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So I got this book out from the library called "Sexual Personae". I couldn't get past the first chapter. Supposedly it was a deconstruction of art and sexuality in Western culture or something to that effect. Yeah, okay, but there should be a warning of the frustrating influence of Freudian rhetoric throughout.
The main issue I had with it is that the author (a woman of all bloody things) got it half right. Until she started getting into the relationships between male and female and sexuality, it wasn't too bad. A little pretentious, but not horrible. According to her thesis, society is nothing more than a denial to nature, which is fine. I fully agree with that, and also that it's neccesary to a point. Social rules and morality is what keeps us all from descending into the chaos of nature. HOWEVER, I hated her assertion that the reason why women have been suppressed throughout history was due to the fact that women represent the messy, disorderly aspects of nature that man so fears. You know, the fact that women reproduce and bleed once a month (and can't help it). There was also the idea introduced that the failing of feminism is largely due to the fact that women wanted a complete freedom that they could not fully have and should have known better. There will never be an equality of the sexes because all relationships between men and women amount to a silent war and the duality of repulsion and attraction. Yes, the old idea that men subconciously fear women because of their mystery and that they represent a mother figure, which men are trying to escape from but are doomed to return to in the shape of heterosexual relations. Ugh. I'm sure you get the picture.
I am reminded why I despise reading books largely based on radical psychology and philosophy. For as much truth as I find in the text, I am ever more isolated because I don't fit into their neat little boxes. I am an anomaly of my own gender, with a duality that defies any easy explanation. I do not follow the rules, not merely because I choose not to, but because the things that are natural to me have been deemed unusual by the so-called norm of my own sex. For every girly thing I do, I defy it with some quirk in my personality or thought processes. Honestly, this is not just because I've spent most of my adult life closer to men than women. I've never been a tomboy. Quite frankly, I'm vain and not athletic enough. So where the fuck do I fit into all this rhetoric? I fucking well don't.
Oh and my opinion on the failings of feminism: Quite simply is that their views on equality are bullshit. Women have the power to choose, yes. If they want to be housewives, fine. If they want to work, great. If they never get married or have children, there's nothing wrong with that because freedom is about the right to choose how you live your life and not letting society do it. Yet where does feminism leave men? What choices are they given? They can either be sensitive or not; they can respect women or not; there is no fucking gray area for them. On top of all that, feminist rhetoric clearly details exactly where they'd prefer men to lean. While I dislike insensitive bastards of men as much as the next woman, I resent the fact that a woman who hates and disrespects a man is considered less reprehensible than a man who hates and disrespects a woman. Where's the fucking equality in that?
The main issue I had with it is that the author (a woman of all bloody things) got it half right. Until she started getting into the relationships between male and female and sexuality, it wasn't too bad. A little pretentious, but not horrible. According to her thesis, society is nothing more than a denial to nature, which is fine. I fully agree with that, and also that it's neccesary to a point. Social rules and morality is what keeps us all from descending into the chaos of nature. HOWEVER, I hated her assertion that the reason why women have been suppressed throughout history was due to the fact that women represent the messy, disorderly aspects of nature that man so fears. You know, the fact that women reproduce and bleed once a month (and can't help it). There was also the idea introduced that the failing of feminism is largely due to the fact that women wanted a complete freedom that they could not fully have and should have known better. There will never be an equality of the sexes because all relationships between men and women amount to a silent war and the duality of repulsion and attraction. Yes, the old idea that men subconciously fear women because of their mystery and that they represent a mother figure, which men are trying to escape from but are doomed to return to in the shape of heterosexual relations. Ugh. I'm sure you get the picture.
I am reminded why I despise reading books largely based on radical psychology and philosophy. For as much truth as I find in the text, I am ever more isolated because I don't fit into their neat little boxes. I am an anomaly of my own gender, with a duality that defies any easy explanation. I do not follow the rules, not merely because I choose not to, but because the things that are natural to me have been deemed unusual by the so-called norm of my own sex. For every girly thing I do, I defy it with some quirk in my personality or thought processes. Honestly, this is not just because I've spent most of my adult life closer to men than women. I've never been a tomboy. Quite frankly, I'm vain and not athletic enough. So where the fuck do I fit into all this rhetoric? I fucking well don't.
Oh and my opinion on the failings of feminism: Quite simply is that their views on equality are bullshit. Women have the power to choose, yes. If they want to be housewives, fine. If they want to work, great. If they never get married or have children, there's nothing wrong with that because freedom is about the right to choose how you live your life and not letting society do it. Yet where does feminism leave men? What choices are they given? They can either be sensitive or not; they can respect women or not; there is no fucking gray area for them. On top of all that, feminist rhetoric clearly details exactly where they'd prefer men to lean. While I dislike insensitive bastards of men as much as the next woman, I resent the fact that a woman who hates and disrespects a man is considered less reprehensible than a man who hates and disrespects a woman. Where's the fucking equality in that?
