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Thursday, February 02, 2006
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 NO MEANS NO, YOU BITCH!
If you're a man in modern society, chances are are you feel cheap and degraded on a daily basis. You feel like a piece of meat and you know that no one will ever respect you for you. It hurts and you cry yourself to sleep almost every night.
I'm not sure what hurts the most, the leering, the unwanted sexual comments or the uninvited fondling. It's getting so I can't even have a conversation with a woman where she even bothers trying to make eye contact. It seems as though I'm talking to the top of her head, so intently is she staring at my crotch as she licks her lips and gunts her responses to me. I feel her eyes burning through my pants for hours afterward. The shame and humiliation are unbearable. I'm a person, too, dammit!
It would be one thing if the constant harasssment only happened in the workplace and on public streets. But it only gets worse when we get home. If anything, the abuse only intesifies with a shocking brutality and crassness.
God help you if a relationship with a woman moves beyond the platonic. Then the demands for sex are shameless, demeaning and near constant. Girls, sometimes a man just wants to be held and loved. We want to know that we're special to you, not just another body part that'll bring you three orgasms in 20 minutes before you roll over and fall asleep without a word, leaving us unsatisfied and empty. We need to know that we mean something to you emotionally. We need to hear it. Yes, it seems like we're nagging you, but we want to know that you love us.
Genrations of mothers teaching their daughters to define their themselves through their sexual conquests have taken their toll on men. Women have come to view men as dehumanized sex objects. If a man doesn't give a woman what she feels entitled to, she has no compunction about taking it, often violently and with tragic consequences.
You might say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Men everywhere silently pray for a day that we never have to hear another story like this one, even as we suffer in silence.
Modesto police said Kelli Pratt wanted her feeble 65-year-old husband to have sex with her the night of Oct. 7.
When Arthur Pratt refused, police said, his 45-year-old wife held him down and bit him repeatedly during a savage attack that ultimately killed him.
Arthur, whose skin was riddled with more than 20 deep tooth marks, died Sunday at Doctors Memorial Center in Modesto -- six days after the attack.
Detective Sgt. Al Carter said Wednesday that Dr. Jennifer Rulon, a Stanislaus County forensic pathologist, believes that the case will be ruled a homicide and that the bites are the likely cause of death.
"He was able to dial 911 that night," Carter said. "We have a tape recording of him screaming while she was biting him. When officers arrived, he was screaming that he'd been assaulted. She fought with the officers and tried to bite them, too."
Arthur Pratt, who had been released from a hospital several days before the attack, suffered from diabetes, heart and circulation problems, and other health issues. While those ailments weakened his system, apparently they are not what killed him, Carter said.
An official ruling will have to await toxicology tests. Those tests, which are not expected back for at least several weeks, could reveal additional details about Pratt's death, such as whether the bites caused an infection that proved fatal.
Carter said he believes Pratt already was in a weakened condition and this put him over the edge. "His death was a direct result of being bitten," Carter said.
Carter said he believes Pratt already was in a weakened condition and this put him over the edge. "His death was a direct result of being bitten," Carter said.
Kelli Pratt was booked the night of the attack on charges of elder abuse, domestic violence and assault on a police officer, Carter said. Wednesday, she was being held at the Public Safety Center with bail set at $50,000. A homicide charge is pending the toxicology results.
The Pratts lived in the 2700 block of Park Place. Carter said the county's Adult Protective Services had a file on Arthur Pratt, perhaps indicating some history of abuse, but those records were unavailable Wednesday.
"I've seen cases where dogs have bitten kids, and blood loss or infection led to death," Carter said. "I've never heard of anyone being bitten to death before."
Another man, just trying to live his life and retain just a little piece of his dignity, brutalized and murdered for no other reason than his refusal to satisfy the impatient libido of someone who claimed to love him.
The tawdry, crass come-ons and little gropings seem innocent enough to you. Maybe these women think we should just grow up and deal with it like big boys. But they don't understand the climate of fear it creates. They don't know what it is to lose a little piece of their humanity every day.
My name isn't "cupcake"or "buttercup." I dress this way because it's comfortable, not because I'm "asking for it." I take the subway so I can get to work and go about my day, not because I want God knows how many women rubbing up against me and touching me in unspeakable ways.
I can't go about my day unmolested. I can't go out to dinner with a woman without worrying about her ulterior motives. I can't be in a relationship with a woman based on mutual respect. I can't be in public without feeling eyes on me everywhere and knowing the indecent thoughts behind them. I can't go out at night without a friend. I can't even feel safe in my own home.
I'm not a person to you. I'm just a man. An instrument that you can use to satisfy your base physical needs and dispose of without a second thought. I'm either a tool or a toy to you, a means to an end.
And no woman will ever know what that feels like. Ever. Sometimes I weep for the little boys out there, knowing what they'll face someday and the fact that there's nothing I can do to change it.
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