Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic fdk:Learning to Love, 17/?

Me the feminist is ready to explode!!!

Sam!!! I hate this Sam!!!

Ellen owes him her fidelity, but he owes her nothing of the sort? He doesn't even have to lie about his many affairs, yet he can demand total faithfaulness from her?

And you know what is most heartbreaking and horrifying about it all? It's that it used to be this way. Seriously. Consider the Bible. There are so many men there who have more than one wife, important men of God - Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David - and I won't even mention Solomon because he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines and even the Bible thinks he went too far. But the rest of those great men? How could they possibly be faithful to their first wife when they took themselves a second wife? And then perhaps a third and a fourth?

You know that adultery is one of the most serious crimes possible, according to the Bible? Ah, but then what is adultery? It can't mean that a man is unfaithful to his wife, because how can he not be unfaithful to her if he is perfectly entitled to take himself more wives, pretty nearly as many more wives as he likes?

No, adultery means that a woman is unfaithful to her husband. That is what it means, because in the Bible women are so often treated as their husband's property. That is why marriages in the Bible are usually business deals which are negotiated between the father of the marriagable woman and the suitor. So, for example, does it say that if the bridegroom accuses his wife of having lost her virginity before the wedding night even if that isn't true, then he will have to pay a fine to his wife's father!!! But if it is in fact true that the bride was not a virgin, then she will be brought to the door of her father's house and stoned to death by all the men in the city!!! (Deuteronomy 22:18-21.)

In the Bible, adultery is seemingly always a crime being committed by a wife against her husband! Yes, because she is her husband's property, and she is stealing herself away from her rightful owner when she is having sex with another, or even when she is flirting with another. He, on the other hand, can have sex with other women as much as he wants to as long as he isn't violating the rights of the male owners of those women!!!


A father giving his daughter away to the bridegroom at a modern wedding. I can't help it, I so, so don't like it when the father gives away the bride.

These traditions, which say that a woman is somebody's property and a man is a "free player" who can do what he wants in matters of sexuality, are so deeply rooted in our societies. Yes, things have changed now - not that these ideas don't still exist, what with all those fathers giving away their daughters to their future husbands and what with all those polygamist sects - but, indeed, today it would be hard for Sam to get respect from most other people if he said that his wife had to be faithful to him, but he didn't have to be faithful to her. But twenty years ago things were different. They were certainly even more different thirty or thirty-five years ago. In Sweden in the early seventies, the government commissioned a legal expert - a man, of course - to come up with a proposal for how sex crimes would be defined and punished in the future. Would you believe that this man argued that since women were no longer regarded as their husband's exclusive property, rape should no longer be regarded as a crime? Well, you know, because now there was no need to protect the husband's exclusive right to his wife's sexuality any more, and therefore it should be allowed for men to force women to have sex with them whenever the men wanted it! No, Sweden never got a law like that, mostly because a number of Swedish feminists argued so vehemently against it. Now, of course, no one remembers that anyone ever suggested that rape should be made legal, and rape is regarded as a most awful crime. And yet society has been so forgiving of men who have committed various sex crimes. For example, in the eighties a teacher I knew of had an affair with his own seventeen-year-old student. Guess what happened? The girl was forced to change schools during her last year of high school, so that the blame for the affair was put squarely on her. The teacher, a man in his forties who had been a teacher for almost fifteen years, was given no reprimand whatsoever.

I could go on and serve up many more examples of how society's double standards have led to the punishment of women and the acquittal of men, but I think you get my point anyway....

(And just because I've spoken so ill of the Bible, you do know that there is one man in the Bible who never for a moment accepted these double standards for men and women, don't you? That man, of course, is Jesus.)

Anyway. I'll try to get back to the details of your fic, Carol. I have been thinking of the fact that Lois was basically naked when Clark found her, and I think I understand what kind of horrible humiliation that must have been for her. Because Clark is the man she shares her home and her bed with. If she ever wants to sleep with him, she wants to do it on her own terms. To have been so rudely undressed for Clark to see must be so painful to her.

I have been so critical of your Clark because he didn't tell Lois right away about his superhuman powers. I also thought he was too gentleman-like with Mayson. But apart from that, I can find nothing to criticize Clark for. He has been wonderfully supportive of and patient with Lois. That is why I can't for a moment believe that he is going to take advantage of Lois in her present, distraught state.

I remember that Aunt Louise told Clark that she had given Lois her own lovely nightie, the one she never got to wear herself for the man she wanted to marry. But Aunt Louise said to Clark, "One day she'll wear it for you, and then you'll know." Well, Lois most certainly isn't wearing Aunt Louise's lovely wedding nightie here. I'm sure that Clark knows that in spite of what Lois says to him, he hasn't got her permission to have sex with her. Right now she is acting like a soiled piece of property, who is offering herself to her rightful owner just to preserve even a shred of her dignity - because right now she thinks that if she doesn't offer herself to Clark, he will take advantage of her anyway. But Clark most certainly doesn't want that kind of relationship with Lois. That is why I'm sure that he won't have sex with Lois in Colorado.

But how he can make Lois respect herself again, and how he can make her believe in herself and love herself so that she is able to give back that respect and trust and love to Clark - well, that's another matter.

What a riveting fic this is!!!

Ann