Stomp Someone Down the Nice Way

To just flat out kick somebody to the ground looks pretty bad, to say the least. It's a very bold way of keeping your minions in line. But if you would rather maintain a clean social image, a better way to lay down the law is to offer people two options with which both will lead to failure!

A certain failure can add legitimacy to your commands! And it works this way quite often. For example, take the witch hysteria from the older days. Back then, to test a woman to see if she was a witch or not, she would sometimes undergo a "swimming test." Basically what they would do is test to see if the woman in question was a witch or not, by seeing if she could breathe under water. If she could breathe under water she was guilty and if she drowned then she was innocent. She had two options, you see? She could... a) die or b) die. When you set up someone's fate like this, it isn't to offer justice or fairness. This was to create a system of hatred towards females. Witch hunting was the sport of misogyny!

Much like the older sport of misogyny, today a new sport is played and it's all dressed up for the 21st century. There is a new couple of options given to women these days. The first option is to be a "slut" which is a term given as much of a negative connotation as it is feminine. (Sure, one can be a "male slut" or a "man whore" but unlike a "fireman" or a "mailman," the "man" part of "man whore" diverges from the default definition of a "whore" usually being a woman.) The second option is to be a friend zoning, cold, frigid "bitch." So as a female... you can either put out and be shamed for your lack of self respect or you can turn a man down and be the girl who "friend zoned" her buddy. Either way, you lose! Misogyny!

And it's not just patriarchy that oppresses through lose/lose options. Government elections offer no solutions, our economy guarantees poverty, drug laws generate criminals... etc. etc. When the hand of oppression knocks us down, it's only doing its job.