep for even letting your eyes stray her way.
In the feminist view, You Are The Enemy. Your Y-chromosome is viewed as a genetic flaw, one that contaminates your bodily structure as well as your mental and emotional characteristics. Your size and strength are constant threats; your penis is seen as nothing more (or less) than a tool of oppression; your sexual interest is dangerous, and your sexual response is tantamount to rape. Never mind that you are in control of yourself, by means of your intellect: Women can’t feel the power of the male mind; at best they label it another “difference” to be hated, or feared, or scorned and dismissed.
But if your strength, your intellect, your imagination and your power can be turned to a woman’s favor, you can make her life much easier and much more secure. If you can be tamed, you will become a valuable … utility device.
I was an “utility device” for my mother. She was 38 when I was born, fresh from divorce, without a “putative father” for my sake. By the time I grew to adulthood, she was nearly sixty – and I was ready to pay my way and hers, as I did for the following twenty-eight years, especially while the nubile “girls” of my generation were marching in the streets with placards that denounced any trace of male behavior as “The Evil Of Masculinity and the Patriarchy.”
By the time there were women who recognized some value in me, I was “beyond the pale” because I acknowledged that “Mom NEEDS me.” And Mom’s well-being and happiness were more important to me than that of the “potential girlfriends” out there. Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe. But I took good care of my Mom, clear to the end, and that leaves me able to regard myself in the mirror with a certain amount of self-respect.
The women of my adulthood, of the Seventies and Eighties, were insistent upon getting everything for themselves. They did not want to marry the CEO, they wanted to be the CEO – and they insisted on it, heedless of the fact that they had no idea what a CEO did, or what made a good CEO valuable to an organization, or anything of the sort. They might as well have demanded to be bowerbirds; a function that might have worked better for them, as they seemingly had their attention on “presentation” far, far more than on “nutrition” or “the menu.” Women could insist on all the “prettyfication,” if that’s acceptable as a word, of the structure and engineering and heavy-lifting that had been performed by men since the origins of genus Homo. Women insisted that this “prettyfication” was far, far, far more important than the man-devised, man-built, man-maintained structure that it decorates.
A man is a “utility device” that fulfills Women’s – or a woman’s – needs or wishes or desires. He may fulfill her survival needs, by providing food and shelter for her and her children. He may fulfill her status wishes, by working himself to death for the sake of her House Beautiful, her fine clothes and fine car and fine jewelry. He may fulfill her desire for excitement, by being the big rough tough thug that she “has managed to tame.”
Anything men build, make, or do, in this women-first model, is regarded (or disregarded) as “mere utility.” And therefore it is that men – that Man – is regarded, or disregarded, as “merely the utility-device.”
I, among others, am aware of this disregard.
What if I choose not to obsessively offer this “utility” to others?
What happens to “your society,” ladies, if I retreat from it; if I decline to provide for you, by the sweat of my brow and the blood of my self-sacrifice? What happens when you have fewer, and fewer, and yet-fewer “self-sacrificing” White Knights, and those knights find fewer and fewer victims to deliver to your blood-soaked altars? What happens when Men decline to continue in that role of “utility devices”?
I will not claim to be speaking for other men when I say this. But I claim my own utility, and the fruits of it, as my own, alone, and I will not offer them to any woman who is not bound to me by blood and necessity. (There is my aged aunt, but I’ve provided for her by moving her into an Assisted Living facility where they’ll take care of her, and feed her, and protect her, and keep her from wandering away. She is in such witless condition that she must be kept from wandering away.)
One of these days … I am going to have my last “blood obligation” sloughed off of me, by Dear Auntie’s death. By then I hope to have sold my own house, used a moiety of its equity to buy an ocean-worthy boat, and prepared myself to get out of Dodge. When Dear Auntie goes west, I hope to be prepared to sail South … and, eventually, Beyond The Sunset.
Ladies, you can go forth and fulfill your own needs.
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No to the stick, no to the carrot (A Voice for Men, 19 May 2012) – John The Other points out, very pointedly, the more and more evident path that men are taking in the “sex-object vs. utility-object” conflict: Just Say No.
Clues on Marriage and Sex During Roman Empire (The Spearhead, 20 May 2012) – A long quote from Tacitus, describing marriage and chastity among the German peoples in the Roman era, shows by contrast how the Romans treated marriage … and frankly, our modern society looks very much like Rome in decay.
The Fall of the Female Gatekeeper (In Mala Fide, 15 May 2012) – The female is the gatekeeper who determines the future of the human race – she’s the one who chooses the father of her children. With this power comes great responsibility. Are the women of today handling this power responsibly?