Boy vs. Girl
The Battle of the Sexes
Man v. Woman
Adam VS. Eve
Misogyny vs. Feminism
Male Marines vs. Female Marines
Because something seems to be going on here. That shouldn't. This will begin later.
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman!!
March 17, 2017: Just renewed my driver's license, with a slightly better picture?? And remembering that in some countries women cannot get one.
The oldest Battle of the Sexes example I know:
My older friend Jose likes the girls in Lysistrata, the old Aristophanes play he heard about somewhere, in the mysterious sources of Jose who doesn't seem to read. But, his wife does, and I often suspect she is the source of his wisdom. Lysistrata is from around 400 BCE, so well over 2000 years old. In it, the women are sick of the Peloponnesian War, and therefore make a plan to withhold sex from their husbands until they agree to peace. Jose always thinks this is a brilliant, foolproof plan, which tells you more about Jose than it does about the modern state of male-female relationships. Or classical male-female relationships?
I can think of about 5 reasons this wouldn't work in reality. Are the women even near enough to their husbands for said withholding to work? Did they go to the battlefield with them? I know there are those sort of old fashioned battle images with two camps, some noncombatants in the camp, maybe sometimes wives and families--the fighting didn't happen at camp. It wasn't like the sneaky, win at all costs, civilian casualties sort of warfare we are more familiar with. (Until invasions.)
This leads to another problem of this system: the notion of the conquering hordes invading a city and raping and pillaging. They get their sex by force, right? Now, we could get into the point that this type of sex is more a power trip, part of the winner's high. So, do they care about their wives' love back home?
There's also the idea of male bonding during wartime, with the speculation that it can become more, em, intimate. Haha, there's the Greek male stereotypes. Well, I guess it would all come down to preference.
Or, here's a notion: soldiers are so stressed out from battle fatigue, PTSD, etc. they just plain don't have sex on their minds. They could care less what their wives think and it just makes them more distant.
Or they just decide the cause they are fighting for is more important than getting laid.
Well, it's a comedy, Lysistrata. It's a pretty idea to imagine. Here's a line from it:
LYSISTRATA:
There are a lot of things about us women
That sadden me, considering how men
See us as rascals.
Her friend Calonice answers, "We are."
This doesn't seem all that far from where we are now.
Jose was lucky to come of age during WWII, which, even in Hollywood movies, seemed to reduce the differences of men and women to something merely quirky or amusing. It seems to me, in the US anyway, that the war years were the high point of male-female relations. Everyone respected the differences, accepted their roles, and secretly thought women were superior. At least in some ways--that seems to be half the joke in 1940s-50s comedies. The Rosie the Riveters made it clear women contributed to the culture in multiple ways, not just as mothers and wives. It just seems like that generation had more respect for each other, and their symbiotic roles. And they seemed to be more forgiving when gender lines were crossed, like they were just cute or something. A new study I just read said that generation even had more sex! (Millennials have the least, go figure.)
My grandparents definitely fit in these WWII descriptions. My maternal grandparents, in love till the day one died, and then more probably, teased each other, took care of each other, sacrificed to each other, tried to make the best of the small life they were given. My paternal grandmother worked full-time her entire life, and definitely was the boss and brains of the house. I think, for the middle class, there was a whole lot less of the gold digger/money man style relations that seem on the upswing now. In WWII movies those were only gangster relationships, people with pathological needs. Has that been normalized? I think maybe.
Is money the source of misogyny and radical feminism? In the fifties, we started to become a richer nation, not a bunch of farmers sharing chores. Men now went out to work, women stayed home, but had less to do, due to modern conveniences. The change that wrought has been discussed to death.
Lysistrata seems to point out that there have always been two types of women: the thoughtful, reasonable kind like Lysistrata herself, who are either educated or wise by experience, and the "feminine wiles" type. The second type is like her friend Calonice, the game player:it seems to me her type has always been the problem, the pampered princess, the one who pouts and plays childish games, who learns quickly to emphasize and control whatever physical aspect there is to herself to attract men. Needy, not sacrificing, on many levels. This type is a game player, and there seems something of a competition involved: more clothes, more accoutrements, expensive beauty treatments, vacations, nights out, all enhancing her status. The trouble is, there are also a lot of men who get into this game too, and some can get burned badly by it.
The most frequently burned men, seeking the most competitive trophy women seem to be the ones that succumb to the highest levels of misogynist feelings. I don't know how many of my male students have complained about bad treatment by a girl who they now describe as a "gold-digger", and generalize her behavior to all women. You want to feel sympathy for them, but at the same time you realize they are the victims of their own bad and inevitable choices. These kind of guys just don't see the attraction in the reasonable, Lysistrata types, so they are very disinclined to admit there is another way to feel about women. I don't think it has so much to do with looks per se, but more to do with women who project sexuality--the others are perceived as boring.
Maybe WWII and its deprivations forced more women to be Lysistrata types.
I had this weird dialogue with one of my students at the Model UN conference we went to in Gainesville. I genuinely felt bad for his position, and felt him trying awkwardly to sort it out. First, my fellow chaperone who actually runs the program gave him a rather daunting task. To sit on the committee for worldwide women's issues. Now this boy, 18 I think, is a polite, old-fashioned gentleman brought up with European manners. He has always been greatly respectful to me, and really to most of his classmates, the girls too. He's the least likely to tell off color jokes, he has old fashioned taste in movies. His most constant companion is a fellow Catholic (a very devout Catholic) who has similar old world values. They often spend time together arguing philosophy, history, and Catholic dogma.
Anyway, this poor guy went into the Lion's Den as the only male participant of the women's issue conference, and made something like this as his opening statement in an effort to get in good with the girls. He said, in his estimation, women were far more important than men, based on their most important ability to populate the world and raise future children/citizens. Well, you can just imagine what a bunch of budding feminists did with that statement.
Poor George, after they demonized him as someone who reduced women to an outmoded role, he never got taken seriously in committee again. I would submit, that some of his ideas weren't that horrible, in fact were less flaccid and maybe a little less fascist than theirs--ultimately they were supposed to be discussing ways to reduce rape and violence against women in combat zones.
George's idea was that enemy soldiers invading a foreign country should be required to wear body cameras much like the ones that have become popular with police officers in the US. They would have to explain to NATO, their military superiors, or any other governing body about any time when the cameras had been turned off. I was kind of impressed with that idea, but it was not adopted. Instead, the girls voted for educational classes for women who experienced or witnessed violence and capital punishments for soldiers found guilty of violence against women. Typical woman's soft yin answer followed with the crazy yang vindictiveness--carried out by others, of course.
George's idea was that enemy soldiers invading a foreign country should be required to wear body cameras much like the ones that have become popular with police officers in the US. They would have to explain to NATO, their military superiors, or any other governing body about any time when the cameras had been turned off. I was kind of impressed with that idea, but it was not adopted. Instead, the girls voted for educational classes for women who experienced or witnessed violence and capital punishments for soldiers found guilty of violence against women. Typical woman's soft yin answer followed with the crazy yang vindictiveness--carried out by others, of course.
Once again, I felt embarrassed for my gender. We all gave G. some advice for his next encounter, trying to get him to possibly see what caused their reactionary point of view. But you could tell he was done, and this had been a very negative experience for him. The odd thing he said at the end was this:
That "In the future women are going to rule the world. They won't need men because advances in science, and men will basically become useless." I was pretty flabbergasted that he said this. I really didn't know what to say except "that's not true", and it felt like, he looked depressed and overwhelmed enough, that I think he really believed it. (I also think he broke up with his girlfriend earlier this year, and they are still forced together in my class. Strained. And she's not at all the trophy type. She literally has a fake limb. Also a nice kid.)
Are there really a lot of men out there that fear this? It's funny, because I think women basically assume the opposite, that we're NEVER going to be on top. Or even. Equal. We've been fighting just to be even since the 20s, at least in America--before that I assume the pioneer women were just too tired. I can't forget the early radical Mary Wollstonecraft.
Now, however, we seemed to be totally screwed up about definitions of male/female. Add the non-binary thing to the mix. And homosexuality. The millennials are calling us on the over-emphasis on sex. Well, is that surprising given the way they've been treated , the most overly sexualized advertising market --I'd be sick of sex too if I had had it thrown in my face 24/7 like they have. Do advertisers and businessmen even have a clue about over-saturation of a good thing?
April 8: So earlier this week I coincidentally listened to this rerun podcast perfect for this thread--(can you believe, a rerun of a podcast? :0) This one was a 15 year old This American Life from NPR: #220, to be specific. It's title: "Testosterone." So, Ira Glass, the host, says one of the producers, Alex Blumberg, had suggested a show all on testosterone, and apparently all the people involved with TAL thought it was a terrible idea.
They were wrong; this was one of the most fascinating podcasts I'd ever heard.
Alex said he got the idea from a memory of a book he read as a kid--Marilyn French's The Women's Room, which I confess I'd never read, although I have extreme familiarity with its cover. It was one of those overstock books we had at the used paperback bookstore I worked for one summer between college and my first teaching job. apparently, a lot of people read this thing, or had a copy of it laying around, anyway. From what Alex said it sounded like some seriously angry women venting, and therefore was often considered sort of mainstream feminism in the 70s. (Boy have times changed).
I was more amused at why he picked it off his parents' shelf in the first place--he was really looking for something more semi-pornagraphic. Apparently he had found Fear of Flying in the past--another 70s open-minded "feminist" sensation. I remember doing similar things as a kid--we must be about the same age--I was taking my dad's Playboy jokebooks.. Anyway, this had the crazy effect of making poor Alex feel bad, because, when he started having sexual urges about real girls, he kept flashing back to the horrible men described in The Women's Room, and thinking he was becoming like them. Score points for Alex's sensitivity.
So the real meat of this podcast, however, was just literally about the chemical effects of testosterone on individuals, to answer age old questions about the differences between men and women (and everyone in between). It was pretty surprising! Like the broadcasters of the pod, I didn't want to believe that a chemical compound had so much effect on an individual's personality! We have a soul, right? We choose to be who we are, choose our moral decisions, particularly with regards to our sexual behavior. Right? Right?
Ok, the first guy interviewed was a man who, for medical reasons, stopped producing testosterone. I guess at first he was just a normal guy. After the Testosterone Stoppage, he felt his personality change in a big way, and not all bad or good. Just very noticeably changed. Incredible, as Ira said:
Here's the guy:
Everything that I identify as being me, my ambition, my interest in things, my sense of humor, the inflection in my voice, the quality of my speech even changed in the time that I was without a lot of the hormone. So yes, the introduction of testosterone returned everything. There were things that I find offensive about my own personality that were disconnected then. And it was nice to be without them-- envy, the desire to judge itself. I approached people with a humility that I had never displayed before.The show goes on to explain that testosterone is the hormone of desire--not just sexual desire--all desires. Says the man(I think his words say it best):
When you have no testosterone, you have no desire. And when you have no desire, you don't have any content in your mind. You don't think about anything.
...And you see, I was looking at absolutely everything, the most mundane sight in the world-- a weed in the sidewalk-- and thinking, oh, that's beautiful. The surgery scars on people's knees, the bolts in the hubcaps of cars, all of it. It just seemed to have purpose. And it was like, oh, that's beautiful.
He goes on to say, that rather than being upset by this change, he found it rather pleasant, like the lifting of a burden, at times. He basically wanted nothing, very Zen or something. He said it had its allure. Is that freaky or what? I don't know what to make of it. However, when doctors found the source of his problem, I guess he went on some hormone therapy and went back to normal.
Somehow, that wasn't what I had expected.
The second interviewee was a person, born a girl, a lesbian, who wanted to become a guy, and did hormone therapy. Her personality changes were even weirder (as you might imagine). But still, gotta make you wonder about the power of the chemical mix in our bodies.
So, she (Griffin) went through her early sexual years as a cool bull dyke lesbian punk, black leather, Doc Martens and tattoos, very rebellious and by her word admired, attractive, and sought after in her circle. She was the one everyone imitated and wanted to spend time with. She was ultra liberal and feminist, as you might naturally think might be the case. (BTW, listening to this person's voice on radio, it's rather strange to think she/he had never not been a man--it was NOT like Melissa McCarthy doing Sean Spicer--it was a MAN's voice. The hormones worked, I guess.
This interviewee gives us the scoop on average Testosterone levels, based on the over the top shots given:
"the average amount of testosterone in an average male body is between 300 and 1,000 nanograms per deciliter of blood. After that shot, and after an average shot, my testosterone levels go up to over 2,000 nanograms per deciliter, so that I have the testosterone of two high-testosterone men in my body at once".
Griffin then goes on to tell about what behavioral changes he experienced. In just a few days.
Here's the core of what Griffin said:
The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women and the way I thought about sex.
Before testosterone, I would be riding the subway, which is the traditional hotbed of lust in the city. And I would see a woman on the subway and I would think, she's attractive. I'd like to meet her. What's that book she's reading? I could talk to her. This is what I would say. There would be a narrative. There would be this stream of language. It would be very verbal.
After testosterone, there was no narrative. There was no language whatsoever. It was just, I would see a woman who was attractive-- or not attractive. She might have an attractive quality-- nice ankles or something-- and the rest of her would be fairly unappealing to me.
But that was enough to basically just flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another. It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind. And I couldn't turn it off. I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex.
I was an editorial assistant. And I would be standing at the Xerox machine, and this big, shuddering, warm, inanimate object would just drive me crazy. It was very erotic to me.
Wow. I'm thinking. The only change was a chemical hormone. WTF? Is this why men and women see the world, and especially sex, so differently? And of course, women have some level of testosterone too. And I suppose it varies in them as well, as it does in men. So, one of the more strange aspects of Griffin's change is what he lost, by no longer being female, and technically, a lesbian. Because now instead of being an edgy person with cool outsider, open perspective, he was viewed as just an ordinary somewhat chauvinistic (of the male type) bro. No women (who didn't know the whole story) gave him credit for once having insight into female life. He felt like something of a monster stalking around in comparison to his old self. He described this crazy internal struggle that took place one day when he was walking behind a woman on the street in a short skirt and skimpy top, staring at her, overtaking her, then having this devil vs. angel conversation with himself about how right or wrong it would be to indulge the impulse to turn and stare at her breasts...the old feminist vs the new male. He also admits getting aroused by a red Mustang, which makes no sense to me.
This is a pretty interesting exchange:
Griffin:So I had to relearn how to talk to women. And I had to learn how to rephrase things, how to hold my tongue on certain things. And I'm not very good at it, so I get in trouble.Alex Blumberg: That is so fascinating. Because as a man, I think, from the time I went through puberty, I feel like that's something that I've been learning to do in a certain way, is just figure out how to say things without getting myself in trouble.
I have been trying to figure out what to do with this information. I think on some level we all know there is a difference, but I think there is some amount of denial on both sides. Men secretly think women really feel like they do about sex, and play games or deny the feelings to avoid looking like sluts. And, women kind of deny to themselves that men don't really think that way, do they? It's just an act, both sides kinda want to think. Men think, no, you really do know what you do to us, that why you dress like that, flirt like that, move like that. Women are aware of a reaction, which is why they do the previous things, but I think they have a more Ken-doll, Disney- prince- with- stars- in- his- eyes sort of interpretation of the exchange. I'm so nice-looking, beautiful, appealing, he loves me, cares a lot about me. But men know, they have these feelings so much, about so many women and perhaps random objects like vibrating machines and cars for God's sake, that they don't associate it with love as girls do.
Not to stereotype, but I honestly think I really had no idea what was really going on in men's minds who found me attractive when I was young--or maybe even now. Wow, we are so not the same. Maybe should be taken with some empathy, each gender for the other?
The last part of the podcast had various people involved in the podcast's production to agree to having their testosterone levels tested. Men and women, of various sexual orientations. Everyone was stressed about this, and the women of course, didn't want to be the highest, and all of the men did. One of the surprises was the gay guy on the crew tested highest. So there goes that theory, too.
I do think, that sometimes, just random things seem to bring on sexual thoughts, especially when you take dreams into account. It almost seems chemical. I think certain people, maybe even types, do that for me--but not even close to the stereotypical heart-throb type --tall, blonde, blue-eyed, chiseled jaw, muscular--no that kind of guy has never been for me. I favor more the rebellious, weird bad boy type--I guess my mind anticipates more how he will act and think more than what he looks like. The words, the ideas. I definitely know I am in the minority in my taste--the stupid boyband, hot stud actors are really no response for me. I'm difficult. And the strange thing is, I don't think I've ever really experienced this in reality: my crazy dude. Maybe it's just something I've seen in a movie. In a band...
But is that chemically driven? It can't be, can it? Not all of it. And why do men favor so many different types of women--focus on different parts, ages, hair types or ethnicity, for example, or thin, big, tall, short--how much of that is cultural? Growing up in the Midwest, for me it was obvious that being tall (and thin) as a girl was a liability to your love life. Midwest boys favored short, cuddly blondes, I think. The "hottest" girl at my school, the one all the boys drooled about, was--I'm not kidding--4'11 1/2 . I know, because Jadwiga used to measure us in gym class: Everyone in the first row (4- to- a- row) was below 5'2"--I was first in the 2nd row, making me 5th shortest in my senior class. Chris F. (4'11"), this little pixie girl with long, long blonde hair and an incongruous smoker's scratchy voice, was shortest. Next was Patty, 4'11 1/2, the hot" one-- middle girl in a very large almost exclusively girl family that spawned a lot of cheerleaders. Patty became one too, but it seemed reluctantly. See, she was our valedictorian, and, I believe, later graduated from Notre Dame med school. But the hotness factor: she probably had a 38"-40" bust, a small waist, and a symmetrical bottom. Even her calves had an insane voluptuous curve, that you knew would turn to fat. Besides her brains, though, she was also a party girl. Maybe she was a bit like a Kardashian, or that Jersey Girl--Snooki or whatever her name was she was. Except smart. Not sure why we were never friends. I grade school they put her in the dum-dum class.
Now, here in Florida, and California, the type seems reversed. Tall, leggy thin girls are the thing. Busts are optional, or possibly manufactured. So something is not totally innate, or chemical.
April 9: A new slant on the gender topic. I've been putting off, for aeons, rewatching The Velvet Goldmine, knowing full well I would understand it much better now, given my full emersion in Glam Rock which had been a mere tepid toe in younger days. Now, I can't believe all the obvious fictionalized references I missed--Brian Slade's first public appearance, with long Rita Hayworth -like side-parted locks and a satin Chinese dressing gown is so early Bowie first album it's almost plagiarism. T-Rex is there, and Ewan McGregor is playing some sort of latter-day Kurt Cobain fan-boy of the Glam Scene--nice touch, shows a breadth of musical knowledge. (Actually, I take all of that back--later scenes show his character is definitely cloned from Iggy Pop--it was the eye makeup and platinum blonde that fooled me, because Kurt, like Ewan, is probably more classically handsome than Ig...) The movie implies there was something sexual between the Bowie-esque character and the Iggy-esque character--which may have just played into the hand of the movie plot's weirdnss more than anything real. At least, I've never heard that, and never got a notion that as unconventional as Iggy was, he didn't go for boys. Or did he?
But what really makes this a damn fine musical movie is the fact that the music is good! Mixed in, of course, with some real glam rock, like my favorite T-Rex "Cosmic Dancer"!! And Eno and...It carries the heartbeat of the originals and almost sounds like deep cuts or lost albums--amazing that this film doesn't have more buzz. But, that just illustrates America's finickiness with complicated sexuality.
Hmm. We can do, easily, Ford truck-drivin' football and sports lovin' womanizer masculinity--that's top grade in 'merica. And pink and mascara, high-heel wearing , big hair, hairsprayed girls--normal. But please do not mix the two in any fashion. It makes us nervous.
So, here's the question the Velvet Goldmine , Bowie, Marc Bolan, Cobain wearing a dress on stage, Iggy wearing eyeliner and glitter, and various other confusing images brings up---why would a very straight, heterosexual, midwest Catholic girl go gaga for these guys? Now, I have to admit, I will go to my grave saying they all were just playing games, that they were as hetero as me. I really don't want to believe anything else, even if they experimented, especially if it was under the influence of drugs. This only works for me, if, bottom line, they're true nature is to love women. Which I believe. But I also love the idea that they are willing to play games with their identities. Plus, I think Angela Bowie is a bit of a storyteller sad wannabe ifyaknowwhutahmean...
I'm just trying to be honest--hate me all you want. But what does this mean? About me, and other females like me?? One explanation is I HATE rules. And I love to play. It's about freedom?
April 11: Finally finished The Velvet Goldmine--that Filmstruck website sure gets glitchy--had to restart it a bunch of times. Perhaps my computer just started to realize that the second half wasn't as good as the first half--after the Bowie-Iggy (that is Brian Slade-Kurt Wilde) relationship started, the movie kinda fell apart--belongs on my "ART I WANNA SEE" thread as a flawed classic. It just seemed like the writer was so bent on focusing on a sexual relationship that maybe did or didn't happen (looking round online, it appears that there are a number of "out" type gay friendly webzines or blogs that want the true deepness of this relationship to be true--yet neither party , who seem to be pretty open-minded, have acknowledged it or published the fact. Either it's too personal for them, or it didn't happen or, whatever. Anyway, the insistence on the focus I think ruined the ending and the fun of the movie.
It also explained the existence of the budding glam journalist character, the narrator that Christian Bale played, who was definitely trying to fight his way out of the closet and was coloring the rainbow vibes in the story. The further the movie went, the more it was from this frustrated dude's eyes, and the phonier and more synthesized the story seemed. So take it with a grain of salt, but the flavoring was kinda like camped up Kraft parmesan--it really stopped feeling real, or Horrors! cool even.
Take the costumes, for example. The Slade (Bowie) costumes in his Max (Ziggy Stardust?) period were hardly alien-like. More like a bedazzled French Court dandy--and pretty tacky. Hamburger Mary's comes to mind--the local chain. Something your mother could love, hardly edgy or intellectual sexuality. Don't see Bowie going in for the threads in this show. Too much pink, too much drag queen feathers and glitter. Tacky. In Russian/ Пошлость. The best thing they did was use Jonathan Rhys Meyers for Bowie who almost pulled it off--the Rita Hayworth look, and the teal blue version of Ziggy SD's frightwig. He's got the sex appeal. But there has always been something else in Bowie that this movie didn't capture--because they tried too hard to camp it all up. I think Glam Rock was only maybe 25% camp, not 95% like this movie. There was an intelligence to it.
All of that was given a plot point by implying Bowie's marriage to Angela (Toni Collette's character) was broken by his affair with Iggy. Now we're back in campy, soap opera ladies' land. Which has nothing to do with the class of David Bowie. Or Iggy Pop, for that matter. In the end, the VGMine's portrayal of them was a depthless cartoon. Maybe Angie deserves this(what is the story about Mick writing a song about her? She claims it was her hub he was hot for).
Hnn. I've gone far afield from my discussion of gender stuff. Maybe. People who have an urge to blur the lines, but still choose a side. Boys Keep Swinging.
Not to stereotype, but I honestly think I really had no idea what was really going on in men's minds who found me attractive when I was young--or maybe even now. Wow, we are so not the same. Maybe should be taken with some empathy, each gender for the other?
The last part of the podcast had various people involved in the podcast's production to agree to having their testosterone levels tested. Men and women, of various sexual orientations. Everyone was stressed about this, and the women of course, didn't want to be the highest, and all of the men did. One of the surprises was the gay guy on the crew tested highest. So there goes that theory, too.
I do think, that sometimes, just random things seem to bring on sexual thoughts, especially when you take dreams into account. It almost seems chemical. I think certain people, maybe even types, do that for me--but not even close to the stereotypical heart-throb type --tall, blonde, blue-eyed, chiseled jaw, muscular--no that kind of guy has never been for me. I favor more the rebellious, weird bad boy type--I guess my mind anticipates more how he will act and think more than what he looks like. The words, the ideas. I definitely know I am in the minority in my taste--the stupid boyband, hot stud actors are really no response for me. I'm difficult. And the strange thing is, I don't think I've ever really experienced this in reality: my crazy dude. Maybe it's just something I've seen in a movie. In a band...
But is that chemically driven? It can't be, can it? Not all of it. And why do men favor so many different types of women--focus on different parts, ages, hair types or ethnicity, for example, or thin, big, tall, short--how much of that is cultural? Growing up in the Midwest, for me it was obvious that being tall (and thin) as a girl was a liability to your love life. Midwest boys favored short, cuddly blondes, I think. The "hottest" girl at my school, the one all the boys drooled about, was--I'm not kidding--4'11 1/2 . I know, because Jadwiga used to measure us in gym class: Everyone in the first row (4- to- a- row) was below 5'2"--I was first in the 2nd row, making me 5th shortest in my senior class. Chris F. (4'11"), this little pixie girl with long, long blonde hair and an incongruous smoker's scratchy voice, was shortest. Next was Patty, 4'11 1/2, the hot" one-- middle girl in a very large almost exclusively girl family that spawned a lot of cheerleaders. Patty became one too, but it seemed reluctantly. See, she was our valedictorian, and, I believe, later graduated from Notre Dame med school. But the hotness factor: she probably had a 38"-40" bust, a small waist, and a symmetrical bottom. Even her calves had an insane voluptuous curve, that you knew would turn to fat. Besides her brains, though, she was also a party girl. Maybe she was a bit like a Kardashian, or that Jersey Girl--Snooki or whatever her name was she was. Except smart. Not sure why we were never friends. I grade school they put her in the dum-dum class.
Now, here in Florida, and California, the type seems reversed. Tall, leggy thin girls are the thing. Busts are optional, or possibly manufactured. So something is not totally innate, or chemical.
April 9: A new slant on the gender topic. I've been putting off, for aeons, rewatching The Velvet Goldmine, knowing full well I would understand it much better now, given my full emersion in Glam Rock which had been a mere tepid toe in younger days. Now, I can't believe all the obvious fictionalized references I missed--Brian Slade's first public appearance, with long Rita Hayworth -like side-parted locks and a satin Chinese dressing gown is so early Bowie first album it's almost plagiarism. T-Rex is there, and Ewan McGregor is playing some sort of latter-day Kurt Cobain fan-boy of the Glam Scene--nice touch, shows a breadth of musical knowledge. (Actually, I take all of that back--later scenes show his character is definitely cloned from Iggy Pop--it was the eye makeup and platinum blonde that fooled me, because Kurt, like Ewan, is probably more classically handsome than Ig...) The movie implies there was something sexual between the Bowie-esque character and the Iggy-esque character--which may have just played into the hand of the movie plot's weirdnss more than anything real. At least, I've never heard that, and never got a notion that as unconventional as Iggy was, he didn't go for boys. Or did he?
But what really makes this a damn fine musical movie is the fact that the music is good! Mixed in, of course, with some real glam rock, like my favorite T-Rex "Cosmic Dancer"!! And Eno and...It carries the heartbeat of the originals and almost sounds like deep cuts or lost albums--amazing that this film doesn't have more buzz. But, that just illustrates America's finickiness with complicated sexuality.
Hmm. We can do, easily, Ford truck-drivin' football and sports lovin' womanizer masculinity--that's top grade in 'merica. And pink and mascara, high-heel wearing , big hair, hairsprayed girls--normal. But please do not mix the two in any fashion. It makes us nervous.
So, here's the question the Velvet Goldmine , Bowie, Marc Bolan, Cobain wearing a dress on stage, Iggy wearing eyeliner and glitter, and various other confusing images brings up---why would a very straight, heterosexual, midwest Catholic girl go gaga for these guys? Now, I have to admit, I will go to my grave saying they all were just playing games, that they were as hetero as me. I really don't want to believe anything else, even if they experimented, especially if it was under the influence of drugs. This only works for me, if, bottom line, they're true nature is to love women. Which I believe. But I also love the idea that they are willing to play games with their identities. Plus, I think Angela Bowie is a bit of a storyteller sad wannabe ifyaknowwhutahmean...
I'm just trying to be honest--hate me all you want. But what does this mean? About me, and other females like me?? One explanation is I HATE rules. And I love to play. It's about freedom?
April 11: Finally finished The Velvet Goldmine--that Filmstruck website sure gets glitchy--had to restart it a bunch of times. Perhaps my computer just started to realize that the second half wasn't as good as the first half--after the Bowie-Iggy (that is Brian Slade-Kurt Wilde) relationship started, the movie kinda fell apart--belongs on my "ART I WANNA SEE" thread as a flawed classic. It just seemed like the writer was so bent on focusing on a sexual relationship that maybe did or didn't happen (looking round online, it appears that there are a number of "out" type gay friendly webzines or blogs that want the true deepness of this relationship to be true--yet neither party , who seem to be pretty open-minded, have acknowledged it or published the fact. Either it's too personal for them, or it didn't happen or, whatever. Anyway, the insistence on the focus I think ruined the ending and the fun of the movie.
It also explained the existence of the budding glam journalist character, the narrator that Christian Bale played, who was definitely trying to fight his way out of the closet and was coloring the rainbow vibes in the story. The further the movie went, the more it was from this frustrated dude's eyes, and the phonier and more synthesized the story seemed. So take it with a grain of salt, but the flavoring was kinda like camped up Kraft parmesan--it really stopped feeling real, or Horrors! cool even.
Take the costumes, for example. The Slade (Bowie) costumes in his Max (Ziggy Stardust?) period were hardly alien-like. More like a bedazzled French Court dandy--and pretty tacky. Hamburger Mary's comes to mind--the local chain. Something your mother could love, hardly edgy or intellectual sexuality. Don't see Bowie going in for the threads in this show. Too much pink, too much drag queen feathers and glitter. Tacky. In Russian/ Пошлость. The best thing they did was use Jonathan Rhys Meyers for Bowie who almost pulled it off--the Rita Hayworth look, and the teal blue version of Ziggy SD's frightwig. He's got the sex appeal. But there has always been something else in Bowie that this movie didn't capture--because they tried too hard to camp it all up. I think Glam Rock was only maybe 25% camp, not 95% like this movie. There was an intelligence to it.
All of that was given a plot point by implying Bowie's marriage to Angela (Toni Collette's character) was broken by his affair with Iggy. Now we're back in campy, soap opera ladies' land. Which has nothing to do with the class of David Bowie. Or Iggy Pop, for that matter. In the end, the VGMine's portrayal of them was a depthless cartoon. Maybe Angie deserves this(what is the story about Mick writing a song about her? She claims it was her hub he was hot for).
Hnn. I've gone far afield from my discussion of gender stuff. Maybe. People who have an urge to blur the lines, but still choose a side. Boys Keep Swinging.
April 17: So, here's a thing. the whole sexuality thing. It's always gross if it is only one way. If you don't feel it, you don't feel it, and feel bad for the persistent one. Age doesn't matter. Gender, lifestyle, language. No barriers. Chemical?? I hate to think of it this way--it is...more soul connections, musical harmonies. They don't happen on both sides very often. No unilateral behavior...
April 23: we gotta talk the whole Bill O'Reilly/ Roger Ailes/ Fox News thing. I can't help but speculate that much of the misogynist bent of the last decade lands at the door of Fox News and its fans. They made their money on Simpsons, Family Guy (which all had it's macho bent, lets face it, funny as it is, that's the scary part to challenge my actual friends with.)..but it wasn't toxic. Here's an example of what I mean .
i just watched a short clip from one of my favorite Russian musicals, Стиляги. Ok, in the movie, set in the 50s?? this 50ish unwealthy divorcee? widower? anyway he's alone at 50, all alone but a cat, but like my good buddy Jose, hasn't let life and poverty take away his joie de vivre--in his scene he's walking--no, strutting-- through the crowded hallway of his Soviet communal apartment building--people are getting ready for their day, the women cooking and cleaning, the young washing up for school. Человек weaves his way down the hallway, smiling at this person, pushing a girl on her bike, then grabbing a girl half his age on the ass and squeezing--what!? However. There's no force of power, just playfulness. he sorta loves her for a brief, wild moment. Just wait, she turns with a smile, swats at him with her towel, wags a smiling finger. this was no power play, just a man enjoying his life and God's bounty. Awesome, maybe mildly irritating for a moment for the young girl , as well as a little flattering.
Cut to BILL O' REILLY. Making none too subtle remarks to a women who is, career-wise, beholding to his power as boss and having the ear of the super boss. He knows this. He is a coiled, venomous cobra. He makes a proposal. A presumptuous phone call that quite frankly, is a power play to use his influence for his own temporary pleasure. There is no appreciation, no joie de vivre. Isn't the difference obvious? It all stems from motive. Jose, who is my father's age, regularly tells me off-color jokes, implies it is a pleasure to sit with me (isn't that nice, an old broad like me) , makes old-fashioned, sexist remarks --but I love him. I don't feel threatened, or burdened, or forced, by him in any way--he just likes all aspects of life, and deserves to enjoy it, as I see it. O' Reilly? He's manipulative, a bully--whatever he says is hidden, to be taken with a grain of salt. Don't wanna ever be alone with him. We can feel the difference. Everyone can, and if you can't you're either in some sort of suck-up, right wing white denial, or a complete bastard, as Rik Mayall would say.
Sept. 6: Hurricane coming, but I'm still forced to work tomorrow. I just watched another movie of a guy with weirdo sexuality, Crumb, the 60's underground cartoonist who both repels me and interests me--I don't even find him physically repellent--kinda stylish in an offbeat nerdy way. His artwork is rife with that nerd boy misogyny, though what you find in verbal vomitus these days all over the 4Chan style internets--the Nazi idiots, the white supremists. Well, Crumb is way more thoughtful than them, but you see the same rejection fueling the nerdbloggers' expression. And I suppose it's part of the Silicon Valley culture, they say, too? Nerd boys who can't get over HS rejections--please go watch Mean Girls or Heathers and realize 95% of us were the victims of the 1%. How does this feed itself? I thought nerds were supposed to be cool and marriage material these days--$$$$--is there something chemical happening here as well? I do have a possible suspect in the autism spectrum--those guys just don't get romance. To investigate.
I'm also curious--my friend Leo is about to interview this celebutante from the 90s Manhattan Club scene who he wrote as a character in his book Italo, about a niche club scene in the 90s. He's sort of both awful and charming, and his story is full of those Club Kids, many very gay, who were part of that scene and who personally rub me the wrong way with their narcissism and attention need. But they come from the same sort of prototype--high school rejects, this time more for gayness and flamboyance. Michael Alig, (the interviewee) embraced this behavior and celebrated it. To great effect and success. He also killed someone in a drug fueled frenzy. (He's the person that Macaulay Culkin played in Party Monster.)
So a new concept is that all that gay flamboyance was sort of nurtured behavior born for a need for gays to identify each other in a repressive society--oh, Dr. Bombay--was Gay?!! I feel a less alone! Now, flamboyance gaydar is no longer needed and hence not so prevalent. Really? also to investigate and figure out.
I'm not gay, BTW. Not that I'm aware of.
Sept 21: this is quite interesting--
https://www.thecut.com/2017/09/why-women-cheat-esther-perel-state-of-affairs.html?wpsrc=nymag
October 14: The Harvey Weinstein Scandal--maybe this is what our culture finally needs, to implode some of its imbalance. More later.
I really don't want to repeat what has already been said, about disgust and incredulity, and yada-yada. I don't know how to approach this, actually. Yes, I experienced sexual harassment and been inappropriately touched in several work places and among friends and acquaintances. I don't really feel scarred, but I made sure to let my disapproval known when I could. One was a college professor, and I flat out called him a jerk--(he'd already given me an A, and this was later). I also know a lot of good men who control themselves. Men who complain about women who are stuck-up, bitches, send up a red flag in my world.
For women I think this whole mess feels like 9/11--the enemy has made its boldness known, and we're on high alert. Code Red Level Alert.
Burn big piles of 4- inch stiletto stripper heels, ladies, if you want to send a message. Haha, maybe women should send men a Lysistrata message--no more bordello clothes until you all collectively prove you can control yourselves.
It pisses me off to see women calling out other women about having common sense about how one should dress. The girl from Big Bang Theory got raked over the coals for advocating common sense (ie. modest) dressing. Please tell me you are wearing those 5 inchers for your own comfort and pleasure. I've been there, looking at my suddenly loooong, toned looking legs in the mirror; it's a real ego boost---but who can keep that up? Fools, that's who--your feet feel completely mangled after 25 minutes. If your clothes are revealing, of course men are more likely to get ideas about you.
But, truly, what you are doing is giving men the excuse they are looking for to shift the blame.
Of course, bottom line, it's up to men to control themselves. Women are not responsible for men who cross lines of appropriate behavior. And there are plenty of instances of men who attack women who aren't provocatively dressed, or flirtatious, or who make it abundantly clear they have no interest in the man.
However, I'm old enough to remember a world when going to a strip bar was a pretty sleazy operation, only for the bottom feeders. Now is a mass-industry, a rite of passage for all 18 year old males. They want their girlfriends to turn them on like that. (Never mind it might be fake..) Men are probably confused, too.
And there's the power trip.
It seems to be that our culture has grown to admire such aggressive men; this is what depresses me. My own parents dismiss my experiences as "my imagination". And you wonder why girls don't tell.
And women are so confused, especially about what to wear. Which seems trivial, but it is so much a part of the whole problem. Lots of women these days conflate looking pretty and feeling good with looking sexy--and with very revealing clothes. There was a time when this was less true. People my age remember a time when wearing daisy dukes and high heels was an outfit for streetwalkers only. And remember that insanely stupid trend combining thong underwear and super-low hiphuggers--so low, you exposed your thong in back, and it was necessary to shave in the front. That wasn't the 70s.
And, it's being said that the fashion industry is also complicit--of, course, that seems obvious now--the red carpet displays, TMZ, the models who become actresses, the models and fashion industry people who become actor and producer's wives, actresses, musicians' wives. The bordello clothes, those stupid heels. Seems like all you have to do is slap a $500 price tag on 5 inch heels, put a 20-year old starlet in them, and all of a sudden they aren't slutty, they are haute couture. Right now it just reminds me of some sort of line-up at a high end whore house. Everything I have been complaining about for for years about the denigration of all our culture's outlets-- music, film, art, animation, fashion, literature--so much of it is judged on how willing the art form is to indulge our collective prurient interests. PHOTOSHOP!! The Motion picture rating system is a joke. Every year it feels like American boys are more sexist and leering. With higher expectations of getting something for nothing. They are the by-product, and future, of these self-indulgent boy-men, because they are subliminally passing on the message--through music and movies--now probably to at least two! generations, that this is what it means to be a real man. And picky little bastards--
Women should boycott the fashion and movie industries that promote this BS. But let's not get silly about it. I don't have to tell you which ones. You can smell it just like I can. Smells like pig and degradation. Like Harvey Weinstein's bathrobe.
October 28, 2017: Oh, yeah, I think this is pretty much a "turn the page"moment in sexual dynamics. Plus, someone in Trump's world is about to be "taken into custody". Maybe there is a god.. Maybe, like someone once said (Gerald Ford?) Our (latest) long national nightmare is about to end. I paraphrase.
Toxic men, your day is done, like last week's BBQ. For the time being.
October 29: Even my parents (or mom, at least) is asking questions about my own (and K's) personal history with sexual harassment, etc. I started off by saying, you know I told you and you didn't want to believe me...guess now she does, about the terrible environment at McDonnell-Douglas, and other problems I had with various bosses, professors, even students. K can tell her own story. It seems rather late, but maybe it feels satisfying to finally be believed. I think it's pretty sad, with my family, though, that something has to become "popular" before they think it has reached a certain level of importance. But, big men continue to fall, and I don't feel bad for them at all.
There was a call in yesterday's paper, (Washington Post, I believe) to put more women in American leadership positions to cure this problem: in government, media and entertainment, universities, business, technology. We're at something like an abysmal well-under-20% --sometimes as low as 12%! This in spite of being slightly over 50% of the population, holding 60% of college degrees, being 47% of working America. This all speaks to so many things I've complained about in the past--the movie industries' ridiculous skew to please adolescent boys more than anyone, the ratings system, the make-up of most Talking Head media teams--(bubble-headed bleach blonde and older distinguished male with graying temples), the fashion and advertising industries obsession with impossible beauty standards, wage inequity, the misogynist laws that pass Congress, the token women as board members, the silly frat boy culture that rules everywhere!! (We actually had a soccer coach at our school take his team to Hooters' for a team event, and even intentionally didn't invite the one girl on his team, in case she Narced on him. With respect to my school, he was fired for this stupidity.)
How about this nugget? Remember when America bragged about its low-mortality birth rate? It was a sign of our exceptionalness--our "beacon on the hill" status. You would think that would also have a connection to the mothers giving birth:
Yet because of flaws in the way the US identifies and investigates maternal deaths -- a process perennially short on funding and scientific attention -- what data exists on this particular set of vital statistics is incomplete and untrustworthy. Indeed, for the last decade, the US hasn't had an official annual count of pregnancy-related fatalities, or an official maternal mortality rate -- a damning reflection of health officials' lack of confidence in the available numbers.
Guess we don't brag about this any more:WHO estimates our rates of maternal deaths are rising, and are twice as high as the world's average, but we're not collecting good data for some strange reason. We do on teenage births, infant mortality (Mississippi's is highest followed by other southern states ,and ours is higher than every European country, Australia and New Zealand), transplants. This seems strange for a country to claim to put such a high premium on family values. Hypocrisy? Of course is some way we are hiding the state of our horrific health care, which Congress seems to be hellbent on making worse for women. Hopefully this is yet another thing that will light up soon.
Nov 14: And the beat goes on...and now in politics. Everything feels so different about this!! Good!! Roy Moore, who apparently has taken a shine to underage girls for decades, is more than likely to lose his bid for election, and probably taking the GOP down several notches with him. Not that I'm a fan of the Dems (see the great SNL skit about them thinking they are now winning because of the recent 2017 elections --uh, no. We still think you're sleazy lite. The sketch wasn't really funny--that kind of satire that is so true it isn't even humorous but still needs to be said).
Wow, this was today's headlines, in several iterations: "WE BELIEVE THE WOMEN!" Finally! A high water mark in our culture! I'm very curious where America is going to go with this over the next 2-3 years.
Sometimes I feel a little bit hypocritical about this topic because of my love for Rock&Roll, which of course is a terribly sexist playground. I really do like the music more than the words, and kudos to Robert Plant for calling out his own past performances and implying that he is too mature to do all that cock posturing anymore--it really is kinda silly, and maybe the new generation of musicians have kinda lost that pose--some of them--perhaps with the help of a whole historical anthology of anti-cock rock to draw from: the loser state of Dead Boys, the Buzzcocks (hah), nerd rock of various kinds, Weird Al, Zappa--who manages to have it both ways with стёб-like satire--, sad-boy British 80s stuff , etc.
Maybe the last bastion of this is hip-hop, where misogyny and bad boy behavior is alive and well. I think the problem is not so much the image, if you think of it as role-playing: then it can be kinda fun and, uh, stimulating. Rock (and hip-hop) needs that kind of energy. But when the perp starts believing his own hype, that's when things lose their flavor and get too real.
And of course, that's the point where my musical skills start to hit bumps--I can't pull off, nor do I really have the urge to perform that way--just picture myself looking silly doing it before I even start.
And something in me kinda thinks I should try.
I was thinking about this today because I just watched a few videos of this kid, Toby Lee--rock god in the making with good taste and great lead skills. He's got the cocky attitude, even when he's sitting on his parents' couch in Tony the Tiger Pjs, playing a Les Paul gold top--the attitude looks somewhat ridiculous on a 10 year old, but you can kinda see that in the not too distant future he is going to command a stage somewhere with his aggressive playing. Most importantly, he looks like he loves what he's doing..and the sounds he's making. That's really the trick isn't it--you love someone because they love themselves.
And it helps to have nice toys. I will pray for Toby to not become a macho jerk in spite of his talent.
Haha, maybe a new idea is to take all the old rock cliches and write new lyrics for them--not feminist lyrics, that's dumb and too obvious. But lyrics that take the intensity of the passion and transforms it to---??????
Lessee--example attempt. An embarrassing classic rock/blues song lyric--hmm.
Whole Lotta Love:
You've been coolin', baby, I've been droolin',
All the good times I've been misusin',
Way, way down inside, I'm gonna give you my love,
I'm gonna give you every inch of my love,
Gonna give you my love.
Yeah! All right! Let's go!
Haha, maybe a new idea is to take all the old rock cliches and write new lyrics for them--not feminist lyrics, that's dumb and too obvious. But lyrics that take the intensity of the passion and transforms it to---??????
Lessee--example attempt. An embarrassing classic rock/blues song lyric--hmm.
Whole Lotta Love:
You've been coolin', baby, I've been droolin',
All the good times I've been misusin',
Way, way down inside, I'm gonna give you my love,
I'm gonna give you every inch of my love,
Gonna give you my love.
Yeah! All right! Let's go!
Alright, given that Robert Plant sings these words in an awesome, way- out there, way (half the words you can't even really understand in the song--"droolin'??") But look at how stupid, how juvenile those words are. "Inch " has always made me cringe a little....
When you look at the big picture of the song, the singer seems convinced that all he has to do to reinvigorate his "coolin" romance is to make his thang bigger. Nuh-uh, my good man...
ok--paste and play:
You've been coolin', baby, I've been droolin', snoozin'? boozin'? cruisin'? this is harder than I thought.......
All the good times I've been misusin',
Way, way down inside, I'm gonna give you my love,
I'm gonna give you every inch of my love,
Gonna give you my love.
Yeah! All right! Let's go
Hmmmm. that just knocks out the embarrassing..
Nov 20:
American Neuroses on parade: American Beauty. When I first watched it, I was seeing through the eyes of a punk rebel..believing every stereotype. Thought it was brilliant. Now I see the predatory excuse making for bad behavior. Sexy wives are really anal-retentive, gold-digging cunts, even when they are working for the gold themselves. Annette Bening is atrocious, but she's written that way. Parents are all horrible and don't understand, until a friend's burgeoning sexuality begins to bloom. What horseshit. Why did I ever think this was an artsy, ground-breaking movie? All that literature about middle-class stifling, oppression. Revolutionary Road, etc. Rose petals...what are the rose petals all about?
This is my personal backlash to my previous admiration, so bear with my harshness a little:)
Blonde bimbo cheerleader character's one dimensional fantasy dialogue: "I kinda like it. I've known about this since I was about 12, when I knew guys were jerking off thinking about me in the shower..yeah, I kinda like it...makes me realize I might be successful as a model..." Which no girl has ever thought...never. At least I hope not. Maybe a narcissist. Lots of pov watching people masturbate in the shower scenes. Personal fetish, maybe??
OMG starting to hate this movie---Star f*cker blonde , (the Teenage cheerleader?) describes an encounter with an older "professional photographer" male, who pulls down his pants and introduces "Mr. Happy"--her confidante says, rightly," Ewwhh!!" But, Ms. Fantasy Bimbo Blonde Cheerleader, future Playboy Bunny, Starlet sez, and I quote, "Not Ewwh. It was kinda cool...!" We're to suppose they had sex and she didn't mind it was a one off thing. She's expecting something else.
I call bullshit on that.....A) They probably don't come through, cis, cos it's not a permanent feeling-- it's temporary lust, dying a quick death. Familiarity breeds contempt, I think is the related idea--once you're open to the idea, there's no more challenge for this sort of thing. B) prove it, what you're owed. It won't stand up in court.
The movie gets better from there when it moves to focus on the teen neighbors: Spacey's daughter and the oppressed kid next door who is a combination film-maker-voyeur. He has his creep factor too, but is a much more sympathetic character because he's attracted to the depressed daughter who's being billed as "the unattractive one" and ignores Blondie and her aggressively presented charms. He's also the source of the famous plastic -bag- blowing- in -the- wind sequence. Also, the poor kid is dealing with an oppressive Christian warrior who turns out to be in the closet, a facile explanation of why he's so hard on his son, another Hollywood stereotypification. While this is going on, Spacey Dad is building his confidence and his physique, by bucking the American system, quitting his job, and telling his horrid cardboard wife off, (who's cheating with perennial smarmy salesman American type Peter Gallagher with the caterpillar eyebrows). Dad doesn't get the Blonde until the very end, when he actually treats her like a human--not that she wouldn't have done "it" sooner, but...certainly not presented as the vulgar scenarios we've been seeing replayed in the media the last month by these movie/ political guys. Because no one would really sympathize with that objectifying, power-trip behavior. But for some reason this movie insists you sympathize with this guy. Like the rest of us, he really doesn't know how to spit in the eye of this horrific American Culture machine.
Of course, this story runs terribly into fantasy on several levels, and works with black (evil) and white (good!)stereotypes to make the story go. I'm certainly less impressed with this movie than when I first watched it, realizing the subtext of its message. Still, it's rather fun to watch. It is a DREAMWORKS film (Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen), not a Weinstein, which I thought it might be, and Sam Mendes, who did one of the Harry Potter movies directed it. I thought I'd watch it to see if it would make me dislike Kevin Spacey more than the first times--it did not, but I'm less impressed with the writer.
I just listened to my friend's podcast last night, and he was talking to a writer guy who once worked as a script writer in the Hollywood studio system --I think maybe he said Universal? What's interesting is he said how hard it is to get scripts approved if they don't follow some self-perpetuating formula. He acts like it's all just laid out, like a road map, and he couldn't do it any more. That explains a lot. They don't want to deal with certain types of characters, for example--wonder how much resistance you get to having interesting female leads, considering the statistics about on screen time, age limits, and the general complaints coming from Hollywood actresses about their workin conditions.
Nov 24: Last night in bed I had some awesome, ( I thought), outside the box thoughts about all this sexual predation/revelation going on, and had some very clear thoughts about it, how to get men and women back together. About the structural wrong that holds up all this surface inequality. Now I can't get my mind back in that space--I know it was something I was planning to tell my thoughtful, non traditional thinking buddies over at Goodreads MOLD Club.
And several pieces I've read in the last few days probably contributed: This completely wack article interviewing an Irish Catholic priest, who is blaming women, of all things, for the failing state of the Catholic Church. He says allowing women into the priesthood (?? last I checked there were no women priests: what's he talking about? Deacons?)* has feminized the priest culture, attracting more altar boys who are confused about their gender to begin with, (okay I admit my daughter was an altar girl, so there's that feminization--but she, like most didn't wannabe a priest). If you ask me, most of the priests I've known most of my life were a bit effete, and some were creepsters, and that was before this new movement. Sure there's all those old movies, like Spencer Tracy's where Father Flannigan was a tough guy who saved poor urchins from a criminal street-life.
*update--I checked this out. There are a good number of SELF-ordained women who consider themselves priests, but all have been ex-communicated by the Catholic Church, and are therefore not included in their sphere of influence. In fact, an already ordained priest was also ex-communicated for supporting them. So, dude, or sorry, Father dude, what the hell are you talking about? And it's common knowledge that the number of priests and nuns have drastically fallen in the last 40 years.
I actually knew a few aspiring priests who were like Fr. Flannigan--extremely altruistic, no whiff of creepiness or pedophilia, but none of them made it in that stifling, restrictive culture of the Catholic church. Most were from tough backgrounds, bad neighborhoods themselves, in Chicago, Brooklyn, Philly, and Patterson, New Jersey, so were trying to give back something that they got, maybe. Most quit in their early 20s, thinking they could do the same thing outside the confines of such an oppressive, hypocritical system. Most became lay teachers, coaches, sports guys, got married. They would have all made great masculine role model priests, and since I was their drinking buddy, I heard their inside stories of why they quit--had nothing to do with women taking over, and everything to do with the bankruptcy of Church culture.
The reason I had this inside view was that I worked at a Catholic boarding school/orphanage--my first real job out of college, and I was almost the only woman on the place. It was a feeder school for the brothers who had just graduated from seminary--they tested them for this grueling life by putting them in this school for a year. Only one year, cos they didn't want them bonding or forming tight friendships. Too late. The work was horrid: they lived 24/7 with these kids: teaching them, coaching them, eating with them, sleeping in the same dorm--no days off for months. There was only one of two ways to handle that kind of stress: either explode, or bond like a father/big brother to the kids, which were some of the most damaged kids I've ever seen. (One, whose name I forget, a 6ft --16 year old basketball player, is the instigator of one of my unwritten #Me Too stories.)
The brothers treated me great, like a friend, no funny business. They blew off steam in the "brother's room, where kids weren't allowed, after all the bigwigs left for the weekend--it featured a vintage barber chair, and a refrigerator full of Canadian beer. I was invited here, the kids not, even the ones who lived on campus. One guy, just the stuff of Female fantasy husband material, was tall, blonde, athletic, Canadian, a sweetheart, spoke French, and a sincerely nice guy. His brother was a famous Canadian professional hockey player at the time. He was raised right, and decided he couldn't deal. Others hung on longer, like Bros. Bill and Pat, into their 40s, but they eventually quit too.
So here's one thing I learned about their lives in this predominantly male culture--they( the Church hierarchy) didn't like women. Instinctively. And they tried to pass this philosophy down--the Virgin Mary was the only good woman--possibly their mothers. Or, they liked women too much--our principal got "fired"--actually, just moved to another school, because he was carrying on a rather overt affair with his secretary during lunch hours. He was definitely of the feminine priest mold, a soft little pudgy momma's boy who found it hard to punish kids for their own good (we actually paddled kids at this school! 3 swats max!) Kids nick-named his swats "love-pats. But he was a good person in bad circumstances. He treated me well.
I was the only woman there, except the librarian, a hard-bitten, an unmarried curmudgeon right out of Faulkner, long black hair and black eyes: she was a reclusive country girl who went home in the afternoon to her farm and cats and other animals. She either lived alone or with her father. No one liked her, except the small minority who got through her crust: she was sweet underneath, but highly distrustful--most were afraid of her. Me, I stayed after school and did tutorial for the worst and coached soccer for the others. We actually won our first season!
The backbone of the school, the brothers, were treated like shit. Just dumped on and dumped on, expected to be saints in every way, blamed for every situation these really tough kids caused. (BTW, some of the kids were recent drug addicts, refugees from places like Haiti, kids of drug addicts or alcoholics, abusive parents, one had been sent to our school from jail for shooting his friend in the face--he was scary.) The handful of good kids were either country kids or the sons and grandsons of the local mafiosa, that fundraised a lot of the school's cash. For the sainted Brothers: No time off. Church with the kids on Sunday, besides all the teaching and coaching.They were berated for insane reasons like wearing shorts (during practice!) in Florida! For talking to me. Me, I was supposed to only wear dresses, no pants. All the old priests treated me with total distain, like I had no business in their world. Luckily some of them only spoke Italian--it was an order founded in Italy.
You can see how this would be an extremely difficult life--a ripe source for rebellion for altruists who considered themselves on a mission, but constantly treated with suspicion. I think the most difficult piece was the discouragement of friendships, which is just sort of beyond the pale and an overkill of caution that to me the Catholic Church is perennially guilty of, and unable to see, as the mote in its own eye.
Well, all of this sort of got me back in the headspace of my thought about our present gender culture. distrust between the sexes. Inequality that breeds more inequality. It has to be men who feel stressed and distrustful that perpetuate this stuff. I really don't like that term "rape" culture, Seems too over the top and one sided for what the problem is really about. It's a turn-off to the discussion by many, I think.
So, I don't know how we got here. Feminists say, 2nd wave Feminist backlash--probably something to that. Normalization of Porn. Hollywood's trash. The resurgence of super-conservative religious, oppressive bible-based norms. (Ok, but why?) I still stand by the perception that there was more respect for women in the 40s-70s, maybe even into the 80s. Things went off the rails somewhere in the last 20 years.
I think a lot of it has to do with the 1% thing. Only those guys have freedom, control, lack of oppression. The rest? pass it on down the line, and women, most who really just try to make things fair and work, get caught in the crosshairs. Women get a double dose--those close to the 1% get their entitlement. The rest get the backwash, oh! maybe this is one time where the trickle down theory makes sense. Trickle down oppression. We need to show the oppressed men we're with them, and not the enemy they think we are. Look up. God, those sanctimonious California hypocritical millionaires piss me off..
I think one cure is to think beyond the toxic men thing--yeah, those guys are there. We gave them power, and we need to take it back, both women and the good men, because they must be full of the same resentment too, when someone's bimbo girlfriend gets a job they might have wanted, when business trips become bacchanal orgies that infringe on their sense of morality. I think frat-boy culture bears a big responsibility in this mess, and I bet many men who don't want to be part of it feel pressured to be. (Note the pressure my hub went through for his "bachelor party" which he was uncomfortable with..)
And here's what women need to do to not feed the monster. Stop fooling yourself that you have the "right" to dress however you want, to stay "a la mode" as an antidote to feeling good about yourself. Remind yourself that your look/looks go beyond objectifying yourself to men. Do you think it's some sort of accident that present women's styles feature stripper clothes that are part of the world of male fantasy, and frankly, need to stay there? That is their place, in private, in whatever form you choose to indulge in. Which means not wearing them in public, and for god's sake, not to work!! I remember for several years having trouble finding women's shirts that weren't so low cut I was embarrassed to wear them. Especially with my body. These were the things that weren't "normalized" in the past. You're not "free" if you're choosing the styles they hand-picked for you.
Short skirts, Daisy Dukes so frayed the seam and crotch line are the same, t-backs, thong underwear, knit dresses that were once called "club-wear", super low hip huggers ( kinda a dead trend now), the return of thigh-high stockings and garters, body hugging skinny jeans, this stupid trend of wearing tights as pants (sans the long over-shirts that made it ok in the 80s), and my favorite fashion topic, those god-damned 4-5-6 inch stripper heels. With shorts and miniskirts! The stuff that in the 60s you saw in softcore mags like Playboy. Notice that these are all simultaneously and not so coincidentally, the present fashionable trends. And who really dictates that? Is it you??
We can't absolve ourselves when we buy into this sex-kitten vision of our "best" selves.
Granted there are men who can sexualize a burqa.
But don't let those guys be the winners. Us and the good men should be the standard bearers.
How many times does Glamour have to admonish you that it is not classy to show too much skin--only one tight or bare body part per outfit, пожалуйста! How about one of the reactions to this gender imbalanced culture is we, women, take back fashion to a more sensible place, more comfortable for women, less revealing. And refuse to buy into this cultural objectification. Again I call bullshit on any girls/women who claim these styles are comfortable--skinny jeans more comfortable than looser ones? stockings with garters and stacked heels? Worrying about bending over in shorts, skirts, low cut tops? Those tights? Damn, even when I wear them under a dress, I spend the day pulling them up and adjusting them.
All the good times I've been misusin',
Way, way down inside, I'm gonna give you my love,
I'm gonna give you
Gonna give you my love.
Yeah! All right! Let's go
Hmmmm. that just knocks out the embarrassing..
Nov 20:
American Neuroses on parade: American Beauty. When I first watched it, I was seeing through the eyes of a punk rebel..believing every stereotype. Thought it was brilliant. Now I see the predatory excuse making for bad behavior. Sexy wives are really anal-retentive, gold-digging cunts, even when they are working for the gold themselves. Annette Bening is atrocious, but she's written that way. Parents are all horrible and don't understand, until a friend's burgeoning sexuality begins to bloom. What horseshit. Why did I ever think this was an artsy, ground-breaking movie? All that literature about middle-class stifling, oppression. Revolutionary Road, etc. Rose petals...what are the rose petals all about?
This is my personal backlash to my previous admiration, so bear with my harshness a little:)
Blonde bimbo cheerleader character's one dimensional fantasy dialogue: "I kinda like it. I've known about this since I was about 12, when I knew guys were jerking off thinking about me in the shower..yeah, I kinda like it...makes me realize I might be successful as a model..." Which no girl has ever thought...never. At least I hope not. Maybe a narcissist. Lots of pov watching people masturbate in the shower scenes. Personal fetish, maybe??
OMG starting to hate this movie---Star f*cker blonde , (the Teenage cheerleader?) describes an encounter with an older "professional photographer" male, who pulls down his pants and introduces "Mr. Happy"--her confidante says, rightly," Ewwhh!!" But, Ms. Fantasy Bimbo Blonde Cheerleader, future Playboy Bunny, Starlet sez, and I quote, "Not Ewwh. It was kinda cool...!" We're to suppose they had sex and she didn't mind it was a one off thing. She's expecting something else.
I call bullshit on that.....A) They probably don't come through, cis, cos it's not a permanent feeling-- it's temporary lust, dying a quick death. Familiarity breeds contempt, I think is the related idea--once you're open to the idea, there's no more challenge for this sort of thing. B) prove it, what you're owed. It won't stand up in court.
The movie gets better from there when it moves to focus on the teen neighbors: Spacey's daughter and the oppressed kid next door who is a combination film-maker-voyeur. He has his creep factor too, but is a much more sympathetic character because he's attracted to the depressed daughter who's being billed as "the unattractive one" and ignores Blondie and her aggressively presented charms. He's also the source of the famous plastic -bag- blowing- in -the- wind sequence. Also, the poor kid is dealing with an oppressive Christian warrior who turns out to be in the closet, a facile explanation of why he's so hard on his son, another Hollywood stereotypification. While this is going on, Spacey Dad is building his confidence and his physique, by bucking the American system, quitting his job, and telling his horrid cardboard wife off, (who's cheating with perennial smarmy salesman American type Peter Gallagher with the caterpillar eyebrows). Dad doesn't get the Blonde until the very end, when he actually treats her like a human--not that she wouldn't have done "it" sooner, but...certainly not presented as the vulgar scenarios we've been seeing replayed in the media the last month by these movie/ political guys. Because no one would really sympathize with that objectifying, power-trip behavior. But for some reason this movie insists you sympathize with this guy. Like the rest of us, he really doesn't know how to spit in the eye of this horrific American Culture machine.
Of course, this story runs terribly into fantasy on several levels, and works with black (evil) and white (good!)stereotypes to make the story go. I'm certainly less impressed with this movie than when I first watched it, realizing the subtext of its message. Still, it's rather fun to watch. It is a DREAMWORKS film (Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen), not a Weinstein, which I thought it might be, and Sam Mendes, who did one of the Harry Potter movies directed it. I thought I'd watch it to see if it would make me dislike Kevin Spacey more than the first times--it did not, but I'm less impressed with the writer.
I just listened to my friend's podcast last night, and he was talking to a writer guy who once worked as a script writer in the Hollywood studio system --I think maybe he said Universal? What's interesting is he said how hard it is to get scripts approved if they don't follow some self-perpetuating formula. He acts like it's all just laid out, like a road map, and he couldn't do it any more. That explains a lot. They don't want to deal with certain types of characters, for example--wonder how much resistance you get to having interesting female leads, considering the statistics about on screen time, age limits, and the general complaints coming from Hollywood actresses about their workin conditions.
Nov 24: Last night in bed I had some awesome, ( I thought), outside the box thoughts about all this sexual predation/revelation going on, and had some very clear thoughts about it, how to get men and women back together. About the structural wrong that holds up all this surface inequality. Now I can't get my mind back in that space--I know it was something I was planning to tell my thoughtful, non traditional thinking buddies over at Goodreads MOLD Club.
And several pieces I've read in the last few days probably contributed: This completely wack article interviewing an Irish Catholic priest, who is blaming women, of all things, for the failing state of the Catholic Church. He says allowing women into the priesthood (?? last I checked there were no women priests: what's he talking about? Deacons?)* has feminized the priest culture, attracting more altar boys who are confused about their gender to begin with, (okay I admit my daughter was an altar girl, so there's that feminization--but she, like most didn't wannabe a priest). If you ask me, most of the priests I've known most of my life were a bit effete, and some were creepsters, and that was before this new movement. Sure there's all those old movies, like Spencer Tracy's where Father Flannigan was a tough guy who saved poor urchins from a criminal street-life.
*update--I checked this out. There are a good number of SELF-ordained women who consider themselves priests, but all have been ex-communicated by the Catholic Church, and are therefore not included in their sphere of influence. In fact, an already ordained priest was also ex-communicated for supporting them. So, dude, or sorry, Father dude, what the hell are you talking about? And it's common knowledge that the number of priests and nuns have drastically fallen in the last 40 years.
I actually knew a few aspiring priests who were like Fr. Flannigan--extremely altruistic, no whiff of creepiness or pedophilia, but none of them made it in that stifling, restrictive culture of the Catholic church. Most were from tough backgrounds, bad neighborhoods themselves, in Chicago, Brooklyn, Philly, and Patterson, New Jersey, so were trying to give back something that they got, maybe. Most quit in their early 20s, thinking they could do the same thing outside the confines of such an oppressive, hypocritical system. Most became lay teachers, coaches, sports guys, got married. They would have all made great masculine role model priests, and since I was their drinking buddy, I heard their inside stories of why they quit--had nothing to do with women taking over, and everything to do with the bankruptcy of Church culture.
The reason I had this inside view was that I worked at a Catholic boarding school/orphanage--my first real job out of college, and I was almost the only woman on the place. It was a feeder school for the brothers who had just graduated from seminary--they tested them for this grueling life by putting them in this school for a year. Only one year, cos they didn't want them bonding or forming tight friendships. Too late. The work was horrid: they lived 24/7 with these kids: teaching them, coaching them, eating with them, sleeping in the same dorm--no days off for months. There was only one of two ways to handle that kind of stress: either explode, or bond like a father/big brother to the kids, which were some of the most damaged kids I've ever seen. (One, whose name I forget, a 6ft --16 year old basketball player, is the instigator of one of my unwritten #Me Too stories.)
The brothers treated me great, like a friend, no funny business. They blew off steam in the "brother's room, where kids weren't allowed, after all the bigwigs left for the weekend--it featured a vintage barber chair, and a refrigerator full of Canadian beer. I was invited here, the kids not, even the ones who lived on campus. One guy, just the stuff of Female fantasy husband material, was tall, blonde, athletic, Canadian, a sweetheart, spoke French, and a sincerely nice guy. His brother was a famous Canadian professional hockey player at the time. He was raised right, and decided he couldn't deal. Others hung on longer, like Bros. Bill and Pat, into their 40s, but they eventually quit too.
So here's one thing I learned about their lives in this predominantly male culture--they( the Church hierarchy) didn't like women. Instinctively. And they tried to pass this philosophy down--the Virgin Mary was the only good woman--possibly their mothers. Or, they liked women too much--our principal got "fired"--actually, just moved to another school, because he was carrying on a rather overt affair with his secretary during lunch hours. He was definitely of the feminine priest mold, a soft little pudgy momma's boy who found it hard to punish kids for their own good (we actually paddled kids at this school! 3 swats max!) Kids nick-named his swats "love-pats. But he was a good person in bad circumstances. He treated me well.
I was the only woman there, except the librarian, a hard-bitten, an unmarried curmudgeon right out of Faulkner, long black hair and black eyes: she was a reclusive country girl who went home in the afternoon to her farm and cats and other animals. She either lived alone or with her father. No one liked her, except the small minority who got through her crust: she was sweet underneath, but highly distrustful--most were afraid of her. Me, I stayed after school and did tutorial for the worst and coached soccer for the others. We actually won our first season!
The backbone of the school, the brothers, were treated like shit. Just dumped on and dumped on, expected to be saints in every way, blamed for every situation these really tough kids caused. (BTW, some of the kids were recent drug addicts, refugees from places like Haiti, kids of drug addicts or alcoholics, abusive parents, one had been sent to our school from jail for shooting his friend in the face--he was scary.) The handful of good kids were either country kids or the sons and grandsons of the local mafiosa, that fundraised a lot of the school's cash. For the sainted Brothers: No time off. Church with the kids on Sunday, besides all the teaching and coaching.They were berated for insane reasons like wearing shorts (during practice!) in Florida! For talking to me. Me, I was supposed to only wear dresses, no pants. All the old priests treated me with total distain, like I had no business in their world. Luckily some of them only spoke Italian--it was an order founded in Italy.
You can see how this would be an extremely difficult life--a ripe source for rebellion for altruists who considered themselves on a mission, but constantly treated with suspicion. I think the most difficult piece was the discouragement of friendships, which is just sort of beyond the pale and an overkill of caution that to me the Catholic Church is perennially guilty of, and unable to see, as the mote in its own eye.
Well, all of this sort of got me back in the headspace of my thought about our present gender culture. distrust between the sexes. Inequality that breeds more inequality. It has to be men who feel stressed and distrustful that perpetuate this stuff. I really don't like that term "rape" culture, Seems too over the top and one sided for what the problem is really about. It's a turn-off to the discussion by many, I think.
So, I don't know how we got here. Feminists say, 2nd wave Feminist backlash--probably something to that. Normalization of Porn. Hollywood's trash. The resurgence of super-conservative religious, oppressive bible-based norms. (Ok, but why?) I still stand by the perception that there was more respect for women in the 40s-70s, maybe even into the 80s. Things went off the rails somewhere in the last 20 years.
I think a lot of it has to do with the 1% thing. Only those guys have freedom, control, lack of oppression. The rest? pass it on down the line, and women, most who really just try to make things fair and work, get caught in the crosshairs. Women get a double dose--those close to the 1% get their entitlement. The rest get the backwash, oh! maybe this is one time where the trickle down theory makes sense. Trickle down oppression. We need to show the oppressed men we're with them, and not the enemy they think we are. Look up. God, those sanctimonious California hypocritical millionaires piss me off..
I think one cure is to think beyond the toxic men thing--yeah, those guys are there. We gave them power, and we need to take it back, both women and the good men, because they must be full of the same resentment too, when someone's bimbo girlfriend gets a job they might have wanted, when business trips become bacchanal orgies that infringe on their sense of morality. I think frat-boy culture bears a big responsibility in this mess, and I bet many men who don't want to be part of it feel pressured to be. (Note the pressure my hub went through for his "bachelor party" which he was uncomfortable with..)
And here's what women need to do to not feed the monster. Stop fooling yourself that you have the "right" to dress however you want, to stay "a la mode" as an antidote to feeling good about yourself. Remind yourself that your look/looks go beyond objectifying yourself to men. Do you think it's some sort of accident that present women's styles feature stripper clothes that are part of the world of male fantasy, and frankly, need to stay there? That is their place, in private, in whatever form you choose to indulge in. Which means not wearing them in public, and for god's sake, not to work!! I remember for several years having trouble finding women's shirts that weren't so low cut I was embarrassed to wear them. Especially with my body. These were the things that weren't "normalized" in the past. You're not "free" if you're choosing the styles they hand-picked for you.
Short skirts, Daisy Dukes so frayed the seam and crotch line are the same, t-backs, thong underwear, knit dresses that were once called "club-wear", super low hip huggers ( kinda a dead trend now), the return of thigh-high stockings and garters, body hugging skinny jeans, this stupid trend of wearing tights as pants (sans the long over-shirts that made it ok in the 80s), and my favorite fashion topic, those god-damned 4-5-6 inch stripper heels. With shorts and miniskirts! The stuff that in the 60s you saw in softcore mags like Playboy. Notice that these are all simultaneously and not so coincidentally, the present fashionable trends. And who really dictates that? Is it you??
We can't absolve ourselves when we buy into this sex-kitten vision of our "best" selves.
Granted there are men who can sexualize a burqa.
But don't let those guys be the winners. Us and the good men should be the standard bearers.
How many times does Glamour have to admonish you that it is not classy to show too much skin--only one tight or bare body part per outfit, пожалуйста! How about one of the reactions to this gender imbalanced culture is we, women, take back fashion to a more sensible place, more comfortable for women, less revealing. And refuse to buy into this cultural objectification. Again I call bullshit on any girls/women who claim these styles are comfortable--skinny jeans more comfortable than looser ones? stockings with garters and stacked heels? Worrying about bending over in shorts, skirts, low cut tops? Those tights? Damn, even when I wear them under a dress, I spend the day pulling them up and adjusting them.
I am in no way suggesting your dress is an invitation and excuses childish frat boy behavior. What I'm suggesting is cracking open the big picture of this culture and examine your own mixed up motives for dressing this way in certain venues. I' saying we've been stupid, like Shakespeare's woodcocks (in Polonius' speech to Ophelia about being smarter about men). Because you are lying to yourself about your freedom. It's one small way to take back power from the male thugs who promote it, through their movies, their hand in the fashion industry, up your easily accessible short skirt, their blandest comments of"Now I really like that dress on you..." Imagine you never wore it again, to show him he's not in control?? Baby steps.
Unless it's you favorite dress...and most comfortable.
One more thing. I'm not entirely sure this has so much to do with assigned gender roles. It is more about respect. Both for males and females. I see a difference in Russia. For all our criticism of Russian culture, I think they respect their women. They expect certain quite defined, feminine behavior, but that is respected. (Their women have always worked from necessity, it's a CCCP ideal--look at the statues. Shoot, they have Women's Day--do we? Their women exhibit sexuality, sensuality. It's part of what it is to be a woman. But I don't get a general culture of exploitation. Yeah,yeah, I know, mail order brides, etc. But coming here! Maybe I'm ignorant. America's backwards in comparison. One of my old Russian student- friends used to repeatedly say that women just need to get the idea of equality out of their heads: it's never happened and it never will, due to constitutional differences. He's hardly an expert on women, but I get the concept of celebrating the differences--Viva la difference, as Pepe Le Peu used to say.. However, there are cultures and there are cultures. Iranian culture being on the low, undesirable side. Scandinavian on the high side. Present US Culture definitely needs to swing towards Scandinavia. So many women are angry now, it's not their imaginations. And disrespect, for whatever reason, is disrespect. And makes one angry.
I read a story yesterday about how all this is just window-dressing, that a real 1970s feminist movement is needed on all levels, now! Agreed. Next step? Be very careful not to alienate the good men. I want more women to stop being empty shills for capitalism. The boys all complain that "she "drives the money frenzy: true? Not in my house, especially now-- but I see it in others. And the expensive wedding craze, as a cultural marker? Something to think about.
I just saw one of my niece's FB post--she's sitting triumphantly atop a car emblazoned with bumperstickers and slogans, including one that says "feminist". Also Black Lives Matter, the gay equality sign, and I <3 my Piercer. I know she's vegan. But her parents (my bro) are pretty conservative politically--wondering what this is all about. Bet my mom is too. Maybe Feminist has stopped being a dirty word?
December 3: So, yeah, watching The Deuce. Main characters are streetwalkers circa late 70s. And yeah, the fashions of those girls much like mainstream today;)
Jan 21: And getting hooked on Californication. Which has a lot of material for this thread, given D. Duchovny's sex addled character. But somehow I don't see him as sexist? Will sort this out later.
Californication is kinda like surface sexism, just because the whole show's pov is from a perspective of males with high energy/sex drives. Their language is quite coarse, partly from that California driving need to remain hip and relevant in a very image conscious setting. However, the women characters are what really reveal the non-sexist agenda of the show--they are well-written, various, eccentric in various ways, not cardboard cutout backgrounds for the male egos. Hank's daughter, for example, is a favorite character, showing levels of emotional depth, hurt by her father's immature shenanigans, forgiving, repressing anger, having her own interests and sense of creativity, her own style, and inevitably her own rebellion into misbehavior, in spite of all she knows. Marcie, Hank's agent's wife/ex/then wife again is also an amazingly written character (her business is high end/ celebrity hair removal)--she can at times be shallow and image conscious, but also spicy, witty, neurotic, loyal, needy, full of great but loving sarcasm, insatiable, nonconformist, forgiving, sweet, greedy--as the show goes on you realize why so many men in the show are attracted to her even if she doesn't have the leggy blonde, all-American surfer chick looks--her story line is hilarious and full of interesting twists. Anyway, there are a number of finely drawn female characters on the show that add depth, even if Hank's #1 is not exactly my fave. She's the beauty of the group, but somehow she's slightly more than window dressing, if not a favorite. Still, she seems like a real person you might know. Anyway, the show seems to take pains to write women characters from a variety of interesting perspectives, from hard-boiled successful businesswomen to ladies of nefarious lifestyles to groupies, to teens who want to grow old to fast, manipulative girls, manipulated girls, moms with lives of their own..anyway, it's fairly deep and better than most TV writing for women characters. So das not sexis'.
Apr 8: Well, I can't believe it hasn't occurred to me to write about this book series I've been reading: Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan series--I'm almost finished with the 3rd book in the series--these are so good I thought I had only read two, but when I went to check the titles I realized-no, I'm in the 3rd!
They are:
#1 My Brilliant Friend
#2 The Story of a New Name
#3 For Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave
#4 The Story of the Lost Child
This series makes me feel somehow that I've never really read a book by a woman author--it's that different. So, the story centers around these two women, Lila and Elena, who grew up in a very poor Naples's neighborhood, both incredibly intelligent and driven, both good-looking in different ways--possibly some of the most subtly drawn characters I've seen in literature--definitely with Dostoyevski depth. That's one reason I love it.
Another is the narrator seems completely unrestrained and open about dredging up and understanding her own feelings about her circumstances, the people in her life, the negative and positive of her friends' and family's impact on her own psyche. It's great, and makes you feel like most women don't do that-they instead play into unconscious stereotypes and cultural touchstones. They delude themselves into thinking that they are happy, that their problems are ordinary an inescapable, just part of the hardships that life makes. And just suck it all up like good soldiers.
Lenu--the narrator, doesn't really do that. Rather than pretend to herself that she's in a happy marriage, for appearances--she writes about how bad her match is to her husband, a fellow intellectual and professor has turned out to be emotionless and an avoider of all the work and noise of homelife. She feels little connection to him, seems to be searching for stimulation outside of her now stifling role as wife and mother. This is treading the same ground as some of the early feminists, like Betty Friedan, and " the problem that has no name,"--which was discussing on a more abstract level the plight of the bored, depressed suburban housewife holding down the fort at home. Except this is a view from within, the day-to-day emotional life of an intelligent, even gifted woman being expected to be satisfied with this lifestyle. Her husband reminds me so much of the men I've had in my life--they ThinK they are supportive and sympathetic of a woman's right to self expression, satisfying work and a creative life--yet they don't share the burden that make that possible in family life.
Lenu's husband sums up the whole male/female disconnect on this topic: in response to a male friend's observation that her waste of intelligence is a crime. Yet, he was not willing to resolve the problem by giving her more space and time to create:
"When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there's nothing that can keep us from completing it." He says, in criticism of her "lack of ambition".
Of course, what that amounts to is a self-congratulatory pat on the back for being so driven and important to the world's edification on whatever his "task" is..that he of course has no time to help with household chores and children. The woman, on the other hand, apparently must not be strong enough in her conviction of the importance of her "task"--since she chooses chores and children over it.
My EX said virtually the same thing about my inability to do what I felt creatively driven to do. His important "task' was to play and coach soccer and build amazing soccer teams that would elevate soccer's status as a sport in the US. :p ( I kinda left him, but for more reasons than that---)
If you ask me, such men should give up the idea of having a family, instead of expecting to find a full on 'motherly type' who will take care of everything "family" in their world. The problem with so many of these "modern" men is that they give lip service, at the beginning of a relationship, to being enlightened and supportive of the woman's creativity and drive--but often end up thinking like Lenu's(and my ex) husband. "She'd do it if it was important enough!" In the meantime, both husband and wife had taken the step to bring children into the world to support in all the ways necessary. My ex actually cried when I finally relented to having a child with him--like it was only then that he had felt I'd committed into his family love trap after 6 years of being worried that he didn't have the maturity ( and both of us the money!) to support a family. Well, in the end I did it on my own, for a while at least. He had to marry a sugar mama to get by.
This to me seems the true hurdle that needs to be removed in the new Battle of the Sexes. But not everyone needs to succumb to the biological drive, the pressure, to have children. I see lots of resistance, today, to that. Which is good, I think. For myself? This is a weird admission, but my choice to have children was partially in response to my alienation: I'm not kidding about this...I had a moment of clarity where I said..someday I will be even lonelier--the number of people I don't connect with. Better make my own. I think it worked.
May 13: Mother's Day: Since my son was here, we actually celebrated. Went to brunch: when I said thank you, to both of them, my husband said--that's too many thank you's. He said nothing to me personally about it being Mother's Day. He's said it in the past--Mother's Day is for his mother, has nothing to do with me giving birth to his child. What a load of anal retentive/self-serving nonsense, and I'm not at all sure he's called his mother, either. On a similar note, my father butted into my phone call for my mother, saying "she never lets me talk to you on the phone." What is wrong with some men these days??
So, with that in mind, I have been trying to get some time to write on this thread about some truly toxic masculinity behaviors--way worse than these merely oblivious- to- the- feelings- of- others dumbassary. (So glad my son is not a clone of his father). I want to write a a bit about this new "incel" phenomenon. If you don't know what that is, it's a darkwebspeak, 4Chan
abbreviation for "involuntary celibate". It came to the surface in the media because of this male, older teenager who shot up some girls in Santa Barbara because they had rejected his romantic advances. He wasn't a bad looking kid--so he must have been one of those who gave off strange vibes to girls--he made an infamous video rant before killing himself. I'm not going to say his name: after Columbine I pledged to myself to never remember intentionally nor repeat in print the names of these sad souls to reduce perpetuating their mythology, like we mistakenly did with Manson in the 70s. Apparently this is still a thing, since the next incel, the dude in Toronto who ran down some girls with his car, was a big fan of the 1st, one, the Santa Barbara guy.
So apparently, there are scary chatrooms somewhere of these guys who call themselves involuntary celibates, who are a new breed of the millennial?? (not sure they are all millennial) self-absorbed and entitled. What are they entitled to? Other peoples' bodies. True, freedom-loving Americans. Keep in mind this is probably an exceptionally small group. I have two sources from which I get my information and insights about them: one was an NPR story about an ex-in cel, who got into the community when he was quite young, (14), in an angsty and angry stage of life, who stayed in the community for a few years, being heavily influenced by their attitudes about women/girls, but then had an epiphany when he realized some of their patterns and sort of scary discussions of revenge. I suppose he got more mature, started to pull away, realizing that these males had warped perceptions. Also, he decided to take the plunge and got a girlfriend--and even confessed to her his former activities in these chatrooms. These were some of his observations, after the fact, that he stated in his NPR interview:
- The in cels (predominantly white) are mainly frustrated about their romantic lives, and rather than discuss their own possible limitations, they externalize and blame the shallowness of others, particularly their female, um, targets of affection, who they characterize as only being concerned with looks, status, which blows up into full-on misogyny.
- The ex-in cel said he noticed a pattern among the men on the site. He felt their in cel status was pretty flawed because they actually did discuss opportunities for dating, but that they frequently rejected the available girls. Why? They didn't meet their expectations in the looks department, which seems to be in the movie star/runway model/cheerleader stratosphere . Oh brother, very sympathetic.
- They actually said lots of terrible things about women, didn't differentiate personalities and egged each other on with rather disturbing revenge fantasies against women. They idolized the Santa Barbara killer as a role model.
The second insightful story I saw was, surprisingly, from Huffpost, which I am increasingly disenchanted with, especially its hyped up and biased coverage of the White House and its drama. But this article was interesting, and chronicled the experiences of a gay self-described in cel, who went off on angry rants contrasting his pear shaped, man-boobed body and the modelesque boy band gay males who wouldn't give him the time of day. Yes, those dating apps really are a great tool in modern life, eh!?
Interestingly, On the Media's research linked the in cel movement with another group (in what they call the Man-o-sphere) with rather skewed ideas about dating, the so called Pick-up Artist community: I recall seeing some of these instructional self-help books on goodreads a while back, and they looked pretty stupid and shallow. Why there are so many males now that seem to need this instruction is a bit of a mystery--maybe it's just a concretely searchable phenomenon. The books tell you things like dress nice and listen, have a good pick up line to break the ice. Flashy watches and jewelry, talking about your fancy car, your big salary--whether it's true or not, will get you some girl action! The most telling element, however, is that these books get somewhat mixed reviews from male readers verging on all gung ho 5s to meh 3s, but the women who read them consistently give them 1s and 2s, with comments like "know your enemy". Ha!
I mean, how about you ask some advice from some girls you actually know? Your sisters, classmates? The OTM article made a link to failed pick up artists to the in cel community, when they had experiences that showed these "techniques" didn't work for them.
My son, who has an affinity for lurking through some of these ugly websites for his own entertainment, really had the best insight of all. He characterized these fringe fellows as mentally ill, not evil, and there ought to be more resources and agents to help them. Amen, son.
Maybe Jordan Peterson, the conservative you-tube phenom, might have some answers. This is really about the balance today being off in a number of ways. Men really are feeling victimized. We really have to stop judging ourselves by the stupid standards the media presents us. This is the flip side of the depressed, anorexic or body conscious females. What a time.
I think in a lot of ways Franz Ferdinand has it right--"Oh, you girls never know, how you make the boy feel. " And of course, "You boys never care... how you make the girl feel.."
New Direction: The IVY League (Slight turn):
OK, so I have a new, sickening take on our world and its latest medical chart status--we are all being fucked by the Ivy-League. Some of us literally, others, figuratively. Professor Ford was one who got it literally. Others of us will get the more subtle version. And all of us, regardless of loyalty, in the US (and beyond), by the Trumpster.
OMG, I am so sick of these bastards!!!!!!!!!!! How do we exterminate them? (With extreme prejudice...) Who the hell do these Rasmussen people poll, exactly? Do they have a call center targeting hell? There cannot be 49% of Americans still on board with Trump--I refuse to believe that.
Ok. too tired to think about these a-holes. More later.
Sept 26:
Trying to sort it. Trump's numbers took a slightly upward tic. My only way to rationalize this is people are balancing against the rather transparent machinations of the Dems in timing all this to screw up the flow of the SCOTUS nominations. And we all know that's retaliation for the whole denial of Obama's Merrick Garland nomination. BUT..when will these people hit the reset button and stop playing football with our lives?
Now I don't know whether to question the Dem's panic over Kavanaugh--would he seriously try to upend Roe v. Wade? Will he continue the corporate raid on Americans, making an overturn of Citizens United impossible, ruin our healthcare system for his fat buddies?
I really don't know what to believe, and looking for that fair voice in the wilderness. It does seem important, either way, to eviscerate Congress, both Houses, both parties--get some fresh, less vengeful people in there. Before we have the Masque of the Red Death rain/reign on us.
Sept. 29, 2018: These Kavanaugh/Ford hearings are giving me a gender stomachache. And a small amount of hope, cracking through an over crust of cynicism. Our politicians never looked stupider or more on the defense: they have no idea how to act, which is why they are resorting to weak imitations of Trump's grandiose temper tantrums. Lindsay Graham might as well wear a sign about how indifferent he is to women. Kavanaugh is playing Trump's aggrieved younger brother. Hearing him go on and on about how his perfect legacy life has been ruined made my gut swirl. His story sounded plausible on the surface, but after you stare at it awhile, you gotta go--hey, wait a minute, is this true? No, it isn't...
Haven't these people been paying attention to how much the American people dislike the childish, petulant rants of our hyper masculine, baby boy president? Talk about tone deaf. Can't wait for the midterms--hope both houses get swept clean. There isn't one worth the effort of saving. We need to start all over again, as if it was 1800 again.
So, Mr. Entitled showed his hand by advertising what has probably been his inside card since high school. HE was a high class scholar-athlete. How dare we question him! Not only that, but a multi-sport athlete! Oooh, all the girls must be swooning and dying to be alone with your alpha-male self at a party! What? They wouldn't enjoy that? How ego-shattering, that we're not all so impressed. I suppose your lifetime echo-chamber was just violated, sir. LATER: haha, SNL nailed this very vibe about how he still aspires to be high school level cool. No wonder the far right doesn't believe in evolution.
And, there's the lack of attention to both detail and logic that his weak-ass argument presents. Lesseee, because he was an athlete, AND because he got good grades, he couldn't possibly be a party boy. This in spite of the fact that he admitted to fairly regular drinking (underage, in spite of his inaccurate dodge that MD and DC's drinking age was 18--too bad I know lots of people who came of age at exactly that same time, in exactly the same place: Montgomery County, MD, who say he was wrong, that he missed that time period). The drinking age was changed before 1982, so seniors were definitely illegal, and, besides, the accusations took place during his junior year. Then there's the comments of various folks who were familiar with his partying rep in hs and college, plus his own damning yearbook brags. More elitist pap that we don't understand,"the code".
He's just working the slippery slope--you think a Yale educated lawyer and judge would be better at arguing. So, yeah, none of us have grown up with, taught, known among our children's classmates, watched in pro sports, the spoiled, over entitled jocks. He's stupid to imagine we've had no experience with jocks who violate their coaches' rules and drink, do drugs, womanize. Jesus, how many news cycles have we all been exposed to on this very theme?? We are ad nauseam with this culture. Addendum: it's just been revealed the BK the Deke was a legacy at Yale--his grandpa went there, so all that crap about working hard without connections is just that--crap.
And does being a regularly participating Catholic free you from this taint?
Of course not, why is 11:30 Sunday Mass at any Catholic church the most popular? Has to do with all the hang-overs from Saturday night sinning, an all ages party of remorse. I can name many boys from my own Catholic high school days who were drink and drug addled party boys who won State Football championships AND amazing college scholarships. (A few died young from their exploits.) And of course, there's the pressure on teachers and schools to "fix" these boys' grades so that the school (esp. private schools) can brag to alumni and future prospects about the scholarships their elite school has obtained for their choirboys. And parents with the connections to expunge records. That goes double for student-athletes known to have been from professional level stock, like Mark Judge: his grandfather was a Washington Senators ball player.
It's a rigged system, up and down, and there's yet another problem to address in the so-called "choirboy's" testimony. Like attracts like. If Kavanaugh was such good friends with this admitted death-gripped alcoholic Mark Judge character, I doubt very much he just sat there and watched him drink himself into oblivion and grab girls without participating himself--especially since he admitted to drinking in those days himself. Chug-a-lug, boy. It just doesn't add up. (I will also point out that our fallen, alcoholic hero also should have been an adherent of the jock code of ethic. ) We all know, from personal high school experience, from our children's, and me, as a teacher, that old elementary school friendships do fade when one friend becomes a partier and the other does not. They both tend to go off to seek friendships that reflect better their personal values, perhaps with regret, sadness, and a little judgment, but that's what usually occurs.
Boys will be boys, indeed. Мальчик как мальчик. I think the popularity of this concept is about to lose traction.
I don't know what to make of the almost 40% of Americans that stick by this nonsense and don't see through it. Lovers of the Alpha dogs?
October 6: Well, it's done, Kavanaugh is in SCOTUS leans right. The assault charges were pretty obviously buried in some manila folders somewhere. Something tells me this is not going to have the effect that one may think. I think there will be lots of pressure to maintain the S Court's dignity.
The real moment will be next month at the midterm elections. I've heard a million opinions pro and con the impending blue wave.
What about the women? Many are soooooo pissed. I can only speak for myself, and the small circle of women I've discussed this with, but I have the feeling many of us feel like we are reliving the worst moments of our teenage years and 20s, where we may have had experiences trapped momentarily (or for some, possibly longer? depending on their social circles), where there were these obnoxious, hyper masculine types who were extremely unpleasant to be around. They may have been jocks, frat boys or jacked up redneck types, but they had this bloated idea of importance, and turned on a dime from charming to aggressive. From my experience, I've never liked the idea that women get a bad rap for being the gossipers, because it seems to me that males are much worse about making up toxic things about other people, especially girls, and wrecking their reputations.
I had it happen to me. Some snotty prep dude I went to both high school and college with spread the rumor, when I got married at 21, that it was because I was pregnant. This was because I sometimes spent the night in the house where my boyfriend/fiance lived. Uh, dude, I was an early and vigilant practitioner of birth control. Maybe that was a moot point to you, but I did not get pregnant until I planned it, in the 6th-7th year of my marriage. He really pissed me off, and he didn't even try to molest me or anything. He comes from a family that has been proven to have substance abusers, and people who cheated their friends and business partners out of money, so stone throwing is not a smart idea. Mostly his attack on me probably has more to do with the fact that one of his close friends was a guy I dissed--the first boy I kissed at 13, who used to invite me over to his empty house to "make out", tell me he loved me, leave me weird love notes and stuff, then would abruptly quit and throw me out, proceeding to treat me in insulting and stupidly 13 year old ways. When I got older, and learned how the male body worked, I realized that he probably had prematurely ejaculated, and threw me out of his house the very second his needs had been satisfied--what a dork.
Later, when we were both in college, he rang my doorbell one night to tell me this bizarre story (a rather transparent attempt to seduce me--but I was no longer a naive 13..) about a girl he made time with in college that he was attracted to only because she had the same name as me..oh, and how embarrassed he now was because of how he treated me in the old days, because now he has learned, much, much more about girls and their needs. I strung him along for about 5 minutes then pushed him out the door--this was a buh-bye before that was a thing. Anyway, I suppose they decided to get some sort of male revenge on me with stories.
I think I got off relatively easy in the male oppressive sexual realm, compared to some girls, yet the treatment I did encounter still has left me remotely angry. So much feels out of our control. Mostly, I think I had better luck because I early on avoided and was not even remotely attracted to the jock/frat type--they actually grossed me out and turned me off. Even now I have to try hard to turn off my negativity to my students who are like this. I tended to like the artsy, softer males (ignore that I married a coach--he was more of a kid friendly type coach , one who himself was on the reject list in high school, not so much aggressive as passive-aggressive, tee-hee.) Not to mention I was severely critical of, and avoided, all that went with it: Homecoming and kissing up to the obnoxious popular crowd, worshipping football and the football players and their bimbo cheerleader girlfriends. I like to think that, rather than they rejected me, that I rejected them.
I have evidence of this, in fact. My freshman year I got asked to pledge a stupid sorority we had called Zeta Beta something...(Phi?) It dated all the way back to the 50s, and the outfits these girls wore even echoed that time--the coolest thing you could do as a freshman at Marquette H.S. was walk around with these little felt navy beanies with the white Greek letters sewed on the back--it must've been a pain in the ass to keep on all day, because most of the girls that had them had them plastered to their heads with a thousand bobbie pins--again a throwback to the 50s.
So, out of the clear blue sky I get invited: and I couldn't help wonder why..I actively hated almost every snotty mean girl in the club. My mother cleared this up for me--her best friend Phyllis was a Zeta Beta, then her daughters who were so lucky to go off to public school! What I yearned for..Phyllis was my godmother, and her daughters probably nominated me, and it probably helped that my mother was a cheerleader, if not rich. Plus, our family lived in one of the more up-scale, newer neighborhoods of our town. My friend Barb, whose dad was a dentist, also got asked, but my friend Theresa, who went on to be class salutatorian, did not--see, she lived in a gully in the bottom of one of the blue collar neighborhoods. None of this was lost on me, and I thought the whole think reeked of stupid, undeserved privilege. I went with Barb to the first meeting, because my mother begged me, where we were on some beautiful patio at night, all holding candles on a little cardboard circle so the wax wouldn't drip on our hands. I felt awkward all night, especially when they sang some sappy patriotic song about sisterhood--I couldn't wait to get out of there. I quit that night, and my mother was disappointed, but not surprised.
When I started my first serious relationship in H.S., it was with a boy who was from public school, a black neighborhood worse than Theresa's (hello Salu Park!), blue collar all the way, not Catholic, in fact Baptist, from a divorced family--in fact, we regularly babysat his half-siblings who had 3 different daddies..a teetotaler (because his wasted mom was an alcoholic), and, of coarse, a very non-jock, long-haired guitar player. His only full sibling was a Vietnam Vet who was dishonorably discharged, unemployed, and a heavy pot-smoker. (But, with a pretty great record collection!) He and my boy shared a room (with a mattress) in the attic of this run-down Bungalow with step-dad, mom, and three other kids. I suppose I romanticized this poverty a bit. The mom was having an affair with her boss, (we caught them in flagrante one time at noon! in her bedroom, which was off the living room and had no real door--she was drunk).
Randy my beau vowed he was not going to follow in his family's footsteps, was respectful of my virginity, and not only didn't pressure me, but was sad when I suggested...
So, see, I pretty much avoided all the high school drama, and was still with Randy through most of my first year of college, when I had to admit his no college, super-religious, no-drinking, women shouldn't work, hitch-hiking, only- friend- but- me- over-bearing- but- lovable self just wasn't really a good match for me. But, I did love him, knew he was one of a kind, and he loved me like no one has since. Sad. Тоска. But we wouldn't have made it, I know. He married some Christian girl--who knows if they made it to happily ever. Something tells me he secretly holds me over her head. Even when we broke up he wanted to be friends, and never called me ugly names, although he did make me cry by singing Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" (with guitar accompaniment ) to me in a rather pointed way--because I drank beer in college and ruined myself. He's the one who was my real first guitar teacher.
So, yeah, I've always liked people more who floated in the middle, empathetic to outsiders and the misfits. Brett Kavanaugh right off set my teeth on edge and made me say to myself--you and I would have NEVER been friends. That doesn't exactly put me on the 0-> side, even though I was a tomboy with a lot of guy friends in my youngest days. It just helped me get inside to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Oct 24, 2016:
Two influences on my gender thinking this week: 1) my usual trip to St. Augustine with my cohort Mark
2) reading an article posted in the New York Times by a contributor called George Yancy, philosophy professor at Emory University. His piece was called "#IAmSexist".
Here it is: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/opinion/men-sexism-me-too.html
But, back to my personal experiences in the first. Mark is a long time friend and colleague that I've had a good relationship with for over a decade. We had shared interests in politics, travel, language, writing, reading material (he did a thesis on Faulkner), and old-fashioned sports. He's an intelligent person. Over the past maybe two years, I felt a growing philosophical distance from him--as he's getting older, and raising his son and daughter (who I've had to teach while navigating his intrusive parenting style), he's gotten more conservative and protective.
Mark has always said he was a liberal--we used to bond heavily over politics--but I am beginning to question his self-identification. For one thing, I've always known he's deeply cynical and self-serving about how the world works. As a parent he trusts no one. He married within his ethnicity although they are both more liberal than their families/friends. He or his wife must be present at every event their children participate in or the kids can't go. This is tough in a school as activity oriented as ours. They don't do babysitters. They made the extremely odd choice to allow their children to sleep with them to a very advanced age, which sorta creeps me out. Needless to say, at our school they are labeled the worst helicopter parents in the school.
That's just background. Over the last few years, Mark has shifted friendly alliances from our old guard of mixed age/gender veteran teachers loyal to our school, to our Spanish teacher, with whom he shares a different set of interests: their worldly-wise ex-New Yorker attitudes (Mark left Brooklyn as a young child but identifies with those roots, even retains a trace of the accent), sports, sports, and keeping up a steady stream of jokes and put-downs at the expense of students and other people around them. You might notice that these are heavily masculine centered interests.
It all started with a gradual build-up when the two of them started dominating the conversations at our lunch table, hardly letting the rest of us get a word in edgewise to contribute to the conversation. Theirs was the only opinion that mattered, or, mainly the Spanish Teacher's, obediently echoed by Mark. Jose and I started making side conversations that pointedly side-eyed these domineering persons. Jose started making up funny names for Robomouth. The table was always crowded since so many other people wanted to be part of the loud laughter at "the cool table"--which the two of them actually dared to call it.
At some point, exacerbated by a conflict over his daughter's participation in a drama event after school, I'd had enough, and decided to find another group to sit with at lunch. It was noticed by Mark, as he remarked about it. For the rest of the year I sometimes came back to sit with them if it wasn't too inconvenient, but with the occasional sarcastic remark to undercut their sense of sovereignty. I wasn't really enjoying the camaraderie that I once did, and it helped make a bad year worse. It didn't help that when I went to have serious private conversations with Mark about the state of the school under our ridiculous, uncommunicative and dictatorial new HM, Mark didn't see my position. He liked "a strong leader," even if he was occasionally unfair and overly strict, he was willing to suck up and play ball like a good male underling--the price you pay for a well- run school. But, that's just my point, it only SEEMs to be well-run.
Well, as I pointed out to him, that our new leader favored jocks and the more masculine types at our school, he refused to see the bias. It's the dirty secret of our school that the majority, including the "other' men talk about sotto voce. To prove my point, I've noticed a much greater trend of absenteeism amongst the formerly loyal and responsible teachers--my sense is there is no love lost with admin, and they are taking all the days they are allowed, loyalty and underappreciation be damned. He disagrees about our admin, thinks it's better than the old one. So, I'm done trying to talk school politics with my old friend. This year M & ST have a different lunch from me, and several people who might eat with them have chosen to eat in their room rather than make the effort to join them. They've been complaining about losing their audience.
I was secretly happy to hear another female (tangentially an administrator) call M& ST "obnoxious" together.
This trip, which I've been involved with for most of the decade, was sort of a flashpoint. The Spanish Teacher came with us. It wasn't too great to be the third wheel in this bromance, boy. The two of them walked way ahead, faster than me (they are both over 6 foot tall)--I thought it was pretty rude that they didn't bother to wait for me. They kept up a gentle barrage of ethnocentric jokes lobbed at the international kids, who were polite about it, but didn't quite laugh at the repeated jokes. Example: they called the Chinese students, universally "Chinos" without using their names, the Thai kid was Thai-ger Jumper (for some reason). Me they gave relentless shit to for not taking advantage of my sub's offer to grade my homeworks while I was gone. Just in general their banter is all about put-downs of everyone else's lesser masculinity, aggressiveness and forward skills of various types. There was a lot of judgment of people who varied from some conservative code of dress or manner. Do you drink your coffee black or wimp it up with a lot of milk? The American kids, of course, repeated all this in parrot fashion. I threw in the occasional side comment of sympathy to the victims, especially for the Thai kid, whose brother I knew well, by talking about how stale and unoriginal their comments were.
Conversations between the three of us at meals were typical--stories about their future trip together to Greece, braggadocio about past travels to foreign countries and especially about how ST beat the systems everywhere. Sports talk. What great leaders/teachers they are. I was sooo tired of them by the end. They are Jerks. Toxic Twins. I told the Spanish Teacher's wife, I was so happy to let her have him back, to which she replied--"You shoulda left him there." Xaxa.
So, I've been trying to analyze for myself--why did I once like M so much and now dislike him? ST is the obvious change--but what is it about their relationship that is so off-putting? I've decided that the answer is hyper-masculinity. Mark is a bit of a chameleon--when he's around Jose, for example, his jokes become more idiosyncratic and gentler, more insightful, and he mimics Jose's polite and self-effacing demeanor. He's much, much more pleasant. Around ST he becomes some sort of god of maleness. He's much more phony and interested in impressing, hiding his lovable weaknesses.
My armchair psychoanalysis, based on what I've heard them say about their fathers, is that they were strict, hyper-masculine and "strong"--that is, not expressing emotions. So they toe the line around the like. Of course, our culture has provided the worst images; the old days of mild mannered heroes like Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy, or Fred Astair are long gone, and they wouldn't ever admit to liking them anyway.
Please note I make a strong distinction between masculine and hyper-masculine. I love men; they are my favorite companions. But I do not like the hyper-masculine aggressive and domineering types, whatever their occupation. I suppose it's why guitar players, teachers, writers, artists and musicians always appealed to me. People who can talk about interesting subjects in-depth and who respect my point of view. Mark was once like this. I don't know what made him switch teams. What really worries me is his insistence that Trump is going to win again (parroting his friend). ST at the beginning was a Trump lover--I know both of them are surrounded by super conservatives in North Pinellas and the Greek church. But ST is intelligent enough to see the Trumpsters' weaknesses as a human--but they are both so city boy cynical, and, they think, practical, that they think it's a done deal. Can't beat that hyper-masculine power....kowtow to the strict father figure.
I'm going on another trip with Mark to Model UN, I think w/o ST, so maybe we can salvage this relationship. Some stuff can't go back--I've seen the masque of his self-effacing charm removed, and now I know how superman he thinks of himself. It's a bit disappointing. I just want to tell him--ok, you know those hyper-female types who spend hours in the bathroom perfecting their feminine image, and turn out to be phony shells? Well, you are giving off the male pheromone version of that--it might get you a lot of attention on the short term, but... The thing is we will never have this conversation on his initiative, even though I can tell he feels the change. Can I tell him he and ST are unpleasant to be around?
Now about 2) the article. To cut it short, it is a seeming milder type, a philosophy prof, who is trying to drum up and enlist men into sympathy for the MeToo movement, for women in general, and for men admitting their own guilt in promoting male-centric culture. He's especially targeting men like himself, who consider themself a cut above the sexists, because they haven't raped or otherwise abused women. He says they need to admit they are in fact sexist. Smartly, to offset accusations of being judgmental he starts with himself, and gives some examples where he was conditioned and took part in ugly male bonding rituals at the expense of females.
The article was well thought out and empathetic in a way we rarely see--and actually made me feel a little relieved to know someone feels the logic of this. The letters following were also interesting--with quite a bit of gratitude, and some cynicism and misunderstanding.
One letter writer made a great point about the difficulty of men (like my old buddy George at model UN last year) seeing capitulation to these ideas not as mutual understanding but 'net loss of power'. And conservative women echoing this plus concern for their sons enduring the wrath of lefty women.
I think I want to point out again, what I said earlier--even America wasn't always in this gender divide that we have now. So there is definitely room for improvement. It has been a hijacked culture phenom. And needs to go in reverse.
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Nov 16:
A new vision of the sex debate. The Atlantic just published a quite involved article (it took me several hours to get through it!) Called, "Young People Are Having Less Sex". Here it is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/
This article is putting a new cog in my brain. So, as we have all been hearing, millennials are having less sex that past generations, less teen-births, delaying or avoiding marriage, not coupling by choice, not even dating. It seems like the whole concept has become quite stressful for all concerned, but more so for heterosexuals. This article lays out all the studies being done, the statistics, and puts out several theories about why this is happening now.
Here's some of the possible causes: ubiquitous online pornography, lack of sex ed, abstinence only sex ed, social media, online dating sites, the Me Too movement, news stories about harassment and rape, increased occurrence of depression, weight gain, photoshop, Celebutard culture, incels, fake male feminists like Aziz Ansari, robot sex, new and improved sex toys, medication for various mental disorders, helicopter parenting, the over scheduling of kids, social pressure to emphasize career (esp. for women), body image issues, stress, stress, stress.
Apparently people don't just "go out" anymore to meet others, and many in this generation lack basic social skills, or even the ability to flirt. Flirting has become the new taboo--girls think it risks harassment and think guys that do it are "creepy"; boys are afraid of being accused of creepiness.
You know, one of my younger friends has been telling me all this for years, but I wasn't really listening, and just assumed he was kinda an outlier, too afraid to jump in, a creep, a weirdo. Man, that Radiohead song "Creep" really is a song for a generation--so much resonance....
No wonder all the guys are hiding behind those beards.
So here are a few of the takeaways that struck me from this article--something like 17% of young women surveyed considered that "a guy asking them out for a drink" was creepy, and sexual harassment.
What? In our day that was status quo, how you did it. Talking to strangers/colleagues/acquaintances in an elevator--creepy. Strangers in bookstores. All the usual rom-com cute meets are probably harassment. So no wonder there's no romance in the world. Ok, I know what everyone's thinking, one guy's romantic gesture is another guy's creepiness, right? It's more a matter of--what does he look like? And it rarely then gets past the superficial stage. A good looking guy is rarely a creep---but is that true? Depends on how aggressive he is. Ha! Laughing at those incel how-to-pick-up-chicks books and sites.
Romance is definitely a dying thing. It's like we're back, practically, to arranged marriages (without the marriage, I guess) that treat people like commodities. Add up the points.
If I can make a suggestion to all the guys out there who want a real girl, not a blow up/robot? Go soft, go slow, be gentle, lower your expectations, and lengthen your time lines. This new breed of girl is scared of you. You have to be reassuring, and not on your agenda to get laid. There really is a new entrenchment against machismo and aggression. We all hate it and fear it, and want to remove ourselves from it by any means necessary, including giving you what you want to get out of the situation you trapped us in. We remember our elders' relationships and don't want to repeat them.
Mainly don't be a creep. And girls don't like gross, even me.
Go anti-porn. I don't mean-- don't watch it. I mean, don't believe in it. It's not Sex-ed. The article gave some straight up evidence of this becoming a problem. 1) More girls who say they weren't raped have what looks like abrasive "vulvular fissures" that indicate painful sex, plus an uptick of women who report pain with sex. 2) Hetero anal sex rates have doubled in 20 years. 3) More girls report getting choked during sex. All of this is porn behavior--and some of you dudes doing this stuff are just plain not doing it right. You are guilty of bad sex. Plus, I've seen in another source, this statistic about the increase of violence in porn, even mainstream porn, with the pretense that the girls love it. They don't. It makes them view sex as traumatic and wish to avoid it. I'm not talking about the BDSM types. That's different, anyway (I hear..:)
But, I'm feeling a lot of empathy for the guys. Holy crow, have we made having a relationship with you difficult! So, what DO you do with this? I've been used to saying, most of my life, that I prefer the company of men, because I'm not too girly-girly--bored with long discussions of shopping, and handbags and celebrity talk, and oversharing of Feelings. But I've been edging my way back to the girls' side of the room, because the male side is starting to stink a little. Anti-social. So educate yourselves. Get some REAL sex ed. And, watch those girl movies you avoid so your buds don't think you're gay. There are some good ones. Learn the real art of flirting from these. The movies aren't all guns and goatee.
I'm thinking, maybe more girls SHOULD make the first move--you won't towards someone you find creepy or aggressive.
OH! This was an interesting insight--the lack of effectiveness of such websites as Tinder and OK Cupid, etc. We all know it's a showcase for the beautiful people, who get disproportionate numbers of hits, male and female. The surveying stat is, since it's so low risk to swipe right, everyone has a tendency to trade up, out of their league, and play it like it's the lottery. No one seems to be looking for a friend. So, several of the users interviewed said that it actually was more like playing tetris or something online--a stress reliever, a time waster. Some people even scheduled regular hours to themselves to do it, like while watching TV. One woman described her sessions--she'd only do it after she'd had two glasses of wine and got in a WTF mood, swiped a bunch, then deleted them all regularly the next day. There was no serious intent, and it sounds like that's how it works for the majority. Shallowness, but safe in your living room shallowness.
On the other hand is this now engrained idea--getting a date via Tinder, et.al., is legit, but asking someone face-to face raises the creep-o-meter. And here's a thought--why is the word creep now so prevalent in our culture in the first place?
Um, this too. The Frequency of Sex is going down in all age groups. In new marriages. People with kids. Empty nesters. It's ubiquitous. And seems to be worse in Japan where a large percentage of marriages after children are "sexless" and the Japanese culture has adapted all sorts of weird-to-us work arounds as alternatives to your monogamous relationships. There are also the "grass-fed" boys, who have sworn off relationships, live with their parents, are into anime and manga sex videos. Italy also has an alarming number of young adults who live with mom and dad. And more people are living alone, by choice.
The one thing that is booming, according to the article, is masturbation.
