Once upon a time, after someone had said unpleasant things about me on line, a young companion offered me support and caring and wrote to say that "you are not your blog". I found that message in my archives a few nights ago, and it did give me something to think about. I know what she meant by it, but I have to wonder about how true it is in at least my own case. I've spent a large part of my life writing about things, and of course much of my life has been lived in and through books. I've always invested a lot of myself in what I write, and I invest a lot in what I read, too. I am what I write, and I suppose I am what I read, too. I've written about that here--- about the things I've learned from books, about the way I've always searched through texts and films for images and ideas and objects for constructing a life.
I do spend far too much time on line reading journals and blogs and Tumblrs. It's hard for me not to think of each of the sites I visit as a kind of alien world that I'm observing from orbit, or trying to reconstruct from Hubble images. It's harder still not to think of personal blogs and journals and Tumblrs as a world of streaming films, of long-running telenovelas. When I find a blog or a journal I like, I always look at it as a roman fleuve, as an ongoing story that I want to follow into the future. I do become a bit possessive about the blogs and the stories they tell, and I'm always glum if they vanished or are simply abandoned. There are a few sites out on the web that I've followed for seven or eight years, and I'd hate to lose those voices and the stories they tell.
The downside of that of course is that it's hard--- perhaps impossible ---to think of the blogs or journals as being about flesh-and-blood people. My rooms are filled with books and DVDs; each one of them is a set of stories about lives. The lives inside novels and films are real to me, and always have been. I suppose I read the entries at blogs and journals and regard them as novels, as telenovelas. I read the stories there as being about characters, and I take from them what I take from novels on my shelves.
That does raise the issue of what I take from entries about sexual adventures and experiences. Some of the entries I've found have been well-crafted and very powerful. Those are the stories I want to know about in detail, to deconstruct and analyze the way I do erotic literature or films. It might be better for me to just read them as erotica, to read them and think they're hot and arousing. That would at least mean that I was taking the stories to be about people. But I spend time breaking them down into more abstract parts, trying to infer what I can about sets and settings, about characters and their lives. Or their character arcs. I think less of the lives than of the function of the characters, of their roles in plot structures. It might be more human if I read the entries to find fantasy material, but I've never quite done that. I read the entries for a sense of alien worlds and a sense of detachment from where I am. I keep reading with the same attitude I take toward romans fleuves or series novels. I obsess over what will happen next, and over how the author will keep the plot alive. There's a kind of demanding cruelty there, I suppose. I'm demanding that the invisible authors hold my interest, and of course I'm as invisible to them as they are to me.
Darkness, obsession, transgression, risk, adventure--- I want all that from what I read. Stories that end with a girl finding true love and contentment and an ordinary life are...well...failures. I've never liked it when a novel or a series or a film ends. I want it to go on and on, to keep exploring, and to be part of a world that's aspirational and elegant and still suffused with a sense of darkness. It might be more human just to read and look for fantasies that could be used either with young companions or for the Solitary Vice, but I'm not reading for anything with a direct or unmediated physical use. It's the worlds that I want. I want the structures of those worlds: places, settings, lighting, wardrobes, social markers. I want the ambience, of course: elegance, darkness, stylishness, class. I don't expect the character-girls to serve as fantasy images; I expect them to serve as carriers for stories. I could laugh and call it a kind of structuralist fetish, but I do wonder about what I'm actually doing here.
I'm not reading for the lives of people I can easily see as "real". I'm not reading for utilitarian things, for sexual fantasies. I'm not reading to watch people change or grow. I'm reading what I hope will go on forever, characters that I like moving through different highly formal plot structures and offering up lists and accounts of other worlds. I want the girls portrayed in the blogs to have dark adventures and explore all the labyrinths of the erotic. But I care about the structures and not flesh and orgasms. That's a different kind of demand, and one that is less human.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Forty-Nine: Exotica
I'm never quite sure what to make of the current usage of the word "problematic". The gender warriors and the neo-puritans of the "social justice" world have a particular meaning for the word. It's used as a weapon, of course, as a moral condemnation. To call something "problematic" is to condemn it out of hand, to say that it's morally flawed and needs to be done away with. Like the current invocation of the word "privilege", "problematic" is used to point the bone at hapless opponents, to silence argument, to flaunt one's own moral righteouness and brand opponents as thoroughly (and ab initio) discredited and probably evil.
One of the "problematic" things out there these days is the idea of the "exotic", or the idea of "fetishising" something. An acquaintance who writes erotica posts links at Twitter on a daily basis--- links to photos of handsome gay men having sex. She's bisexual herself, and the male characters of her novels are almost inevitably bi. She prides herself on writing hot male-male scenes, and she seems to have a fair number of female readers who sigh over those scenes. Yet the other evening she posted a series of apologetic tweets about her daily gay links. She apologised for "fetishising" the scenes in the photos, for "fetishising" the men in the photos. Someone had found what she was doing "problematic" and attacked her for finding male-male sex hot to look at and for encouraging her female followers to become aroused by the photos.
I don't quite follow the argument, of course. I fail to see the moral failure in looking at something outside one's own usual experience or one's own world and finding it hot precisely because it's new and unknown. I fail to see why something can't be simply desired based on novelty. My literary acquaintance was attacked for finding two handsome men together to be a hot thing to watch, and I've known other people who were attacked for wanting to try something based on novelty or visual appeal. To say that one wants to date an Asian girl, or a red-haired girl, or to say that one is excited by a category, an image, is now "problematic", meaning morally evil.
I'm not sure why it's evil to seek out novelty, to want to be part of something new and different, to want something that've you've never had, to want to be part of a scene that has visual or literary resonances. Is it only that the desire is purely for novelty, or for what enters at the eye? Is it that the desire isn't about the person, but about the novelty? Is it that simple? I'm still left shaking my head.
We're creatures who tell stories, who live for and through stories. We construct stories about what we see, and we long for new stories and new experiences that turn into stories. To "fetishise" is only to look at something and see the inherent stories. That's what it is, really. I've spent my life seeing the world as a set of potential scenes, as the raw material for stories. I won't apologise for that, and no one--- not my acquaintance the erotica writer, not someone wondering what it would be like to take someone who's [fill in the blank] to bed ---should ever have to apologise for that.
One of the "problematic" things out there these days is the idea of the "exotic", or the idea of "fetishising" something. An acquaintance who writes erotica posts links at Twitter on a daily basis--- links to photos of handsome gay men having sex. She's bisexual herself, and the male characters of her novels are almost inevitably bi. She prides herself on writing hot male-male scenes, and she seems to have a fair number of female readers who sigh over those scenes. Yet the other evening she posted a series of apologetic tweets about her daily gay links. She apologised for "fetishising" the scenes in the photos, for "fetishising" the men in the photos. Someone had found what she was doing "problematic" and attacked her for finding male-male sex hot to look at and for encouraging her female followers to become aroused by the photos.
I don't quite follow the argument, of course. I fail to see the moral failure in looking at something outside one's own usual experience or one's own world and finding it hot precisely because it's new and unknown. I fail to see why something can't be simply desired based on novelty. My literary acquaintance was attacked for finding two handsome men together to be a hot thing to watch, and I've known other people who were attacked for wanting to try something based on novelty or visual appeal. To say that one wants to date an Asian girl, or a red-haired girl, or to say that one is excited by a category, an image, is now "problematic", meaning morally evil.
I'm not sure why it's evil to seek out novelty, to want to be part of something new and different, to want something that've you've never had, to want to be part of a scene that has visual or literary resonances. Is it only that the desire is purely for novelty, or for what enters at the eye? Is it that the desire isn't about the person, but about the novelty? Is it that simple? I'm still left shaking my head.
We're creatures who tell stories, who live for and through stories. We construct stories about what we see, and we long for new stories and new experiences that turn into stories. To "fetishise" is only to look at something and see the inherent stories. That's what it is, really. I've spent my life seeing the world as a set of potential scenes, as the raw material for stories. I won't apologise for that, and no one--- not my acquaintance the erotica writer, not someone wondering what it would be like to take someone who's [fill in the blank] to bed ---should ever have to apologise for that.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Forty-Eight: Sentimental Education
A friend told me once that when she first went to university she was given a warning. There was a meeting for all the new girls in the residence halls where they were told about women's services available at the university, and then told all about the risks they ran at university and how to deal with them. Some of the warnings were standard enough--- depression, eating disorders, drinking, personal safety. But there was one part that my friend always remembered.
There was a long set of warnings about what to do if faculty made advances to them. The presenters were from the campus women's rights organisation, and they performed a series of skits about what to do. My friend remembered one in particular. The gist of it was that if some male faculty member gave you poetry he'd written for you and told you that you had "a great ass", then you should immediately "call the dean! call his wife!" and tell them what was going on. My friend said that she didn't know whether to laugh or jeer. She'd come from a small town in the Quebec countryside to a major university, and having a distinguished older professor find her desirable was something very much on her agenda. She was perplexed, too, at how specific the skit was. Were English and Lit faculty supposed to be so lecherous that they got special mention? What if you were a girl in the engineering program? Would an engineering professor be likely to write poetry for you? She thought, too, that the skits were too pat, too polished. Years later, she told me, she found a Tumblr where the same warning was repeated, with the same language. She wondered where the skits had originated, and whether women's groups at universities all over North America were using them every September.
She laughed, too, and told me that the best part of having been warned about that in her freshman autumn was that in actual fact, one of her instructors really did bring her poetry (though she was never quite clear whether he'd written it specifically for her or was just showing her poetry he'd already written) and made a point of telling her she had excellent legs. She loved the sheer irony of it all, and only regretted that he never took it farther than lighting her cigarette and flirting. She was, she told me, more than willing to sneak off to hotel rooms or a locked office or even his house...if only he'd asked. She told her best friend that all that was needed would've been for him to take her jaw gently in his hand and kiss her. A fiercely intelligent older man with greying hair and a literary reputation was exactly what she'd been planning for since high school. I could only light her cigarette and apologize that my hair hadn't yet gone grey.
My friend told me that her taste in older men was something that marked her as part of a secret tribe. There were other girls at her university who managed to have affairs with faculty, and she did envy them--- but it was all more clandestine than being gay would've been back in the Fifties. She remembered being told that no girl of her age could actually be attracted to older lovers. She was, she was told, really only falling for what they knew, for the books and ideas and lives that they represented. All she could do was stare. But, she'd say, isn't that exactly the point? To learn from a lover, to find someone who could evoke passion about the things she wanted to learn? The bedroom is the best classroom, she wrote me once: a place for opening herself to experience and knowledge, a place for shared conversations late at night. Her dream since high school had been sitting cross-legged on a older lover's bed and reading the books he'd written or having him stand behind her and kiss her bare shoulders while she scanned his bookshelves. The line is there in a letter she sent me once: trading youth and erotic energy for knowledge--- isn't that the perfect exchange?
My friend had known since high school what she wanted, and what stories she wanted to be part of. Someone else told me once that when she'd walk into a classroom and hear her professor talking about Neruda or Rilke she'd feel vaguely cheated that she wasn't getting what she called a "sentimental education", that the poetry she was studying didn't come with a seminar where one had affairs with poets. I envy her using "sentimental education" as a term. And I envy what my Quebec friend said about coming to Montreal and university, about coming there to find experience and find affairs that could open up the world to her.
My own university experience would've been different. I'm male and heterosexual, and my choice of mentors was very different. I did spend my undergraduate years seeking a sentimental education, though. I wanted to seek out experience and worldliness, and I was in love with ideas and with being part of the stories told in novels and films. I still am, of course. I had different things to trade for it, but I'd have offered up youth and beauty if I'd had them.
I've been someone who offered up knowledge to Young Companions. You know that. Knowledge and, I hope, intellectual passion. And, yes, intellectual and physical passion went together--- a pairing that's as powerful and brilliant as anything out there. Yes--- it's an exchange, and it's one that's never anything to be ashamed of. Not for either partner.
There was a long set of warnings about what to do if faculty made advances to them. The presenters were from the campus women's rights organisation, and they performed a series of skits about what to do. My friend remembered one in particular. The gist of it was that if some male faculty member gave you poetry he'd written for you and told you that you had "a great ass", then you should immediately "call the dean! call his wife!" and tell them what was going on. My friend said that she didn't know whether to laugh or jeer. She'd come from a small town in the Quebec countryside to a major university, and having a distinguished older professor find her desirable was something very much on her agenda. She was perplexed, too, at how specific the skit was. Were English and Lit faculty supposed to be so lecherous that they got special mention? What if you were a girl in the engineering program? Would an engineering professor be likely to write poetry for you? She thought, too, that the skits were too pat, too polished. Years later, she told me, she found a Tumblr where the same warning was repeated, with the same language. She wondered where the skits had originated, and whether women's groups at universities all over North America were using them every September.
She laughed, too, and told me that the best part of having been warned about that in her freshman autumn was that in actual fact, one of her instructors really did bring her poetry (though she was never quite clear whether he'd written it specifically for her or was just showing her poetry he'd already written) and made a point of telling her she had excellent legs. She loved the sheer irony of it all, and only regretted that he never took it farther than lighting her cigarette and flirting. She was, she told me, more than willing to sneak off to hotel rooms or a locked office or even his house...if only he'd asked. She told her best friend that all that was needed would've been for him to take her jaw gently in his hand and kiss her. A fiercely intelligent older man with greying hair and a literary reputation was exactly what she'd been planning for since high school. I could only light her cigarette and apologize that my hair hadn't yet gone grey.
My friend told me that her taste in older men was something that marked her as part of a secret tribe. There were other girls at her university who managed to have affairs with faculty, and she did envy them--- but it was all more clandestine than being gay would've been back in the Fifties. She remembered being told that no girl of her age could actually be attracted to older lovers. She was, she was told, really only falling for what they knew, for the books and ideas and lives that they represented. All she could do was stare. But, she'd say, isn't that exactly the point? To learn from a lover, to find someone who could evoke passion about the things she wanted to learn? The bedroom is the best classroom, she wrote me once: a place for opening herself to experience and knowledge, a place for shared conversations late at night. Her dream since high school had been sitting cross-legged on a older lover's bed and reading the books he'd written or having him stand behind her and kiss her bare shoulders while she scanned his bookshelves. The line is there in a letter she sent me once: trading youth and erotic energy for knowledge--- isn't that the perfect exchange?
My friend had known since high school what she wanted, and what stories she wanted to be part of. Someone else told me once that when she'd walk into a classroom and hear her professor talking about Neruda or Rilke she'd feel vaguely cheated that she wasn't getting what she called a "sentimental education", that the poetry she was studying didn't come with a seminar where one had affairs with poets. I envy her using "sentimental education" as a term. And I envy what my Quebec friend said about coming to Montreal and university, about coming there to find experience and find affairs that could open up the world to her.
My own university experience would've been different. I'm male and heterosexual, and my choice of mentors was very different. I did spend my undergraduate years seeking a sentimental education, though. I wanted to seek out experience and worldliness, and I was in love with ideas and with being part of the stories told in novels and films. I still am, of course. I had different things to trade for it, but I'd have offered up youth and beauty if I'd had them.
I've been someone who offered up knowledge to Young Companions. You know that. Knowledge and, I hope, intellectual passion. And, yes, intellectual and physical passion went together--- a pairing that's as powerful and brilliant as anything out there. Yes--- it's an exchange, and it's one that's never anything to be ashamed of. Not for either partner.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Forty-Seven: Alexandria
Body, Remember
Body, remember not only how much you were loved
not only the beds you lay on.
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembling for you in voices---
only some chance obstacle frustrated them.
Now that it's all finally in the past,
it seems almost as if you gave yourself
to those desires too--- how they glowed,
remember, in eyes that looked at you,
remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices.
not only the beds you lay on.
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembling for you in voices---
only some chance obstacle frustrated them.
Now that it's all finally in the past,
it seems almost as if you gave yourself
to those desires too--- how they glowed,
remember, in eyes that looked at you,
remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices.
--- C.P. Cavafy
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Forty-Six: Monads
I was born in a region and in a time where there were very clear rules about social behavior. I'm city-born, but I spent parts of my childhood and adolescence in small towns with streets overhung with moss-draped trees and houses built seventy or eighty years before. There were longstanding rules about social behavior, and the guardians of the rules were the elderly ladies who sat on porches or seemed always to be visiting the tiny stores along the main street. One clear rule was simply that one smiled, that one made the effort to smile in public. I can remember receiving the occasional reminder about that--- being reminded to smile on such a lovely day, or reminded that a "handsome young man" should always have a smile, or that a smile brightened everyone's day. I'd always smile when reminded. I suppose, too, that I worried a bit about looking dour enough to worry others or give a darker tone to an ordinary day. I never minded the elderly ladies and their chivvying. It was part of small town life (or even some older, insular city neighborhoods), and it did remind me as a boy that I was part of a social web, that something as trivial and simple as a smile could help make it a better day for the people around me.
I'm thinking about that because I've been finding blog posts in the Social Justice world that go on and on about how being told to smile is a kind of "micro-aggression" and is yet another gendered power play. The blog entries are written by women, and they draw flurries of comments by women. The stories are all the same: the anger and violation felt at having people (men--- always men) tell them to smile, or that they'd be prettier if only they smiled. I did feel a bit perplexed that all the stories were gendered. My own experience and observation was that it was elderly ladies who issued reminders. Regional and generational, possibly, but I do suspect that small towns in New England or the Thames valley aren't so different. Perhaps it's only males that the authors and their commentariat remember. I never felt the reminders to smile as a gendered thing, or as a gendered issue of power, of males using the reminder to smile to control women.
I do find the whole "micro-aggression" issue troubling. The term seems to be applied to almost any kind of social interaction, to the exhortation to smile and to the smile itself (seen as an adjunct of the Evil Male Gaze) , to initiating conversations, to asking someone to dance, to a choice of subway or airport lounge seats. The underlying vision seems to be that any act that brings someone into a social contact is an act of aggression.
The world that the Social Justice crowd seem to envision is one that's completely atomized, one where armoured solitary figures move through the streets or through offices and schools with nothing to say to one another that could be construed as personal in any way or as creating any kind of social ritual. That's an unpleasant world to imagine. No one can speak first, lest that be taken as a sign of "privilege" or of exercising power and aggression. No one has any part in any social webs or rituals, since such things constitute "micro-aggression" via laying claim to others' attention or reminding them that someone is regarding them with attention. We're not even talking issues of politeness and courtesy here. This is about something else, about a belief that only a world without social rituals or interactions can be just, about a belief that only a world of disconnected atoms can be free of power dynamics, gendered or not.
I'm thinking about that because I've been finding blog posts in the Social Justice world that go on and on about how being told to smile is a kind of "micro-aggression" and is yet another gendered power play. The blog entries are written by women, and they draw flurries of comments by women. The stories are all the same: the anger and violation felt at having people (men--- always men) tell them to smile, or that they'd be prettier if only they smiled. I did feel a bit perplexed that all the stories were gendered. My own experience and observation was that it was elderly ladies who issued reminders. Regional and generational, possibly, but I do suspect that small towns in New England or the Thames valley aren't so different. Perhaps it's only males that the authors and their commentariat remember. I never felt the reminders to smile as a gendered thing, or as a gendered issue of power, of males using the reminder to smile to control women.
I do find the whole "micro-aggression" issue troubling. The term seems to be applied to almost any kind of social interaction, to the exhortation to smile and to the smile itself (seen as an adjunct of the Evil Male Gaze) , to initiating conversations, to asking someone to dance, to a choice of subway or airport lounge seats. The underlying vision seems to be that any act that brings someone into a social contact is an act of aggression.
The world that the Social Justice crowd seem to envision is one that's completely atomized, one where armoured solitary figures move through the streets or through offices and schools with nothing to say to one another that could be construed as personal in any way or as creating any kind of social ritual. That's an unpleasant world to imagine. No one can speak first, lest that be taken as a sign of "privilege" or of exercising power and aggression. No one has any part in any social webs or rituals, since such things constitute "micro-aggression" via laying claim to others' attention or reminding them that someone is regarding them with attention. We're not even talking issues of politeness and courtesy here. This is about something else, about a belief that only a world without social rituals or interactions can be just, about a belief that only a world of disconnected atoms can be free of power dynamics, gendered or not.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Forty-Five: Inspirational
A girl I once knew, a recent graduate at LSE, an expat trying to make her way in London's East End, posted an image at her Tumblr the other day--- a poster that says in large block letters against a background of the sea "REMEMBER---- YOU are someone's reason to masturbate!" I know what the poster is trying to do, trying to say--- it's meant to be inspirational for her. She's a gym rat, and she's had body image issues most of her life. The poster is mean to remind her to spend more time on the treadmill, to be more determined about weights and body sculpting. It's there to remind her to keep working out, to remind her that she can dominate the fantasies of the buff, washboard-abs men she fancies, that she can be the girl that gym rat men sigh over.
The poster is inspirational for her, but it's not something anyone male could've posted. I can all too easily imagine what the Gender Studies crowd and the Social Justice Mob would make of that poster if it had been posted by anyone male. The propaganda of the gender wars would depict the poster as "creepy" and "entitled" if a male had posted it. I think we can take that as a given. I do wonder if any of that ever crossed my expat friend's mind... And I wonder if she ever thinks that she's doubtless been guys' Reason since her teens? Does she--- or any girl ---ever consider that? And...what is the Correct attitude about that? What do girls think about being strangers' Reason? Any thoughts? In my time, I've asked girls all sorts of questions about their views on sex and desire, but I'm not sure I could ask a girl that, ask her what she thinks of being strangers' Reason, ask her if she realises that she's very likely to have been part of male fantasies since her teens. Asking that--- or even raising the possibility ---isn't ideologically possible in an age of Gender Wars. Suggesting to a girl that she figures in strangers' fantasies (even if it's almost certain to be true) is regarded as tantamount both to sexual assault itself or to wishing a kind of assault on her. The expat gym rat girl can see the poster as inspirational, but no one male would be allowed in the current climate to offer her up the poster phrase, to say that to her as either inspiration or statement of fact.
Male desire and male sexuality are regarded as suspect--- or more ---these days. I've heard Gender Studies types argue that any masturbatory fantasy is a kind of rape. And that's alongside or in addition to the usual point of view in the culture that regards male masturbation as pathetic and laughable at best and as creepy and hostile and disgusting at worst. I looked at the image of the poster there at the expat girl's Tumblr and felt empty and glum. Part of that is being male and recognising that male desire is taken these days as something necessarily morally and politically corrupt. Part of it of course is recognising my own lack of value.
Another expat friend in London, a girl a few years older than the gym rat girl and part of a fairly posh and educated crowd, told me not to worry. Everyone, she wrote, is someone's Reason. I could only think of the end of "The Sun Also Rises": Wouldn't it be pretty to think so? Yes--- it would be pretty to think so, or at least consolatory. Being someone's Reason (and, yes, I always think of that someone as being "someone attractive") is a marker for value. I find it difficult to imagine being someone's Reason, and there's a sense of loss and futility and hopelessness when I look at the expat girl's Tumblr.
Being someone's Reason would be a marker for social and sexual value. Being a fantasy object for an attractive girl--- especially a stranger ---has a clear rank-hierarchy value. I understand that I'd never be fantasy-worthy for the particular gym rat girl, and I don't want you to think she's the issue. She's certainly right about herself. She's quite fantasy-worthy by anyone's standards. But her own tastes run to males whose looks I could never match and could never have matched in the days of my far-off youth. So it's not about her.
But it is about being fantasy-worthy. Everyone is someone's Reason, my other expat friend wrote. Tonight I can't imagine being anyone's Reason, or at least not a Reason for anyone for whom being fantasy-worthy would confer value. I'll just note that somehow, being fantasy-worthy seems to be more of a marker for value than just being desirable in the flesh. Maybe it's only that I see imagination and memory as being more important than the flesh. You're free to infer that; you may be precisely correct. The odds are in your favour, anyway.
Tonight I'm looking out at the lights of the city where I live and thinking about the expat girl's poster. I feel empty and useless. She's certainly a Reason for handsome strangers. My other expat friend is a Reason for a great many people--- a different set of categories, but still a Reason. I'm not anyone's Reason. I don't have that kind of value, and I'm not likely to have it again. And I'm very, very depressed over the gnawing fear that I may never have had that value. Flesh has its charms, but being fantasy-worthy outweighs flesh. I'm no one's Reason, and I won't be a Reason in the future. All I can do is feel the dull, dead emptiness of coming to believe that I was never anyone's Reason.
The poster is inspirational for her, but it's not something anyone male could've posted. I can all too easily imagine what the Gender Studies crowd and the Social Justice Mob would make of that poster if it had been posted by anyone male. The propaganda of the gender wars would depict the poster as "creepy" and "entitled" if a male had posted it. I think we can take that as a given. I do wonder if any of that ever crossed my expat friend's mind... And I wonder if she ever thinks that she's doubtless been guys' Reason since her teens? Does she--- or any girl ---ever consider that? And...what is the Correct attitude about that? What do girls think about being strangers' Reason? Any thoughts? In my time, I've asked girls all sorts of questions about their views on sex and desire, but I'm not sure I could ask a girl that, ask her what she thinks of being strangers' Reason, ask her if she realises that she's very likely to have been part of male fantasies since her teens. Asking that--- or even raising the possibility ---isn't ideologically possible in an age of Gender Wars. Suggesting to a girl that she figures in strangers' fantasies (even if it's almost certain to be true) is regarded as tantamount both to sexual assault itself or to wishing a kind of assault on her. The expat gym rat girl can see the poster as inspirational, but no one male would be allowed in the current climate to offer her up the poster phrase, to say that to her as either inspiration or statement of fact.
Male desire and male sexuality are regarded as suspect--- or more ---these days. I've heard Gender Studies types argue that any masturbatory fantasy is a kind of rape. And that's alongside or in addition to the usual point of view in the culture that regards male masturbation as pathetic and laughable at best and as creepy and hostile and disgusting at worst. I looked at the image of the poster there at the expat girl's Tumblr and felt empty and glum. Part of that is being male and recognising that male desire is taken these days as something necessarily morally and politically corrupt. Part of it of course is recognising my own lack of value.
Another expat friend in London, a girl a few years older than the gym rat girl and part of a fairly posh and educated crowd, told me not to worry. Everyone, she wrote, is someone's Reason. I could only think of the end of "The Sun Also Rises": Wouldn't it be pretty to think so? Yes--- it would be pretty to think so, or at least consolatory. Being someone's Reason (and, yes, I always think of that someone as being "someone attractive") is a marker for value. I find it difficult to imagine being someone's Reason, and there's a sense of loss and futility and hopelessness when I look at the expat girl's Tumblr.
Being someone's Reason would be a marker for social and sexual value. Being a fantasy object for an attractive girl--- especially a stranger ---has a clear rank-hierarchy value. I understand that I'd never be fantasy-worthy for the particular gym rat girl, and I don't want you to think she's the issue. She's certainly right about herself. She's quite fantasy-worthy by anyone's standards. But her own tastes run to males whose looks I could never match and could never have matched in the days of my far-off youth. So it's not about her.
But it is about being fantasy-worthy. Everyone is someone's Reason, my other expat friend wrote. Tonight I can't imagine being anyone's Reason, or at least not a Reason for anyone for whom being fantasy-worthy would confer value. I'll just note that somehow, being fantasy-worthy seems to be more of a marker for value than just being desirable in the flesh. Maybe it's only that I see imagination and memory as being more important than the flesh. You're free to infer that; you may be precisely correct. The odds are in your favour, anyway.
Tonight I'm looking out at the lights of the city where I live and thinking about the expat girl's poster. I feel empty and useless. She's certainly a Reason for handsome strangers. My other expat friend is a Reason for a great many people--- a different set of categories, but still a Reason. I'm not anyone's Reason. I don't have that kind of value, and I'm not likely to have it again. And I'm very, very depressed over the gnawing fear that I may never have had that value. Flesh has its charms, but being fantasy-worthy outweighs flesh. I'm no one's Reason, and I won't be a Reason in the future. All I can do is feel the dull, dead emptiness of coming to believe that I was never anyone's Reason.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Forty-Four: Explanations
There's word I've just run across out there in the bloglands: "mansplaining". I found the original essay that used the word, and I do understand what it means. It still sounds like a word Ricky Ricardo would've used, but I do understand where it comes from and what it's intended to mean. I do have a few problems with the word, since I'm not convinced that it needs to be a gendered thing, and I'd certainly argue that the basic idea needn't necessarily be gendered. But I suppose it is something I'd apologize for.
I rarely if ever apologize for things in the gender wars. I try to reserve apologies for one-to-one encounters, for moments when I've failed in courtesy with individuals. I was brought up to believe that politeness and courtesy matter, and I'll always believe that. I don't apologize for political or social failings, and I don't apologize for being most of the things on the current "social justice" list of all things evil---- male, older, white, straight, cis, nominally middle class. I will always apologize for inadvertent failures of individual politeness; I will not apologize for "privilege".
"Mansplaining", now... Well, I am guilty of over-explaining. I over-think, and I over-explain. I'm aware of that. I spent far too many years standing in front of classes explaining things. I can so easily be triggered into lecture mode--- explain, offer up examples, repeat key points, point out linkages between ideas. Tell the story, look at it from different angles, then quickly review. That's built into me, I fear. And before ever I stepped up in front of my first class, I spent years managing a bookstore, explaining to people why they needed this book, what that book could offer them.
I over-explain. And I love telling stories. I don't think that's ever been a gendered thing. I'll tell stories to anyone. I probably do offer up explanations to people who may already know them, but if they tell me that and offer up their own stories--- well and good. I suppose there's competition there, but I like that. Trading stories, seeing who knows the most arcane things and the most intriguing stories--- how can that not be fun? I have to wonder what matters more--- the value of the explanation as such, or just being able to tell stories. I have no clear answer to that.
I've never assumed that the girls I talk to or flirt with need to have things explained, or that as a male, and an older male at that, that my explanations are always and ever more correct than girls' views. But I will launch out into explanations and stories. I was trained to do that--- to explain, to tell stories. I ask questions, too. I was trained to do that as well.
So I do feel the need to apologize sometimes. Not for "mansplaining", not for assuming that I must know better than any "mere" female. I'll apologize if ever I took up someone's time when they were busy, or if my stories and explanations turned out to be wrong.
Telling stories, though--- I won't apologize for that as such. Or for enjoying the game of exchanging stories. But it's the stories that matter, not gender competition. I want to be very clear about that.
I rarely if ever apologize for things in the gender wars. I try to reserve apologies for one-to-one encounters, for moments when I've failed in courtesy with individuals. I was brought up to believe that politeness and courtesy matter, and I'll always believe that. I don't apologize for political or social failings, and I don't apologize for being most of the things on the current "social justice" list of all things evil---- male, older, white, straight, cis, nominally middle class. I will always apologize for inadvertent failures of individual politeness; I will not apologize for "privilege".
"Mansplaining", now... Well, I am guilty of over-explaining. I over-think, and I over-explain. I'm aware of that. I spent far too many years standing in front of classes explaining things. I can so easily be triggered into lecture mode--- explain, offer up examples, repeat key points, point out linkages between ideas. Tell the story, look at it from different angles, then quickly review. That's built into me, I fear. And before ever I stepped up in front of my first class, I spent years managing a bookstore, explaining to people why they needed this book, what that book could offer them.
I over-explain. And I love telling stories. I don't think that's ever been a gendered thing. I'll tell stories to anyone. I probably do offer up explanations to people who may already know them, but if they tell me that and offer up their own stories--- well and good. I suppose there's competition there, but I like that. Trading stories, seeing who knows the most arcane things and the most intriguing stories--- how can that not be fun? I have to wonder what matters more--- the value of the explanation as such, or just being able to tell stories. I have no clear answer to that.
I've never assumed that the girls I talk to or flirt with need to have things explained, or that as a male, and an older male at that, that my explanations are always and ever more correct than girls' views. But I will launch out into explanations and stories. I was trained to do that--- to explain, to tell stories. I ask questions, too. I was trained to do that as well.
So I do feel the need to apologize sometimes. Not for "mansplaining", not for assuming that I must know better than any "mere" female. I'll apologize if ever I took up someone's time when they were busy, or if my stories and explanations turned out to be wrong.
Telling stories, though--- I won't apologize for that as such. Or for enjoying the game of exchanging stories. But it's the stories that matter, not gender competition. I want to be very clear about that.
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