Being raised to oppress: male/female relations....

So I slept in a house last night and because I was warm for once, and have grown used to sleeping in the cold (cold enough to see your breath most of the time,) I had a hard time sleeping. It was wierd, being all comfortable and stuff. So while I was having a hard time sleeping, I thought about the patterns I get into in relationships (specifically, sexual relationships with the opposet sex,) and why my relationships always end up being abusive in some way, shape or form. I'm not gonna claim I'm always the one being abused either; quite often, I'm the one who ends up doing the abusing, which is usually via manipulation and drunken fights, teasing and calling my partner names, etc.

This lead me to thinking about the type of partners I usually chose; being a somewhat strong and dominant woman, I tend to chose weak and submissive men (not always, but sometimes.) Why do I do this, time and time again, knowing that it doesn't serve me well? Well, because the way we've been trained in this culture, we have been lead to believe that all relationships have a dom and sub; someone on top and someone on bottom. I don't think I can think of a single relationship I've ever seen or experienced that was not based on this model. Can it be done? Can you have two equally strong and dominant people together? Would that work? I'm not sure I can answer that.

I began to think about how mating and pairing off happens with animals in the wild. Are pairs based on equality, or inequality? I saw a program about wolves not that long ago in which a husband/wife team spent something like twenty years just watching the dynamics of this one pack of wolves. When the new alpha male went to chose a new mate, they where very suprised when he chose a female who had been always bullied by the rest of the pack; a female who had to wait on the sidelines until the rest of the pack had eaten before she could move in and eat, a loner female wolf...

This did not suprise me. Obviously, the alpha male would have an easier time subdueing a weaker female...after all, humans usually pair up in this way, and the structure of human packs often closely resembles the wolf pack...so to me, this made perfect sense. The weak female moved up by submitting to the alpha male...she bore his pups and became alpha female. In a sense, she had to subject herself to pregnancy and birth in order to rise in rank; just as humans often feel they had to submit to unwanted sexual advances or rape or marriage or whatever, maybe this wolf felt that this was just one more level of being bullied by the pack; or perhaps not.

The guy I was watching the video with argued with me about this very subject; when I blurted out "oh, well now she gets to rise in standing..." he replied with "if you call getting knocked up rising...."

He had a point. So why do I have a pattern of finding men who are already used to being bullied, used to being kicked around, etc? Do I consciously want to hurt, control and oppress them? No, in fact, I'm often attracted by qualities I see in people who have been hurt, as I have been hurt, by this culture (a fierce desire to love and be loved, the ability to withstand hardship, a toughness that comes only from withstanding the worse of what this culture has to offer, a passion that comes with being able to see clearly where things are really fucked...only those on the very bottom can truely see how very fucked things are often.) I admire these qualities, and yet, once I get into relationships with these types of people, I fall into old habits of "kickin' um when they are down..." Like the alpha wolf, I tend to go straight for the neck; I bite hard until the oppressed yelps and runs away, tail tucked.

I used to actually be physically abusive; I had a boyfriend named Chris who would get really drunk with me and then I'd call him names and beat on him. He was also emotionally abusive; he would call me names and tease me all the time, drunk or not, but this was no excuse for my behavior. Again, as pack animals, can we let go of this type of primal violence? Is it a necessary part of our pack behavior, or do we need to seek to irradicate it?

I have no idea; I know that sometimes I get a great deal of pleasure from mildlessly attacking people (Chris was especially fun, since attacking him often lead to violent sex, which I sometimes enjoy,) I think I really enjoy having a sense of power over someone; so some might say I'm cruel and evil. Perhaps I am. Or maybe, I'm just a primal pack animal after all, a hairless ape, screaming and beating her chest in frustration.

Love ya,
Carrot