YA-O-O-O-W-L!
ALPHA AMERICAN WOMENHOOD—A PROBLEMATIC MISS SCARLETT ASPECT

“Check your privilege” is a phrase afoot today on some college campuses. It is directed at white males in particular. It is used to remind such men that they likely benefited from favorable experiences, perceptions, assumptions, presumptions growing up, which they are not fully cognizant of, and to which they have not given proper consideration. Moreover, they continue to benefit from same. It is meant to check and cow such (privileged) persons, lest they, in speech or action, suggest that others, less advantaged, are not only inferior, but at fault for this inferiority.

Recent psychological studies support this premise.*

This Yowl suggests that “check your privilege” might also be directed at an alpha class of American women—specifically Caucasian, well educated, professional-type, below the age of fifty, and, typically, not unattractive. Such women tend to exercise (fiercely), they are ambitious, they are all about self advancement and “leaning in.”** They are privileged and self assured. They are destined to be American leaders and influence arbiters.

Not that women should not be ambitious and take advantage of all opportunities. The Yowling Wolf is a feminist who wholeheartedly believes in advancement of women. His two grown, achieving daughters are proof.

However, attitude, belief, outlook count for much. This is particularly so when attitude, belief, and outlook is reflected in American leadership, and is problematic.

The Wolf has discerned a curious attitude/belief/outlook on the part of some, if not many, possibly even most of the women in question. It bespeaks an unrealistic, arrogant, even fantastic sense of entitlement. Ominously, it is redolent of an American brand of female entitlement, arrogance, imperiousness, and surreal behavior, evident in a particularly dark, unsavory chapter of the American past.

It is The Yowling Wolf’s view that unnoted, unexamined, unchecked, given the power and influence such women will wield, this attitude/belief/outlook has possible negative implications for American relations abroad and race relations at home. (History shows that the two are not unrelated.)

Manifestly, imperious arrogance and fantasy in domestic and foreign policy and planning cannot be a positive.

As is said, “from small acorns do large oak trees grow.”

The attitude/belief/outlook detected, examined, brought to light in this Yowl may be termed and characterized as a “Miss Scarlett” aspect. The contention is that a Miss Scarlett aspect is alive and well in an influential group of American women, and this augurs problematic going forward.

Hang with The Wolf!

CONTEXT
The reader has, it is hoped/assumed, seen the classic, blockbuster American film, Gone With the Wind. A soaring epic of mid-nineteenth century American southern gentility crashing into the Civil War, it is based upon Margaret Mitchell’s runaway best-selling novel of the same name. Clark Gable plays the dashingly handsome, bold, swashbuckling, not-quite-a-gentleman, possibly-a-Yankee, war profiteer, Rhett Butler. His love interest is fiery Scarlett O’Hara—pouting, arrogant, spoiled, iron-willed exemplar of privileged southern slave era womanhood, played by then newly discovered English beauty, Vivian Leigh.

If the reader has not seen this movie, order it immediately. It is a great show and depiction of an important American era. It nicely establishes context for this Yowl, as the Miss Scarlett aspect here examined has Scarlett O’Hara of Gone With the Wind precisely in mind.

AMERICA’S PECULIAR INSTITUTION
Called the “peculiar institution,” slavery in the United States was a perverse, but not at the time (in the world) unusual system, wherein men (and women) enslaved other men (and women and children). Humans were owned literally as property by other humans, much as livestock and pets are owned. (Except pets and livestock today have far far more protection against mistreatment.)

Slaves did the bidding of their owner master. They did onerous chores. They were told when to come and go. They were punished at the whim of masters and mistresses, often severely. Sometimes they ran away seeking freedom. By law they had to be returned. It was a shameful, barbaric period in American history that has significant ramifications, racial, economic, and psychological, to the present day.

Early on, persons of both Caucasian and African heritage were slaves of a sort. Called “indentured servants,” such persons could purchase freedom by dint of years of hard work and careful saving, and many did. Poor persons in England and elsewhere abroad “indentured” themselves in exchange for boat passage to the New World (and presumed better opportunities). Such servitude was economically based and justified thereby.

Subsequent enslavement of persons brought from Africa as cargo for the express purpose of sale as slaves existed in northern as well as southern states. Such slavery generally lacked possibility of freedom being purchased. However, freedom was sometimes granted by benevolent or grateful owners. Such slavery was justified by theories of “natural superiority.” It should be noted that ownership of Black slaves by free “Negroes” was not unheard of.

Some years ago in lower Manhattan, New York City, during excavations near Trinity Church, bones of Black slaves in an apparent graveyard were discovered. The broken, diseased, and damaged condition of the bones demonstrated that life for Black slaves in the North could be brutal, short, and neglectful, the same as is popularly depicted in southern states. However, the truly harsh, damning manifestation of slavery that comes to mind, as depicted in Roots (popular television series), Gone With The Wind, and, more recently, the movies Twelve Years a Slave and a remake of Django Unchained, occurred almost predominantly in southern, eastern states—Maryland and south (below the Mason-Dixon Line).

The African’s capacity for hard labor in fierce sun and humidity (where Whites and Native Americans wilted), and the human-power cultivation/harvesting requirements of vast fields of tobacco, cotton and other agricultural products required importation of literally millions of human cargo from Africa, destined for sale and enslavement. The reputed 400-to-1 ratio of slaves to citizens in some ancient Greek city states was not approached. However, small numbers of Whites employed harsh measures to ensure control over larger numbers of Blacks in both city and rural environs.

In order to justify such an inhumane institution and inhumane dealings in a God-fearing Christian nation, also in order that Black slaves not find political commonality with large numbers of near equally downtrodden, destitute Whites, particularly in the South, notions of “race” and “racial superiority” were invented and popularized. Previously non-existent, these ideas were given scientific credence by exponents at such leading Americans institutions as Harvard and Yale. (At which institutions professors and students sometimes owned [Black] slaves.)

VENEER/CHARADE OF SOUTHERN GENTILITY
Concomitant with rise of the southern slave plantation system and vast wealth created thereby for slave masters (several of whom in Georgia, Mississippi, and Jamaica were The Yowling Wolf’s antecedents!), came the usual pretentious ambition of the wealthy to both fete themselves, and to be recognized, admired, and feted by others.

Enter mimicry of European high society by the (English/French/Spanish aristocracy-loving, non-puritan) southern gentry class. Imagine, as depicted in movies invoking southern plantation life, grand parties and balls at fine city mansions and grandiose plantations. Imagine a slave-owning merchant and plantation class garbed to the throat in European finery, and beneath it in the sultry humidity … sweating profusely. “House Negroes,” often children in footman livery, waved fans to provide relief in the best tradition of slaves of Egyptian Pharaohs and ancient Eastern potentates.

Of course, life in antebellum southern United States and the overseer plantation/merchant class was hardly genteel. The slavery upon which this world depended was an obvious contradiction. Alongside, often indistinguishable from learned, mannered models such as (the rapist!) Thomas Jefferson and Ashley Wilkes, were brutish, ambitious, upstart Thomas Sutpens.***

Were it not for extreme human degradation underpinning the economic engine supporting this charade, it was a laughable fantasy world.

FLOWER OF SOUTHERN WOMANHOOD DULY HONORED
At the apex of slave South hierarchy, leastwise set forward as frontispiece by moneyed husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, were corseted, bejeweled, bedecked women of the privileged class—so-called “flower of southern womanhood.” In Gone With the Wind this was the fiery, beautiful, iron-willed, scheming Scarlett O’Hara, and also her counterpoint—sweet, kindly, benevolent sister, Melanie (portrayed in the movie by Olivia DeHavilland).

Modern-day inheritors and (eager) representatives of this much-admired Southern Tradition would be (white) sorority women—southern belles—at such flagship universities as South Carolina, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Mississippi (Ole Miss), and LSU (Louisiana State University). (Also such southern bastions of learning and tradition as Furman, Wake Forest, and Sewanee [University of the South].)

The gentile ladies of the slave South oversaw much of the daily management of the slave population—tasks, care, feeding, etc. Never mind that on plantations such women regularly entered primitive, fetid slave quarters, were intimately familiar with both male and female help, and sweat and got their hands dirty. In town they were representatives of the privileged, gentile greatness of the South.

Often arriving in and traveling about in carriages, sometimes with liveried (Black) footmen, the Flower of Southern Womanhood paraded about their business in towns and cities in European finery, carrying parasols to protect against fierce southern sun. (Lest fair skin—the fairer, the better—tan or be blemished with freckles of color.)

Heaven help the man who cast an untoward remark or gesture in the direction of such ladies. Southern Gentleman Code, modeled on gentleman codes of Europe, would demand “satisfaction.” In the (highly unlikely) instance of insult from a man of similar elevated station, dueling was a recourse. If from a white male of lower, coarser station, economic retribution, flogging, and worse might be in order.

If something untoward from a Black male, however, a slave above the age of, say, 12—even an “inappropriate” glance observed by a total stranger, tattletale child, or imagined or contrived—, response demanded by protocols of subjugation via fear was far more severe. The classic Billie Holliday song of southern trees bearing “strange fruit” refers to the many thousands of male slaves summarily dragged to trees and hung by the neck, typically following severe beating, mutilation, and other object lessons preceding the final demise.

[BROKEN WINDOW ANALOGY. It may be noted that punishing a wayward “nigger glance” was a version of present-day “broken window” police crime theory and practice. Punish the little things, such as jay-walking, breaking a window, congregating [selling loose cigarettes a la Eric Garner!], or merely walking while Black [WWB, analogous to driving while Black (DWB)], and the would-be criminal thinks twice about committing a more serious crime. Instant punishment of a “wrong look” served to stave off the middle-of-the-night knife to the throat, club to the head—all-out slave insurrection—that slave owners and overseers lived in constant fear of. (And on some level of consciousness knew they deserved?)]

Suffice that protection of the honor of the fairer sex has probably never before or since reached such a zenith.****

Lest any doubt that such tradition and practice persisted in the American South well into the twentieth century, and exists in vestiges to this day, google “Emmett Till,” a 1955 episode in which a 14 year old Black boy (visiting from Chicago) was brutally murdered in Mississippi for reportedly “flirting” with a white woman. All Till had done was “spoken” to the 21 year old, married proprietress of a small grocery store.

The well-known Black movie actor, Samuel L. Jackson, reported instruction from his mother while growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, not to “look at Whites the wrong way,” especially certain Whites in town (male or female).

December 17, 2014 brought news of a South Carolina judge dismissing the conviction 70 years prior of 95 pound, 14 year old George Stinney, Jr. The Black youth was convicted of bludgeoning to death 11 and 8 year old white girls that he and his sister had spoken to briefly the morning of their death. (Merely to respond “No” to the question, “Do you know where we can find Maypops?”) The girls bodies were dumped in the “Black side of town.” The only evidence was Spinney’s confession, which he claimed was coerced by police. His sister vouched for her brother being with her all day. Small comfort to descendants, as the boy was electrocuted soon after his conviction.

Moreover, such was political befuddlement sown among under-educated, non-gentile, non-slave-owning, working class and poor Whites (the same as in present day America by republicans!!), that this vast underclass were willing agents, observers, and enablers in the enslavement, mistreatment, and lynching of similarly-situated Black brethren.

“I’m better than any nigger!,” and “At least I’m white,” the ultimate redoubt and satisfaction of the ain’t-got-nothin’ White, resonated then as it does today, if now more muted. (Reflected, for example, in republican capture of the white southern vote.)

EXALTED STATE OF WOMEN IN AMERICA TODAY
No question, but these are salad days for women in America. Black and Latino women long ago surpassed men of their group in every indicator of success one might name, excepting of late, President of the United States.

White females have not achieved parity with white males in corporate boardrooms, skilled trades, political bodies at every level, and the professions. However, they now outnumber male counterparts in colleges and even some professional schools. (E.g., law schools.)

In that white males have for so long been entrenched at the top, and, moreover, with mere high school diplomas can still earn reasonable incomes in the trades, business, and, recently, all manner of Internet enterprise—e.g., video game and smartphone app development (merely requiring computer savvy, not higher education)—, an earnings/power gap persists, and will continue for some time. (One may note that Google and Facebook were started by college dropouts. Harvard College dropouts, to be sure. However, computer savvy sufficed. Venture capital awaited.)

Nevertheless, opportunity for and advancement of women in America is astounding. Women in general piggybacked on the civil rights movement of the sixties, surpassed whatever gains occurred for Black America, and have not stopped “getting on up.”

Apart from the Meg Whitmans, Sheryl Sandbergs, Hillary Clintons, Nancy Pelosis, Michelle O’Bamas, Susan Rices, Beyonces, Taylor Swifts, Martha Stewarts, OPRAH (of course), and countless other women of exalted position,***** woman, as noted, are at present over half of law students, not far behind in numbers as medical students, and finding their way to levers of power on every front. Only in engineering and precincts attractive to Silicon Valley, and also professional money sports, are women lagging. (One may note respecting the latter that the leading light and draw today of MMA [mixed martial arts], the fastest growing sports entertainment in the world, is one “Rowdy” Rhonda Rousey, a TV-attractive blonde, who is a judo Olympian and a genuinely skilled bad-ass.)

On a personal, every-day, look-around-you level, The Yowling Wolf raised his two daughters more or less “as guys.” (Did not, for example, want them asking on a Friday, “What are [various and sundry boys] doing tonight?”) They did serious sports. They went to the best colleges. Both are today married with children. Simultaneously, one has started a business, the other is a higher-powered lawyer than her lawyer husband.

And The Wolf’s daughters are hardly unusual. The Wolf’s SO is a college professor and department chair, presently pushing for more women in university positions of higher management. (Using as a chief argument the salient fact of there being more female than male students.)

Not that women are not achieving at unprecedented levels in unprecedented numbers in many other countries around the world. Many nations—India, Britain, Germany, Australia, Pakistan, Brazil, Liberia, etc.—have already elected women to the top leadership position. Proportionately, numerous countries outpace America respecting women elected to the ruling legislative body.

However, in general, women in all other countries, including countries that have elected female leaders, seem still to function under an implicit, if not explicit assumption and acceptance that men are generally to be deferred to. Moreover, that such is the natural order of things.

In countless countries and parts of the world—entire continents!—women continue to be less educated, subordinate to husbands and male relatives (who, in not a few cultures, kill and maim them for reasons of “honor”), bought, sold, trafficked, and generally downtrodden.

Second class citizenship is the lot of the vast majority of the world’s women.

EXCEPTIONAL NATURE OF AMERICAN FEMALE ADVANCEMENT
Are American women different from their counterparts in other “advanced” countries in terms of advancement and status?

Surely, yes, in terms of sheer proportionate numbers advancing. Definitely, YES, in terms of rarified air they occupy. At least some women. Here the reader is reminded of the object of this Yowl—Caucasian American, well-educated, professional-type women, typically below the age of fifty, typically relatively attractive in appearance. Henceforth, “young alpha white American women” (YAWAW).

Why not include less educated women in the target group? Why not poor women? Why not older (above fifty) white, professional women? Why not women of color who are educated, ambitious, accomplished? Many among these groups jog and do yoga fiercely. They are represented in the examples above of wealthy, powerful women.

The answer will emerge. Meantime, The Wolf wants to wrap up the point that the position of women in America respecting advancement is of a different, higher sort than that in all other nations. For example, consider America’s close neighbor and, in some minds, very comparable nation of Canada.

In Canada, if in any nation, one would expect advancement and stature of women to closely approximate that in the United States. However, a recent magazine article noted that misogyny in Canada—hatred of women—seems to be tolerated to an extent unthinkable in America.

Canada’s “premiere radio host” was revealed to have a long history of choking, punching, and physically and sexually assaulting women, and “everybody who associated with [him] knew about his appalling behavior toward women.” An analogy was drawn to disgraced-but-ever-buoyant Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, to whose home police responded “again and again for alleged domestic abuse,” but charges were never brought, and “the media ignored the issue.” The piece queried, “Are Canadians just too polite to bring up a man’s misogyny?” It noted that,”Finally, Canadian women are refusing to keep silent any longer.”

The Wolf’s point? No matter their educational/career achievements, owing to custom, culture, history, laws, religion, and other factors, woman in all other countries have not matched American women in the scope and breadth of of their advancement vis-a-vis men.

Which brings this Yowl at long last to its crux: THE GENTEEL, PRIVILEGED, SCARLETT O’HARA TYPE OF AMERICA’S SLAVE SOUTH, both before and after the Civil War, PARADING ABOUT BENEATH HER PARASOL, SUPREMELY, NAY, IMPERIOUSLY CONFIDENT IN HER POSITION AND SAFETY, EVEN FROM SO MUCH AS AN UNTOWARD GLANCE OF A SLAVE, …

SEEMS TODAY TO BE AMONG US! (Big time!)

MISS SCARLETT ATTITUDE OF YAWAW (young alpha white American women)
This Yowl emerged as the result of a community “safety” meeting attended by The Yowling Wolf.

The Wolf has lived in several States, the Northeast, Midwest, South, and California, and also abroad in Africa and Europe. The Wolf has lived in cities, towns, ruburbs (rural suburbs), and the country. (Never, thankfully, [boring] suburbs.) At present The Wolf abides in a charming, small, eastern US city. Happily, this city is on the upswing. (Meaning Whites are moving back in. Correct, a gentrification situation.)

As in all American cities (and ALL suburbs!), there is crime in The Wolf’s city, albeit declining. Drug use continues, incidents occur, including the brutal murder recently of a young, single, (white) female schoolteacher, surprised late at night in her house by 25 and 16 year old (minority) burglars. Denizens of The Wolf’s charming neighborhood had been summoned to convene in a local church to discuss what might be done.

New to the neighborhood, The Wolf wanted to eyeball neighbors, check the pulse. The neighborhood seemed economically and racially diverse, although The Wolf knew he was part of a gentrifying changeover.

Whoa! … 99 percent of turnout was white. (Okay, 98 percent. The police chief [Black?, Hispanic?], along with The Wolf and a couple others, were the other minorities in a group of some 150.) The usual complaints about loud noise, trash, drug deals going down in absentee landlord buildings, and, especially, a “white, middle-aged” dude got beat up. (“White” implying his three assailants were Black or Hispanic? Ethnicity of the assailants was never articulated or made clear. However, the victim’s wallet was not taken. Hm-m.) Several women had been subjected to lewd remarks. An (India) Indian-appearing woman (third minority attendee) said someone had pinched her rear, and she was very angry.

“I want to feel safe walking my streets!,” was a repeated theme. There was a call for more lighting (too expensive). All agreed that turning on porch lights was a good idea. (The Wolf now duly turns his on from dusk to midnight. Out after midnight, watch yo butt!)

What caught The Wolf’s attention was the insistence of several women, all white, all youthful, relatively attractive, professional, educated types, that, “I should be able to walk home at night and feel safe,”—ALONE!

It was “ALONE” that caught The Wolf’s attention.

“WTF!” was The Wolf’s immediate thought—”YOU WOMEN THINK THAT WALKING AT NIGHT, ALONE, IN AN URBAN SITUATION, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL SAFE?! Are you kidding?! You are female! You are (relatively) physically disadvantaged! … You are sex objects, you are a target!” (And have been since human apes dropped out of trees and lived in caves.)

At no time, nowhere in the history of the world have woman been able to traverse at night alone safely! Often not during the day. Not on the African veld, not outside walled medieval castles (anyone seen Braveheart?), not on streets of the Old West. (Apparently, yes, on streets of some few small cities and towns in some [very] few present-day Muslim countries—if covered head-to-toe in non-revealing black garb, and moving briskly in early hours of the night.)

However, here are these leaning in white chicks saying and thinking that matters in 2014 United States of America should be different for them!

The thought began to pound in The Wolf’s brain—”Where does this ridiculousness and sense of entitlement come from? Who do these [young, white, attractive, seeming educated and professional] women think they are?!”

The Wolf leaned over to a twenty-something woman next to him with whom he had been conversing—white, Duke MBA, banker, wearing, it may be noted, short shorts and flip-flops on a sub-freezing night, because, “I just came from my yoga class.” The Wolf said, referring to one of the I-should-feel-safe-walking-urban-streets-alone-at-night speakers. “Is she kidding? … At night, alone?”

The young woman responded, matter-of-fact, and it being November, “It gets dark pretty early, you know.” Meaning, “Yes. Of course I should be able to walk alone at night on urban streets in safety.”

As noted, got The Yowling Wolf to thinking, “Where does such an attitude of entitlement come from?” Is it European? … No! … Professional or no, women in every European country are routinely subjected to suggestive catcalls from men. They may carp, fret, and lament. However, such women know better than to demand complete surcease from coarse male attention. They know how things were, and not so long ago—long histories of war, pillage, rapine, insecurity on the European continent, brutal subjugation of women AND men. They are grateful for forward strides. However, they ain’t crazy! They ain’t detached from reality!

Yowling Wolf has raised two daughters. They are well-educated, confident, professional. Both are tall and physically tough—they have judo black belts. However, much as either might embrace the concept of walking streets at night alone in complete safety—intellectually!—, neither, the Wolf is certain, would deem such a notion plausible or realistic. Neither is naive. Both have their feet on the ground. One could be pass as YAWAW. However, neither evinces the arrogant, Miss Scarlett-like attitude/belief/outlook The Wolf detects in YAWAW.

It would not occur to The Wolf himself, as yet far from decrepit, that he should be able to walk alone, at night, on city streets without concern and some trepidation. The Wolf knows from years in Brooklyn (where he was a prosecutor!) that at night one should walk purposefully, keep a lookout, give short shrift to a shady sort asking for the time or a cigarette. Indeed, The Wolf has taken a walking stick on several walks to and from the center of his city alone at night.

[Yes. The Wolf has thought about packing, being “strapped.”]

Nor would poor women, poorly educated women, women of color (no matter their exalted educational background, wealth, stature, or power at work), … women older than fifty (having a few wrinkles, gray hairs, more life experience) deem walking alone at night in a city (or anywhere else, an underground parking facility, for example) a situation where they should “feel safe.” (Would be nice! But, …) Why? … Because such women are grounded in reality.

To imagine one should feel safe alone on city streets (or suburban driveways) at night would not likely occur to, say, Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, or, very likely, the aforementioned (billionaire CEO) Meg Whitman. Nor Beyonce, nor, very likely, the reader’s mother, sister, daughter. However, to younger, Leaning In Sheryl Sandberg, … Maybe.

The Wolf’s point is that for a small, privileged coterie—YAWAW—something approaching the disengagement from reality of life in the American slave South—a Miss Scarlett perspective—begins to distort reality.

What are the implications? Is this something merely to be taken note of? … A harmless quirk?

The Wolf thinks not. (The reason, of course, for this Yowl. Useful, purposeful thinking is always the basis and purpose of a Yowl.)

REALITY FACTOR
All but YAWAW it would seem—males, females, anyone above the age of 5—, know that walking at night anywhere, whether alone or with others, is never completely safe, and cannot be. Danger lurks in the world, and always has. Very likely it always will. (From the time of wild animals outside caves, on to a future populated by buzzing drones overhead [one of which outside a Brooklyn eatery recently went awry and clipped off part of a man’s nose!])

Together with The Wolf, all persons of common sense (and a modicum of humility?) understand that alone, at night, in a city—on a dark country road, in a suburban driveway—, one should be alert for a problem possibility, just as when one crosses a street.

[It may be noted that not a few young people are now observed to walk into streets engrossed by their smart phones, seeming intent on defying common sense and rules of the road. Some get hit by motor vehicles. If not killed or rendered senseless, many take genuine umbrage. WTH?!]

So where do YAWAW get off thinking, a la Miss Scarlett parading in town under her parasol, that they should be able to “feel safe” walking home alone at night in a city? Where does such unreasonable sense of entitlement derive? What prompted these women to not only have such a (ridiculous) thought, but to have the temerity, further, to articulate it in a public forum? (What arrogance!)

[In fairness, these women quickly came down off their high, unreasonable perch. They seemed to realize that no amount of additional police presence, surveillance cameras, and additional street lamps were going to provide complete safety. Nor could such be afforded. Caution was necessary. Block watching, buddy systems, email alerts, more homeowners turning on porch lamps (providing free low-energy light bulbs, if necessary)—common sense (and vigilance) was needed.]

WHERE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD—OR, BIOLOGY STILL COUNTS
As noted, each woman exhibiting the Miss Scarlett attitude/belief/outlook—i.e., presumptuous, privileged, entitled, imperious—was young, white, attractive, confident (save for in this one area of safety!), seemingly professional and well educated. The Wolf has observed at least two jogging in the neighborhood.

What The Wolf perceives is frustration that, despite progress on career and educational fronts, one salient barrier to a full sense of empowerment remains—FEAR FOR PHYSICAL SAFETY.

NO MATTER HOW ONE CUTS, SLICES, DICES, EXPLAINS, RATIONALIZES, CONDEMNS, OR LAMENTS, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL AND EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD, WOMEN OF ALL AGES, BACKGROUNDS, AND APPEARANCE, FAR MORE SO THAN MEN, ARE SEXUAL OBJECTS AND TARGETS.

That, along with in general being physically weaker than men, therefore more easily intimidated and overpowered, is biology and fact. (In this regard one may note the vast disproportion of sexual assault against females in the military versus males. And these women have guns!)

One may be CEO, PhD, MD, billionaire, an ex army ranger, or the local chief of police, … If female, in a circumstance where a man has his wallet taken and his head caved in, a woman is also likely to experience the additional humiliation and degradation of sexual assault, possibly rape. Indeed, she may and often will be targeted where a man is not.

In such regard Mother Nature chimes in in accord with a physical safety disparity between men and women. The Wolf notes reports of several women attacked by mountain lions in California while hiking and jogging—mauled, even killed. As posited by experts, they were “smaller in stature and perceived to be more vulnerable.” However, nary yet a man.

Thus, intrepid, attractive, CBS Sixty Minutes reporter, Lara Logan, apt YAWAW example, pushing confidently (at first) through Tahrir Square in Egypt during unrest that toppled longtime dictator, Hosni Mubarak (paving the way for the current dictator), in order to “get the story,” suddenly, despite camera crew and Egyptian handlers in tow, was beset by a gang of men (later determined to have the precise intent of “teaching women a lesson”), who savagely beat and sexually assaulted her.

Over time and eventually, owing to personal experience or daily media reports of aggression by men against women, fear of possible of attack by men, usually with a sexual component, becomes a component of most women’s thinking. Such fear angers and frustrates ALL women. (And many men—women’s fathers, husbands, brothers, friends.) For women so very close to HAVING IT ALL—YAWAW!—, such a fear component must be especially galling.

No amount of sweat, yoga, running, exercising, and pumping iron alters this biological reality.

BUT FOR LESSER PHYSICAL STRENGTH AND BEING SEXUAL OBJECTS, COMPLETE EQUALITY WITH THE REMAINING COMPETITOR HOLDING AN ADVANTAGE—WHITE MALES—WOULD BE WITHIN REACH.

Frustration and anger, indeed! And possible flight into fantasy.

PROBLEMATIC IMPLICATIONS OF YAWAW MISS SCARLETT ASPECT
First, it seems to The Wolf unrealistically unseemly, privileged, even arrogant that anyone should imagine that absolute safety exists or should exist on a personal level! Not while so much of the world heaves with war and mishap. To ignore a constant, omnipresent potential for harm, or to pretend or belief such does not lurk constantly, especially to think that for oneself it should not exist!, is to take no steps (at least fewer) to address the problem, both on a personal level and in general.

Is it not precisely the case that from such smug, posturing, self-aggrandizing thinking stems (racist, me-ist, insensitive) belief that others are … inferior, undeserving, can’t fly airplanes at night (owing to eye structure—actual belief of [white] American war strategists regarding Japanese foe in World War II), are part of a communist monolith and not merely nationalists (costly, mistaken perception of North Vietnamese foe in Vietnam War), won’t violently object to stationing of American troops and promotion of American values in lands—Saudi Arabia, for example—deemed sacred to Islam (root cause of anti-American Islamist planning, plotting, and terrorist acts), and Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and other countries can be nation-built to be “like us?”

Does anyone get a powerful whiff of the problematic posture of American Exceptionalism?

YAWAW will, after all, soon be an integral part of American leadership structure. One doubtless will become President and leader of the Free World.

Is divorce from reality—whether reality be logic, science, culture—ever a good thing?

Second, more here, now, immediate, THE REALITY BEING THAT THE PRIMARY PERCEIVED SOURCE OF DANGER ON DARK CITY STREETS IS URBAN YOUTH, AND SUCH YOUTH ARE LIKELY BLACK (and/or Hispanic in The Wolf’s city), ARE NOT YAWAW, DESTINED FOR POSITIONS OF INFLUENCE, LIKELY TO HARBOR A PARTICULAR GRIEVANCE AGAINST MALES WHO FORCE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE LONE SHORTCOMING IN THEIR PUSH FOR PARITY (with white males)?!

In other words, forget about root causes of poverty and violence on city streets, (the exaIted) “I, I, … ME ME, ME cannot feel safe because of … BLACK MALES!”

Why, my goodness, Miss Scarlett. We sho nuff be transported right back to streets of any southeastern American town or city, both before and after The Great, Heroic War of Secession!

Those darkies, those niggahs, those Black males in particular—from age 10 on up—, … They still pose a problem fo white women. … They still lurk and are dangerous!

What is to be done?! Can anyone say “POLICE TO THE RESCUE?!”

One feels (at least The Wolf does), as a direct consequence of YAWAW discontent, potential hardening of a new generation of hearts. The Wolf senses fuel being thrown on the flame of the suspect notion (are all checking privilege?), “They [threatening urban youth] had the same opportunities I had.” [“Well, maybe not exactly the same, but enough opportunities in any case.”] “Something needs to be done about … THEM.”

So that I—exercising, hard-working, trying-to-make-the-world-a-better-place (wonderful, entitled) I—can feel completely safe while walking home in a city, alone, at night.

YA-O-O-O-W-L!

* Players were set against one another in Monopoly. At the outset one player was given the advantage of twice as much money and the ability to move his piece twice in one play. When, almost inevitably, the advantaged player began to win, usually convincingly, when asked to what he attributed his success, almost never was the reason given, “I began with an advantage.” Rather, the winner described himself (or herself) as “more skilled,” “more risk taking,” “more clever,” “better,” and the like. Moreover, as the advantaged player began to pull ahead, he/she began moving his piece with more authority, literally tapping it harder on squares as the move was counted.
In a similar vein, a recent comparison of the response of those driving expensive, prestige automobiles, versus ordinary cars, revealed the former to almost never stop when an actor stepped in a crosswalk in the path of the oncoming vehicle, while drivers in the second category invariably stopped. The conclusion was greater sympathy and empathy in the drivers of modest cars.
The sympathy and generosity of those having more or less money was measured. Those with more modest income and wealth invariably gave more, percentage wise (by a large margin), and exhibited greater empathy with those in need than those with large incomes and wealth. However, if shown a photograph of a needy child before starting the experiment, the wealthy, higher income participants then exhibited a similar level of sympathy and generosity.
In sum, wealth and good fortune seems to compromise and corrupt the angels of human nature. It is as if the person of good fortune must justify and account for it with false and/or inaccurate attributions of cause and effect.
** Expression popularized by a book of this title recently published by Sheryl Sandberg, Harvard College, Harvard Business School educated, billionaire COO (chief operating officer) of Facebook. It may be noted that Ms. Sandberg, a woman of undoubted superior intelligence and energy, also benefited from growing up the daughter of a wealthy Miami physician and the mentorship at Harvard and in her early work career of Harvard/White House/Wall Street heavyweight, Larry Summers. The essence of the book (unread by The Yowling Wolf) seems to be that modern American women in business and other pursuits should not only not shy away from being aggressive and assertive, but, indeed, the time has come when they can and should exhibit such posture—I.e., lean in.
*** Central character in William Faulkner novel, Absalom Absalom, who, simultaneous with building a plantation and outward respectability, delighted in engaging in brutal wrestling matches with his slaves.
**** Institutionalized vicious response to the suggestion of even sexual thought by a Black slave toward a white woman seems unprecedented. The Wolf is not aware of a similar dynamic vis-a-vis Greeks, Romans, and their male slaves, or Nazis vis-a-vis Jewish males and Aryan women. Rather, the behavior seems to reflect imposition of the (recently invented) racial aspect upon the institution of slavery. Hair-trigger fury and retribution visited upon a Black male slave, many of them mere boys, for even a glance at a white woman of any station bespeaks deep insecurity, very likely guilt and projection of a rapist perspective by white males. Rape practiced on female slaves was, of course, a common occurrence in the slave American South. (Lore in The Wolf’s family is that a great great grandmother was held in a shed for a week to force her to submit to the rapist slave master.)
***** Meg Whitman is the billionaire chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, and formerly the CEO of E-Bay. She ran unsuccessfully for governor of California as a republican.