Breast Implants
By Rod Van Mechelen
If there's no such thing as sexual power, then what are breast implants for?
Implants for Women
1992 Bellevue, Wash. - In the quest to enhance their sexual power, thousands of women obtained breast implants. Now a few of the problems these implants sometimes cause come to public attention, and whom do pop feminists blame? Men, of course.
They blame it on "male chauvinist pigs" for making women want to have large breasts. They blame it on the sexist surgeons (none are women?) for failing to fully inform their patients of all the potential risks.
Consistent with this penchant for pointing fingers at men, Jenny Jones, a talk show host who appeared on the Donahue program March 3, 1992, to speak out against the implants, resorted to male-bashing when she complained that if men had been getting implants, too, the medical community would have responded immediately to correct the problems and smooth the way for implant removals.
Her remarks were aimed at a plastic surgeon sitting next to her. When he responded by pulling a "pectoral muscle implant" for men out of his pocket and saying "here it is," they immediately cut to the audience where the host gave the microphone over to one of the women there.
Implants for Men
Men have been getting implants for years. What's more, as men are commonly more physically active than women, they could be facing even more severe problems from their implants than women do. To an unbiased population, therefore, this is not a gender-issue. But pop feminists need it to be a gender issue because it's one more way in which they can slander men, which is precisely what Ms. Jones was attempting to do.
Implicit in her accusation was the message that the male-dominated medical profession doesn't take issues like the hazards of breast implants seriously because it's a "female problem." What the facts reveal, however, is that the problem is not men, but a medical community dominated by men seeking to earn and retain the wealth and power necessary to attract women.
In this respect, we might blame women. After all, they encourage men to become insensitive surgeons by objectifying them as walking wallets. That, however, would be as sexist as Ms. Jones' diatribe against men.
Regards
Rod Van Mechelen
Rod Van Mechelen is the author of What Everyone Should Know about Feminist Issues: The Male-Positive Perspective (the page now includes several articles by other authors), and the publisher of The Backlash! @ Backlash.com. He is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and served for 9-1/2 years on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council.
