Today’s Bizarro:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Lionesses do most (but not all) of the hunting for a pride, often in groups, so it’s appropriate that Piraro’s character, retired from the hunt to take up office work, is depicted as a female secretary.
Then there’s the idea that hunting down and devouring prey is an almost uncontrollable animal instinct, urge, or drive — in the very nature of lions — which requires constant effort to keep in check.
Ah, we’ve seen an analogous idea in a very different sphere.
This is the idea that men have an almost uncontrollable animal instinct, urge, or drive — in the very nature of men — to pursue women and take them sexually. We can’t help it, it’s just the way we are, we have to get nookie, desperately, one way or another. Some few of us can keep this instinct in check, but, really, the solution is to keep women away from us until marriage allows us free access to nookie as we need it.
So, really, the problem is the women, with their sweet tits and honey pots, always tempting us. These teasing Eves must be cordoned off so that they won’t inflame us.
This idea plugs into two other very old ideas: the idea that women are the property of men — the property of their fathers until they marry, at which time they become the property of their husbands — and the idea that women’s sphere of action is limited to the household, and that women have no place in the polis, the sphere of public life.
You don’t have to subscribe to any of this to realize the pull of these ideas.
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