Like much of the internet, particularly the lady-oriented bits of it, I found myself reading Katie Roiphe's Newsweek cover story this morning. It was sort of like watching a train wreck, really: I couldn't STOP reading it. Now I can't stop reading reaction to it, which is also like watching a train wreck.
I know a lot of people don't like Roiphe. She's not my favorite person in the world, either, but she wrote a piece for Slate once titled "Does Everyone Think Single Mothers Are Actually Crazy?" that really resonated with me, so I am more apt to defend her (despite her history of dismissing date-rape as a thing that doesn't happen) than most people. That's a round-a-bout way of saying that I don't diss everything she writes out of hand the way some people do.
And this piece is no exception. Roiphe is really a pretty smart lady. There are more than a few good points made: Sexual desire is not beholden to political correctness; fantasies are generally about leaving behind the world you're living in. And, snob that I am, her jabs at the awful prose that is Fifty Shades of Grey make me snicker to myself. Because, honestly, it is awful writing. If you want literary female-submission porn, there are far, far better-written stories than Fifty Shades of Grey. REALLY. This shit is like Twilight all over again, and it offends me most as a writer, or someone who considers herself an aspiring writer. Or something. Bad prose is offensive, ok?
The basic problem with all of Roiphe's assertions can be summed up thusly: she's talking about modern women and their sexuality when she ought to be looking at modern life in general, and pressures on and fantasies of both sexes.
Fifty Shades of Grey is enormously popular! No one can deny it. It's become a bonafide sensation. There's a pretty good piece on Jezebel explaining why this particular piece of words strung together is perhaps not as culturally revealing as we would all like to think it is, because the rules of supply and demand and also the unspoken power of cache apply.
But ok, that would be boring, so let's run with the idea that this particular story, with its themes of submission and losing one's self, IS popular because it stirs up some latent need or desire in the collective unconscious. I'll bite that hook. I happen to think that the allure of sexual submission does, in fact, come from pretty much that exact set of desires: the desire to let go, to not be in control, and ultimately to not be responsible for whatever happens. Roiphe backs up this reading of our culture at large by referencing a scene from HBO's new comedy Girls in which one of the characters, waiting for an OB/GYN appointment, briefly fantasizes about having AIDS because such a diagnosis would free her from the responsibility of ambition and making something of herself.
I think we can all identify with that urge.
And that's where Roiphe goes wrong. We ALL can identify with that urge. Men, too. The urge to leave behind responsibility and just float for awhile is not uniquely female. And the fantasies that we engage in that run along this theme are not uniquely sexual: for all that it occurs in a gynecologist's office, the scene in Girls is not at heart a sexual fantasy. The desire to shed responsibility for a while comes up in even the most mundane daydream about going on vacation. Hell, I get excited about the prospect of my dad taking my kid to my sister's house for the day because it means that my walk home from work is conducted without the specter of responsibilities to be shouldered immediately upon returning home. It's an hour of time that is normally scheduled and deadlined which is suddenly, utterly, blissfully free, and that is SUCH a great feeling. But not in the least a sexual one.
By pegging this completely natural desire to leave it all behind as (one) only for women, (two) sexual in nature, (three) universal and (four) irrevocable, Roiphe has done a serious disservice to all of us. Men, in Roiphe's world, exist only to cater to the fantasies of women. They don't get to have any of their own. They don't get to want to indulge in the fantasy of giving it over and giving up control for a while. I would love to hear Roiphe explain the prevalence of the FemmeDomme in popular culture, if men don't even want to give up control. Women, in Roiphe's estimation, are all exactly the same, with exactly the same fantasies. The popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey translates to an absolute universal: since a lot of women seem to enjoy reading this, all women want to experience this. And, like Freud before her, Roiphe assumes that everything can be reduced to sexuality, when the truth of human behavior is actually far more complex. And while I myself indulge in some pretty hefty abnegation-of-responsiblity fantasies, at the end of the day, I do enjoy my autonomy and personal-decision-making capacity, and I'd really like it a whole lot if the culture I lived in would acknowledge that I am both capable of and have the right to make all personal decisions for myself. This is why I am a feminist. Just because I, like everyone else, sometimes would like to not make any decisions, doesn't mean I never want to make any decisions. Submission fantasies do not mean that feminism, with it's basic demand that women be viewed at all levels as complete human beings, is wrong.
This is where some of the feminist criticism of Roiphe, and of BDSM in general, breaks down, for the record. They take the opposite position, and they're equally wrong: feminism does not mean that submission fantasies are bad. If feminism is the struggle to gain credence to that women are people, then the ultimate feminist goal is a completely humanistic view of all people. And that means that women, as much as men, have the right to daydream about being free from pressure now and again, and even to achieve that feeling through whatever means they deem fit.
Of course, the larger context of this piece of Roiphe's matters. It's a Newsweek cover story. The headline reads "The Fantasy Lives of Working Women" and the accompanying image is of a naked, blindfolded women with suggestively parted, perfectly painted red lips and perfectly sculpted coiffure. She is slender to the point of emaciation through her neck and arms, but with hints of a generous, voluptuous bust. The image is titillating, and rife with the kind of impossible beauty standards we as a culture hold women to. The title plays on the language of "working girls" and delights in wallowing in the idea that women that own their sexual desires are sluts and prostitutes. Given Roiphe's own fascination with spanking, the association that women need to be punished for owning their sexuality is unavoidable.
The content of the article is sadly narrow. The context is utterly infuriating.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Even-Keeled I Am Not.
I'm a little bi-polar. Note bene: I don't mean that I've seen a psychiatrist and have a diagnosis in my permanent medical file or ought to be on a lot of medications. I have a friend who is actually bipolar, and I'm not that. What I mean is, more so than the average person, my emotional state goes up and comes down with very little regard paid to external stimuli. Happy things will make me happy, and sad things will make me sad, but sometimes happy things make me less happy because I'm in the nadir of my natural emotive cycle and sometimes sad things make me less sad because I'm sitting pretty atop the zenith of that cycle.
When I'm "up" (which ought not to be confused with happy, because they're not really the same thing) I am fast. I talk faster by at least a factor of three, and sometimes as high as a factor of ten. I am wittier; my brain moves fast enough for me to come up with those charmingly barbed bon mots that we all love Violet Grantham for. I am constantly looking for new stimulation when I'm up. I meet new people at an alarmingly high rate. Sometimes I take reasonably alarming risks. I feel invulnerable, you see, so I can totally split that hash joint with some random man who is completely unconcerned by the fact that I cannot understand him outside the tiny dive bar in a city where I don't speak the language. Nothing will happen. I am fast, I am quick, I am capable and I'll get myself out of whatever happens. Nothing's going to happen anyway.
(In my defense, nothing ever has happened. For the record.)
When I'm down, I am slow. I speak slower than average. It takes me whole seconds to find the words I mean to say. I do not want to meet people. I want to lie in my bed. I want to watch movies that I have already seen again. I want to reread favorite novels. I become a worrier, half-way convinced that the roof over my head is going to collapse at any moment. And I become defeatist, because I am convinced that while the roof is going to cave and crush me, there is nothing I can do about it. Going outside would be too much effort, you see, and my bed isn't outside, anyway. I have no energy for getting out of the way of whatever impending disaster my worry-wort brain has settled upon.
(In the interest of fairness, none of the disasters I've predicted when low have happened, either.)
There are people that only know me when I'm up. They met me when I'm up, and I only see them when I'm up and flitting about like a manic social butterfly with my tiny butterfly feet in every pie I can spy. There are lots of these people. It's not really personal that they only know me manic, it's just that when I'm low, I tend to sit in bed. Not a lot of opportunity for social interaction when you're sitting in your bed, you know?
There are a few people, one or two, here and there, that only know me when I'm down. I can only imagine what they think my life is like. I count myself blessed beyond measure to have these people, even though most of the time I don't think about them at all.
And as I get older, there is an ever-growing number of people that know me both up and down. Anyone that knows me long enough is likely to come to the conclusion that I'm a little bi-polar. The longer someone knows me, the more likely they are to realize the full magnitude and interpersonal impact of my brain chemistry. I now know people that I've known for more of my life than I've not known them. This makes me feel old, a little, but it also is an amazingly affirming realization. People have decided to keep in their life for this long. They've done this even though I'm a little bipolar, and can't be easy to deal.
But I wonder, in these stretches of worrying and defeat and solitude, how all this up and down makes me appear. I'm horrifyingly image-conscious, when you come right down to it. I care very much how people see me and what they think; I put enormous and disturbing amounts of energy into cultivating public personas that are agreeable and likable and desireable. Or, rather, I do all that when I'm up. When I'm down, I don't have the energy, and so I withdraw from the world, and I often wonder what these absences say to people. It's impossible to determine how absence and silence affect perception, because in order to find out you'd have to appear and ask, breaking the absence and the silence.
Because I only stop to think about it when I'm low, I imagine that these retreats must make me seem unhinged, unreliable, flaky, flighty, unable to control myself. Something unflattering and damaging, to be sure.
I spent about three weeks, recently, UP. I was ON. I was HOT. It was great. It lasted forever.
Well, not forever, because I haven't left my house except to go to work or the grocery store since last Wednesday.
I fend off absolute despair by reminding myself, in mantra-like repetitions, that my emotional cycle is a cycle and I'll not be this tired, this uninterested, this uninteresting, this irritable forever. Acceptance really is the best check on anything. Accepting that I'm a little bipolar helps to moderate the lows. I have yet to figure out how to moderate my highs; I don't really want to, I guess. I suppose that feeling invulnerable will get me in trouble some day, but it hasn't yet. So why bother?
Maybe that's just the lows talking. Probably.
When I'm "up" (which ought not to be confused with happy, because they're not really the same thing) I am fast. I talk faster by at least a factor of three, and sometimes as high as a factor of ten. I am wittier; my brain moves fast enough for me to come up with those charmingly barbed bon mots that we all love Violet Grantham for. I am constantly looking for new stimulation when I'm up. I meet new people at an alarmingly high rate. Sometimes I take reasonably alarming risks. I feel invulnerable, you see, so I can totally split that hash joint with some random man who is completely unconcerned by the fact that I cannot understand him outside the tiny dive bar in a city where I don't speak the language. Nothing will happen. I am fast, I am quick, I am capable and I'll get myself out of whatever happens. Nothing's going to happen anyway.
(In my defense, nothing ever has happened. For the record.)
When I'm down, I am slow. I speak slower than average. It takes me whole seconds to find the words I mean to say. I do not want to meet people. I want to lie in my bed. I want to watch movies that I have already seen again. I want to reread favorite novels. I become a worrier, half-way convinced that the roof over my head is going to collapse at any moment. And I become defeatist, because I am convinced that while the roof is going to cave and crush me, there is nothing I can do about it. Going outside would be too much effort, you see, and my bed isn't outside, anyway. I have no energy for getting out of the way of whatever impending disaster my worry-wort brain has settled upon.
(In the interest of fairness, none of the disasters I've predicted when low have happened, either.)
There are people that only know me when I'm up. They met me when I'm up, and I only see them when I'm up and flitting about like a manic social butterfly with my tiny butterfly feet in every pie I can spy. There are lots of these people. It's not really personal that they only know me manic, it's just that when I'm low, I tend to sit in bed. Not a lot of opportunity for social interaction when you're sitting in your bed, you know?
There are a few people, one or two, here and there, that only know me when I'm down. I can only imagine what they think my life is like. I count myself blessed beyond measure to have these people, even though most of the time I don't think about them at all.
And as I get older, there is an ever-growing number of people that know me both up and down. Anyone that knows me long enough is likely to come to the conclusion that I'm a little bi-polar. The longer someone knows me, the more likely they are to realize the full magnitude and interpersonal impact of my brain chemistry. I now know people that I've known for more of my life than I've not known them. This makes me feel old, a little, but it also is an amazingly affirming realization. People have decided to keep in their life for this long. They've done this even though I'm a little bipolar, and can't be easy to deal.
But I wonder, in these stretches of worrying and defeat and solitude, how all this up and down makes me appear. I'm horrifyingly image-conscious, when you come right down to it. I care very much how people see me and what they think; I put enormous and disturbing amounts of energy into cultivating public personas that are agreeable and likable and desireable. Or, rather, I do all that when I'm up. When I'm down, I don't have the energy, and so I withdraw from the world, and I often wonder what these absences say to people. It's impossible to determine how absence and silence affect perception, because in order to find out you'd have to appear and ask, breaking the absence and the silence.
Because I only stop to think about it when I'm low, I imagine that these retreats must make me seem unhinged, unreliable, flaky, flighty, unable to control myself. Something unflattering and damaging, to be sure.
I spent about three weeks, recently, UP. I was ON. I was HOT. It was great. It lasted forever.
Well, not forever, because I haven't left my house except to go to work or the grocery store since last Wednesday.
I fend off absolute despair by reminding myself, in mantra-like repetitions, that my emotional cycle is a cycle and I'll not be this tired, this uninterested, this uninteresting, this irritable forever. Acceptance really is the best check on anything. Accepting that I'm a little bipolar helps to moderate the lows. I have yet to figure out how to moderate my highs; I don't really want to, I guess. I suppose that feeling invulnerable will get me in trouble some day, but it hasn't yet. So why bother?
Maybe that's just the lows talking. Probably.
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