About 'Alpha+Good'

Alpha+Good (a bad wordplay on Orwell's "double plus good" and old machismo - I'm the realest after all) is a side project that belongs to 'Onklare taal' ('Unclear' or 'Unripe language'), the umbrella of several literary projects in Dutch.

This section is almost exclusively in English and comprises my ongoing thoughts on progress, gender, politics and various other social themes. Why is this in English why everything else in Dutch? Because I want to gun for a much wider audience here. Also, my literary English isn't good enough, otherwise I would always write in English. In 2020, I released my debut novel 'Fragmentariërs' (it's written in Dutch, though who knows I may one day make an English translation).

Are you a little lost? This link will take you right back to my home page.

Sunday, August 06, 2017

The key/lock-analogy is one of the dumbest pieces of sexist rhetoric ever

"A key that opens many locks is a master key, yet a lock that is opened by many keys is a shitty lock." This analogy or variations thereof are assumed by sexists and idiots alike to be an elegant way to defend why a double standard exists in (heteronormative) sexual practices. To be sure, it is elegant. It is also spectacularly stupid.

That's because it applies circular logic. It simply restates the double standard that female sexuality is somehow a room, presumably full of valuables or secrets, whose contents are finite and therefore more interesting the fewer keys that can open it. Conversely, the key is as the key does: no content, no hidden layers, nothing of note to be treasured or cherished, only in as far as it is capable of opening rooms. It's like the world's dullest dick joke made to restate the double standard.

There is no inherent value to sexuality other than what cultures construct it to be. The double standard causes grief to both men and women, subjects women to a myriad of hoops to jump through (though they can still be a "slut" even if they've had sex with just one guy if other people think the circumstances were wrong - so you can't win as a woman, really) and depresses men into becoming shallow idiots whose main source of pride is how much women they can bend to their will.

If anything, the key/lock analogy presents a piece of patriarchal yarn in its starkest and bleakest way, and shows us how stupid it really is.