Not-So-Easy Listening

This morning, while taking the kids to school, I listened to a local hip-hop station. I abandoned the other such station a couple of months ago, after the woman who hosted the morning show told guys that, "Just because she says no one time, doesn't mean she won't eventually like it," in a discussion about keeping the sex life spicy or something.

I e-mailed the show, curious as to how they'd missed the whole point of "no means no," if the host had any idea of the power of sexual coercion, and if she really believed that women were such fickle beings. One of her male colleagues e-mailed me back in a huff--the host does not condone rape, she didn't mean sex in general, but specific acts (because it's okay to try to force women into things they don't want to do once they've consented to have sex, apparently), and--my real comeuppance--out of the hundred or so responses they'd received, mine was the only one that expressed such sentiments. So there.

I e-mailed him back to apologize for my forwardness and promised to only write them if I had glowing praise for the show. Someone e-mailed me back and I promptly deleted it. I haven't listened to their morning show since.

But then, this morning, the other station was having a discussion of why guys don't like for their "girls" to have slept with a lot of men.

You can probably guess where this went.

I tuned in when the male co-host was trying to explain to his female co-host that the problem was not with women's choices to sleep with a number of guys, but with guys' reaction (always the truly important measure). No boyfriend, he maintained, wanted a girlfriend about whom another guy could opine, "I slept with her; she ain't nothing special." Since specialness is apparently all bound up in how close one is to virginity and all. And no guy could assert that such an assumption is foolish. But I digress.

The co-host was pretty aggravated, bugged by the double standard and the idea that a woman was somehow worth less because she had an active sex life. The host gave up on her and appealed to the DJ to make her see reason. So, the DJ came to the mike and the first thing he said was,

"It's about ownership."

Uh-huh, yes he did. Women, or perhaps their vaginas, are owned by men, and no man wants too many trespassers on his property. To continue, the DJ then said,

"It's like... discovery. Guys don't want to plant their flags where a lot of other flags are planted."

Ah. So now women, reduced to their vaginas, have become like a conquerable continent or planet or something. Which is pseudo-amusing to me that the DJ has to "discover" vaginas as I've always thought the location was rather established and familiar. Then the host chimed in with,

"I know. The reason man wanted to go to the moon is because no one else had been there!" And dissolved into laughter.

The co-host who managed not to succumb to all this brilliant male reason, asked "What about women... I mean I don't want a flag that's been planted a lot of places, either. What about that?"

To which the DJ responded, "The double standard is there and you should just get used to it." More laughter. Thankfully, I'd arrived back home and got out of the car on that note.

I still can't believe that happened. I want to hope that maybe people called in after I got out of the car and blasted their asses, but I know that's not likely. What is likely is that they succeeded in making it seem as if the co-host was overreacting and that the so-called status quo was somehow pre-ordained and ever existant--it could not possibly have been constructed!

All I could think of was those, "you poke it, you own it," beer commercials. And no, I have not responded to the station, though I suppose I will now, just to get the angry refutation of my reaction.