Column: Auto Mechanics, Sperm Donors

The days of female subjugation are over boys! -- I can't believe I have to do the dishes! Easy, easy girls . . . er, women . . . just kiddin'. It seems a new ripple of feminism is burrowing its way up, out of the semi-dormant '80s and into our new decade. Now, long overdue, women are bringing heinous crimes like rape and battery on stage for all of us to consider. The new awareness of these issues is another achievement of feminism, primarily, but of a maturity in our societal attitudes toward sex. But, (Were you women waiting for this?) it seems in some instances this maturity breaks down, infuriating women and men alike. The early seventies brought feminists like Betty Friedan and Kate Millet. Radicals who charge all marriages and heterosexual relationships are invariably one-sided unions where the male reigns supreme over the female. Millet exhorts sex between man and woman as wholly impure. Friedan coined the phrase "comfortable concentration camp," referring to all women that stay home to raise a family, even if they choose. This is what stopped men from listening. Even some women became confused when they were told things like shaving their legs would contribute to their own sexual exploitation. What the hell's the difference? I prefer my girlfriend's legs shaved just like she prefers my face shaved. And if we lapse in our hygiene it doesn't matter! Today, it seems that some complaints are trivial. Is demanding that hurricanes be given male names really constructive? I heard a woman on television say the only men that should be allowed to live are the "auto mechanics and the sperm donors." She said it for a laugh, but I'm beginning to fear that one day some Feminist Biologist will invent a synthetic spermatozoa and then . . . that's it boys. Mike Tyson is presently in trouble up to his oversized, Everlast trunks. He's been indicted for rape and is being sued for $100 million by a former Miss Black America because he "assaulted, battered and humiliated" her by grabbing her buttocks. (Wait, isn't participating in beauty pageants degrading and humiliating to women?) Any way, these charges are just the latest in a long squalid saga of his mistreatment of women. He has sexually propositioned sales clerks, made indecent hand gestures to a female attorney and this isn't the first ass he's grabbed. I agree that he is a carbuncle on the buttocks of society. But, what Melanie Baham, the New York chapter president of the National Organization for Women, has to realize is that Tyson is innocent until proven guilty. The law applies to Mike just as it would to Mel had she been doing the grabbin'. He has a right to make a living. So, he's going to work on Nov. 8. Fortunately, my faith in women's rights advocates was recently renewed. Rosemary Ruether spoke at Penn about feminism in the third world. I had read a little about the government in Pakistan issuing laws to require women to wear unnecessary, traditional garments and had heard of cases where women actually lost their jobs when they didn't. I thought this was a bad transgression until Ruether spoke about "Dowry Murders." She explained that there are cases when a man, being unsatisfied with his fiancee's dowry, will plan the bride's "accidental" murder. Wow! -- maybe this is what women should funnel there excess energies into correcting, instead of a hand on the buttocks or Hurricane Bob. Gregg Ventello is a masters student in Liberal Arts from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Odi Et Amo usually appears alternate Mondays.

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