Practical Magic and Disposable Men
Using Men for Sperm and Money is Evil, Actually
The phenomenon of men who overtly despise women, yet compulsively seek sex and admiration from them is well commented-upon. Shrewd veterans of the dating hellscape can spot such men at a distance.
It’s only recently—and by recent, I mean in the past 5 years or so—that the female version of this phenomenon has gotten any attention. At least, negative attention. But it’s always been with us, and the destruction that comes in its wake is far worse that harsh words and hurt feelings.
In 1998, the movie Practical Magic was released and immediately beloved of almost every woman and girl. It was a witchy, girl-power dramedy that hit all the right notes. So right, in fact, that most of us overlooked the troubling inciting incident.
Young Sally Owens and her sister Jillian are raised by their aunts after being orphaned. All the Owens women are witches. They’re born that way. They are also subject to a curse: Any man who genuinely loves an Owens woman is fated to die.
As such, when Sally and Jillian grown up, they are careful not to fall in love. Though Jullian has plenty of use for men.
Sally (played by Sandra Bullock) lives a solitary life into early adulthood, until one day, she suddenly runs off to the hardware store to accept a date with the cute clerk who’s been making eyes at her. She doesn’t know why. She is compelled to his side.
But Michael, after giving Sally two daughters, is hit by a truck and dies.
Sally is utterly destroyed and goes to the see the aunts, demanding they bring him back. It’s only then she realizes why she ran to the hardware store that day.
Jet: “It was just a little push… You wanted so much to be happy. We never expected that you'd truly love him.”
Sally: ”Well, I did. And I want him back!”
They put a spell on her. Their own niece, to drive her into the arms of a man. They knew he would die as a result. Maybe they thought Sally wouldn’t love him. But they knew HE would love HER. And die for it.
Why would they do something so wicked?1
We don’t get a clear answer in the actual film, but a Vice article (accurately) speculated why the aunts would perform magic to spur Sally into a relationship:
Why do the aunts care if she falls in love? The same reason anyone’s family prods them towards heterosexual life choices: procreation. The curse appears to set in just after an Owens woman has time to bear two daughters, a new version of herself and her sister, one sensible brunette and one wild redhead. How else would the curse live on for another generation? The curse isn’t just that any man an Owens woman loves will die. The curse is that Owens women will love men, period. - Natalie Adler
Despite its valid motive for the aunt’s horrific behavior, the Vice article goes on to make the preposterous claim that the Owens family curse was created for a particular reason: “… to save the women from male violence.”
In other words, he had it coming.
The problem, of course is that this is nonsense.
Justifying Female Violence Against Men
In the movie, and in the book that inspired it, the curse was plainly a reaction from Maria Owens, the matriarch of the Owens family, after being betrayed by her love.
Maria had an affair with John Hathorne, a witch-hunter, which resulted in the birth of her daughter Faith. Her heart was shattered at being abandoned by the man she loved. Pain turned to anger. As it so often does.
Rejection can bring on a type of madness. A spiral into man hatred.
“He left me because he is a man. Men are cruel. He used me for sex and dropped me when I wasn’t convenient! I need to protect other women. Not just from him, but from them all!”
It doesn’t seem to matter what men say or how they act. The story heartbroken women tell themselves stays the same.
That’s why the Vice author twisted herself into knots trying to make it sound like “all this could have been avoided if men weren’t such meanies.”
It’s why women laughed and cheered en masse at Lorena Bobbit for chopping off her husband’s penis.
And why, years later, Sharon Osborne and other female tv hosts cackled live on network television about a similar case of male sexual mutilation.
“He was a cheater. He was abusive. Probably a child molester. They all are.”
This manner of thinking is not just for out-of-touch Hollywood types of even women who have experienced abuse. It has infected us all.
Art Imitates Life
There was nothing unique about real Life murderer Kathleen Dorsett. A middle-class, Midwestern girl. An elementary school teacher.
She did well in school, had friends, met a nice man, married him, and had a baby.
But then (stop me if you’ve heard this one), she “just wasn’t happy.” Kathleen got increasingly short with her husband Stephen, pushy, and demeaning. Finally, she filed for divorce, demanding full custody of their daughter.
According to interviews with Stephen’s friends (as seen on both Dateline and Snapped), Kathleen was both shocked and enraged that Stephen had that gall to demand shared custody of their child.
“She used me as a sperm donor,” he told his friends. There was no other explanation that made sense to him. She’d been the ideal wife right up until she had the baby. And it wasn’t due to his negligence. He took great pains to be hands-on in parenting, which seemed to make Kathleen even angrier.
A longtime friend of Stephen’s speculated she never loved him, that the plan all along was to have a baby, thinking that Stephen, being a man, would willingly walk away from his child.
When he refused, she lured him to his death (with the help of her parents… oh my God) and set his body on fire.
Because this was HER baby. Who did this MAN think he was to imagine he had any rights to his own child?
And it wasn’t until Kathleen and her parents were charged that anyone in her social circle batted an eye. Kathleen sneering cruelty toward Stephen, her willful defiance of court orders to let him see his own child—all of it was shrugged off by every woman she knew.
“Yeah, my ex tries to control me through the kids too.”
It’s baby rabies turned up to 11.
But why? Why marry a man you don’t love just to use him as a sperm donor?
My sister in Christ, you can buy sperm on the internet right now. You had a job. With benefits. You had involved parents who were willing to provide child care. Why trick a man into thinking you love him only to drive him from his family once you had what you wanted?
It’s gross. Respectability politics run amok. These women view men as so disposable that they think nothing of using them for an easily gained body fluid, all so they don’t have to take on the title of “single mom.”
Divorce is no longer shameful. But being a baby mama is. So they do the logical thing: destroy a man’s life to protect their own image. After all, “he had it coming.”
I don’t want to be controversial here, but it seems to me that men are people. They have feelings. They have souls. They have hopes and dreams and love their children and love their wives.
They have pride as well, just like we do. Show me a man who stays with a wife who treats him like shit and I’ll show you a man who fears the stink of failure above all things.
A man is a lot more than a roof fixer and sperm donor. Be sure to remember that when you take pains to ensnare one.
They’re not so impervious as you’ve been led to believe.
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ICYMI
I have started doing livestreams on my Nonsense-Free Editor channel to help aspiring authors in their careers. Here are the first two:
This only refers to the movie version of Practical Magic. The book has some sizeable differences, including the characterization of the aunts.
Great read! I’ve been thinking about all the hate men get. As a mom to boys is very sad and scares me. It recently hit me how weird young women are with men flirting or talking to them these days. So many reports of men casually flirting with a woman and she acts like they are committing a felony. Similarly it’s sad that some women are so controlling they want to use a man in this way. This all makes marriage look like a big trap. It’s not, if you marry a kind respectful person. It’s quite lovely.
It's been slow turning the ship, but family courts in the past decade are finally starting to see that fathers have as valid a claim to custody as mothers, not just weekend visitation. On the other hand, women are the cause of some of this because a few are starting to act more like cads, and leave a family in the lurch, kids and all.