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| Photo Credit: Morgue File by Dave Hamilton |
I really like Gina Barreca. Or at least, I really liked listening to her at the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop last month. She was the last keynote speaker that I heard, and, among that aggregation of very funny people, she stood out as the funniest of all.
"No man has ever done what women do about this, because we try to fit ourselves into sizes."
"No man has ever said I'm going to be a 42 short by the holidays."
"Men think they're a little fat if they can't fit into a foreign car."
Her talk–and what made it so funny–centered on the disservice women do themselves through our rampant anxiety, the niggling desire to "fit ourselves" into clothes, expectations and circumstances. Men were just the foils within this theater of female psychodrama. The Not-Women. At a glance, Gina Barreca's feminism seemed to be about what women do to themselves and to each other, more than what men and society does to women. Which I kind of liked. And I will tell you: Gina is one smart lady.
And yet there was something I kind of laughed over–or only let out the embarrassed laugh that makes you look out the corner of your eye to see if anyone is looking offended, to check if you should be offended, the uncommitted laugh.
"We're the smart ones."
Resounding applause followed in a room filled, by an enormous ratio, with women. Women are smarter. Women have a more sophisticated sense of humor. Hmmmm...it's funny, and it smells like a kind of truth (or it wouldn't be so damn funny), but, in one fell swoop, it herds all females–lesbian, straight, married, single, young, old, smart and dumb and all men–into opposite corners of the room and calls it truth. Perhaps, that is the essence of humor. It lives in generality. But Gina Barreca is not just a humorist but a thinker. Here is a link to one of her latest pieces Why Do Women Fall For Cruel Men? which appeared in Psychology Today May 7th.
What Barreca is pointing at is that strong women, in her estimation, tend to view strong men as ones that can best them. This besting then plays out as men treating women with a certain callous disregard, a certain cruelty. Or causing a certain emotional grief. She discusses the case of a woman, having waited to find the right man–a man strong enough–who then loses herself entirely in that man. She tells stories of women for whom male anger, when directed against them, shows love. Stories of smart women seeking stupid men. Other women, while perhaps not seeking an actually painful relationship, Barreca says, will look for a man too good for them, a man who will ignore them. Women, as she portrays them, are bound and determined to suffer at the hands of men, but somehow on their own terms.
I find myself amply motivated to argue with all of these statements. In fact, I chose this piece as a link because I thought its broad generalizations worthy of a second, more ambiguous look. But, I cannot, as I re-read this article, completely discount what Barreca has said here. At least not in front of anyone who has known me long enough to be familiar with my entire relationship history, which has included, over and over, men less intelligent than myself with whom I quickly grew bored or smoldering, passionate but physically abusive men or yet more men entirely indifferent to my interest in them. And don't we all know these women? The ones about whom we wonder aloud,
"Why the Hell did she choose him?"
If this phenomenon is specific to the psyche of women, I am not entirely sure it is limited to straight women. It seems to me I have known many lesbians to have made ill-fated choices among their partners as well. But is this argument true at all? Let's examine the body.
The Left Leg: Which woman do you mean, exactly? Is this true of all–or even most–women? Barreca's article rang–in some ways–true for me, but I developed my male-female relationship strategies very young and while navigating issues of depression and addiction. To say that I was looking for someone to "fix me" would be an understatement. So, I have to ask you ladies and the men who know them–those of you who grew up straight rather than bendy, if this stuff is true for you?
The Right Leg: When prevented from committing suicide, Juliet grows up. If women are geared this way, as suggested by Margaret Drabble, due to the portrayal of romance as tragic, don't most of us get the picture later? (If so, I guess this would be an argument for dating quite a bit before committing to marriage.) Someday, don't we finally realize that we want a best pal, a life mate, a trusted friend and then get over the need for grand gestures of male strength? I cannot imagine myself, at thirty-six, having the slightest damn interest in any man's ability to overpower me in any way. Although I will admit that I often said, when younger, that I found it attractive if a man could beat me in an argument, I now find it infinitely more attractive if he does laundry and will watch Grey's Anatomy with me.
The Left Arm: Is every guy you know Eminem? What does this say about men? If women are hot and bothered for all these brooding assholes of men, it would seem there would have to be quite a lot of them to go around. Unless, of course, we all dated the same jackass senior year and he's still making the rounds. But are you married to this guy? Or did you leave him a long time ago and settle down with someone who gently strokes your hand but wears sandals with socks? Or are these men really at fault? Are they made awful by our own weird fixation? That is a chilling thought. Perhaps after you left them for being so wretched, they settled down with someone who treated them like just another human being, and they still treat her like a queen?
The Right Arm: Let's play master and servant. If a lot of us will sheepishly admit to a certain understanding of Barreca's case here, just as many of us seemed to relate to it when Tangled Lou bared the soul of narcissistic love–the kind where you settle, fall in love with the notion that your partner may change, and let that poor soul adore you while you treat him like a dog that has yet to be trained. The love that seems to be compassion but is really falling in love with one's own reflection. I have done this kind of thing as well. So maybe it is just hard to get this right. We are shooting for men who slavishly worship us and for whom we do not return the affection, or we are shooting for men who seem disinterested or uncommitted or unkind. How many shots before we nail it? One high, one low, one waaay on the outside there, then, hopefully BULLSEYE!
The Rest of the Body: It All Comes Down to Power. At the risk of sounding like I am chatting with you from a communist coffee shop in Berkeley while I water hemp with a tincture of my own menstrual blood: my analysis is that patriarchy comes down to systems of power that are wielded (unconsciously and automatically) in subtle ways that keep women from accessing that power to control their own lives. If we are raised all of our lives to believe that certain kinds of power are the province of men, it makes sense that we try to get it from them. So, if men are the avenue to feeling loved or feeling worthy–or men are the avenue to showing us our own strength–then, perhaps, the most daring among us may seek the fiercest dragon to slay and therein prove our own worth. Our lives are shaped by myths and fairy tales told over and over, unconsciously, thoughtlessly, and innocently. The man wins by being brave, smart and strong. The woman wins by being loved. The allegory is stamped on souls.
And, instead of making us better wives, mothers and lovers, I think it makes us angry. Angry with some sort of Meta-Male force that demands our multi-tasking, lactating, libidinous perfection so that we can claim a wholeness that we can never have otherwise. The individual men that fall into our lives, I think, are still just foils–actors in the fairy tales they never liked as well as we did. They mostly just want their coffee brought and to be told they are wonderful. The rest is woven around them like invisible skeins of implication, winding all of us up like cocoons.
But what do you think? Our lives are varied, full of mirrors and polarities. I only know the path my romantic, heterosexual life has taken me. What about you? Are you buying that we have a collective penchant for male punishment? Or something akin but, perhaps more subtle? Or do you think the whole argument is gobbledygook? And it really wouldn't hurt men to comment. They have a unique perspective on this, which I would be fascinated to hear, since they know women, and perhaps have been in romantic relationships with them a time or two.
Remember to follow the rules.
I was so shy, I married the first guy that didn't intimidate me. What a needy sponge he turned out to be, or like Mom says, he was nice enough, he just wasn't meant for me.
ReplyDeleteEnter Rob. My parents loved him before they meant him because I was back to normal. (I had a lot of interesting qualities under that skittish exterior.) I adore Rob. He adores me. Sometimes our strengths are the same, sometimes they are different, but we always support each others choices and laugh together over the small disasters. After 55 years of marriage my parents still enjoy each others company. I wanted that. I got that. No smart woman, or man, should settle for less. We are so much more when we find the person that completes us, challenges us, adores us.
I wonder: Can everyone find this person? Is he out there for EVERYONE or are some of us really lucky?
DeleteMy sister, who is 42 and unmarried, would definitely argue that he isn't out there for everyone. I count myself incredibly lucky.
DeleteAnd people change.... that man who was your soul mate 30 years ago can grow distant and absorbed in work even as you grow distant and absorbed in parenting AND work.... it's hard to keep a well grounded marriage grounded when there are kids to raise and satisfying work to which to attend.
DeletePerhaps the Mr. Right idea can be deceptive. So much work goes into maintaining a good marriage, so much daily choosing. The happiness can be a function of our daily choices once we have been lucky enough to have found a purpose with whom we can be happy (our own Rob. And yet, if there's not a Mr. Right, there IS certainly a Mr. Wrong. Some relationships are irredeemable.
DeleteI thought about this a bit. I seem to be surrounded by well balanced, happy, and mutually supportive couples. However, I have a friend in the Denver area that recently told us how rare a relationship Mark and I have. She knows no other happily married couple. This statement really surprised me. She went on to detail all the flawed relationship she has seen that mostly ended in divorce or open marriages. How strange! This got me wondering, do I live in an unusual place? If yes, then how have I always lived in places like this. Perhaps people in well-balanced relationships tend to befriend others of the like and vise versa. Or is there a difference in more rural areas over urban areas? Or are the people making these statements somehow more attune to a less stable world – perhaps they are therapist, or in my friend’s case, a teacher in an inner-city Denver school which is not know for relationship stability. This might be part of the answer, but I do not believe it is that simple. There has to be many other reasons for this strong discrepancy in relationships … or the perceived view of relationships.
ReplyDeleteThat is really interesting, Kimberly. I guess I figure that most of the married people I know seem happy but then again I am not behind closed doors with them and I know that it can be very different from that viewpoint. How much is it affected by affluence, education, and other statistical measures?
DeleteThe families I know seem to fall into a certain kind of group. Is that a recipe for happiness? These families have a working husband, a wife who works less or not at all outside the home, a supportive, affluent community, connections of support and friendship within that community, interests that are both common to both the husband and wife but that they do on their own more than together (running, church activities for example.)When I meet unhappy wives, they are often career women, who feel the enormous pressure to assume all the SAHM roles as well as keep their careers afloat or SAHMs who are relatively isolated and financially threatened. This isn't true across the bar, by any stretch, just a sort of sketchy pattern I can discern.
This is a very interesting point you make here, Tara. I shall have to chew on it for a while.
DeleteThere's so much here and I definitely see myself and most every other adult human being I know in there. My parents did the "'til death" thing and in my dad, I saw exactly what I did--and definitely did not--want in a mate.
ReplyDeleteI knew young what I wanted and needed. I don't know how, but I did. My husband has my father's good qualities, but none of his less attractive ones. He's rock solid and faithful. He loves deeply. He's steady and true.
My husband is highly intelligent, but in the exact opposite areas from where my strengths lie. The scientific stuff that I believe happens as a result of mysterious magic, he understands and finds fascinating. He's calmer than I am. He would never spend a sunny Saturday holed up inside with a book. He has zero interest in Facebook or any other form of online communication. He uses email only because it's required for work and finds the goodies on our fancy phones to be annoying. He likes history and geography. If asked to fill in the names of countries on a world map, I wouldn't get far before my ignorance became glaringly clear. He's the science museum. I'm the art museum. He's a motorcycle guy, I'm a word nerd. It works for us.
I think the main reason we mesh so well is that we respect each other and understand that we don't have to be mirror images. We love one another to our depths and that love far surpasses any of the little stuff that might otherwise put us at odds. Neither of us feels any burning desire to be "right." We think in terms of "us." While we are outwardly very different, we are almost identical at our cores and in this life, no matter what has come our way (and there's been plenty), we are in it together.
*** When I started writing this comment, there was a whole bunch of stuff between my first and second paragraphs that I then deleted. Mostly, it was a history of my parents' marriage and how it impacted me and my siblings--mostly the oldest three. Stuff that is long over and best left there...or at he very least, isn't (in large part) my story to tell. ***
Thanks, Elizabeth. So much there to think on, so deeply shared. I envy the surety of your young self. I am still not sure, with regard to any part of my life, exactly what I want. Because of this, I may not be the easiest woman to be married to.
DeleteI think I could re-read what you wrote several times and keep learning from it.
I think our culture has a historic and traditional penchant for "male punishment" - but I think that growing out of this has been an important part of feminism.
ReplyDeleteIs it any coincidence that the worst "alpholes" (see "Beyond Heaving Bosoms" - the Smart Bitch authors have done a lot of research on male romantic fantasy; alphole=alpha asshole) are decidedly anti-feminist? Misogynistic, even?
I think you're right. I just wonder how much is still invisibly embedded in our worldviews, despite our progress. When I took Psych and Child Psych, the most shocking thing of all to confront was the way we teach gender roles to our youngest children so rigidly from birth, and yet would deny that we are doing so (at least many of us would; others might celebrate it).
DeleteWith our Barbies and GI Joes and our fairy tales and comic books, I still think we are growing up to expect something from romantic hetero relationships that is hard to get away from. Many smart women do seem to have avoided this, and I have asked myself if this question is just for sick women or damaged women or older women. My answer has changed hourly. I just think–for me–that there is something there, although obscured by over-generalization.
Here's a link to the Smart Bitches: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/books
DeleteMy first impression of this article is that it assumes a lot. Like you said, generalizations. First and foremost being that it is biased toward a hetero perspective. Since I am hetero, that's the only perspective I can address with any authority. Although, I would love to hear a lesbian or bi perspective on all of this.
ReplyDeleteThe sentiment "I need a strong man to be able to handle me" is one that belies a certain amount of conflicted self-esteem. "Handling" is a notion that is strange in a healthy relationship, to me. It connotes that being a strong woman (or an interesting woman?) is difficult and requires special care. Also built into that statement is the idea that other women might be "easier" emotionally because they are... what? Less intelligent? Weaker? Simpler? I don't know. I do know that as an intelligent woman, I don't want to be "handled". I want to be loved and I want equitable companionship and I want to be respected for who I am as a person, gender notwithstanding.
Now, having said all of that, I have had my share of bum relationships. Ones in which I allowed myself to be mistreated, ignored, and disrespected. Why? For starters, I was much younger, still trying things out. For a while it seemed like there was a choice of simpering lap dog or cruel and domineering and not much in between. A lot of this has to do with allowing men to grow into themselves and their roles as well.
The hetero bias bothered me as well, as if there aren't countless lesbians struggling with relationships. In fact, without the support of society and the visible contract that most of us lucky enough to be born into the boy/girl club get, making a relationship work can be very hard. Add to that years of shame and being told there is something fundamentally wrong with you, then having to hide your relationship from the world to keep your job or reputation–yeah, I think all these same problems can plague lesbian women. But I say that as a hetero woman who can only speculate, so who knows?
DeleteGrowing up. There's a lot to that. And yet child marriage exists/existed. Go figure.
Child marriage is a different kettle of fish, though. They are essentially contracts between families. Ideas of satisfaction, fulfillment, or even attraction don't factor into it. If you are removed from the necessity of "finding a mate", then there is not a whole lot of choice involved on either part, more a resignation?
DeleteAlso, people who marry by choice very young can make good marriages while being as yet unformed if they make the commitment to the marriage itself and grow up together. But I would argue that it takes a bit more fortitude than our current culture of disposable marriage engenders.
That is true about arranged marriages and, I think, about young marriages, too. Maybe what we have now is a new kind of marriage altogether. Since arranged ones or young ones or at least ones that are the fruition of first love are all the traditional norms.
DeleteI think all of this points to chemistry. As Word Nerd suggests above, there's a balance to a healthy relationship. Replace "the law" with "science" and she describes my marriage to a certain extent. There is no magic formula that works for everyone across the board, but I can see when I look at my past failed relationships that it was less a matter of strong vs. weak or good vs. bad but just that we weren't a good fit for each other. Something in our personalities brought out the worst in each other. There was a disconnect in understanding. For example, one guy I dated absolutely hated, hated, hated when I made up stories about inanimate objects and went off on wild, florid tangents about things. He thought it was annoying and "babyish" and unseemly. My husband loves this very same trait about me. It is one of the things that drew him to me. Was the first guy bad? Not really. He said some cruel and demeaning things to me because I annoyed him. Would he do this to a woman with whom he was compatible? Probably not. Should I stick around and let someone demean me? Absolutely not. Should I change this essential part of my personality to please an otherwise nice guy? No. Did I try? For a while, yes.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with over-generalizing is that the nuance of the situation is lost. Relationships are nothing, if not nuanced. Yes, on the surface you could say I dated some cruel people. That paints both of us with an awfully wide brush. What's more important is why do we feel the need to change ourselves for people? With male/female relationships, there's the illusion of love that's brought about by interlocking parts. It's no secret our society is a wee bit oversexed. There are the fairy tales we feed ourselves and our children in an almost steady diet: princesses get rescued, love hurts (this is a great song and I love it), we can change people in the course of a tastefully directed montage. Think about almost every single Rom-com out there. Boy meets girl, girl doesn't like boy, boy and girl quibble and fight (but it's adorable, right?), they go away from each other because they really don't like each other and then they are sad. Insert montage of some sort and then they go running back into each other's arms because one of them has changed or they decided to settle or because whatever. Life doesn't really work that way. Generally, if you fight with someone and you don't like them, no amount of Sarah McLaughlan in the world is going to change that. It's a myth that's harmful to both men and women.
I think that what I struggled with all my young life is feeling that my relationships were bad because I was bad and if I could just...fix myself..and him...then we would be happy. There was no point in leaving because experience had taught me that unhappiness lurked under every rock that I turned over. Best to settle and try to make the best of a bad situation.
DeletePerhaps, you can never really find someone you can be happy with until you are happy with yourself, or at least know yourself a little.
Lastly, let's talk about vampires. They are old and otherworldly and sexy with the leather and the teeth and whatnot. And because they are dangerous, lethal even. We love them. (Certain ones, anyway.) Culturally, we're obsessed. Vampires and superheroes. But superheroes with a dark secret are even better. There is a fascination with the dark, the dangerous, the harmful, and the powerful. Is it anti-feminist? It depends. If you want to play out some of these fantasies in real life relationships, perhaps there's an issue there. But the dark and the dangerous serve as a balance to the good and the healthy and the light. If for no other reason to sublimate some of those dark and nasty desires that all of has from time to time. Where the thinking woman comes in is when she says that's all well and good, but please don't suck my blood for real. There's a part of everyone that wants to be powerless. Just as there's a murderous part of everyone and a saintly part of everyone. It's part of what makes us complicated individuals. I think we're so afraid of acknowledging that in ourselves, but the more we stuff it down and ignore it or deny it, the more it pops up in our interactions and we think "Where did that come from?!" Just because it's there and, I believe, integral, doesn't mean we have to use it to define ourselves or our relationships. Part of being in a healthy relationship is trust. Trust contains a form of acknowledgement of powerlessness.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that, as long as this stuff lurks in our collective unconscious, it will rise to the surface in story. I guess the story itself doesn't bother me either. In fact, I'm sure it doesn't. I hate Story Police. Leave my imagination alone.
DeleteI believe that's one of the major purposes of stories and storytelling - to enact this stuff that in "real life" would be harmful, impossible, or damaging. My comment above is riddled with typos and grammatical errors. That is damaging to me. My apologies.
DeleteSorry for the obnoxiously long comments.
ReplyDeleteI like the long comments. :-)
ReplyDeleteSo we don't really want that in our relationships, but we like the fantasy of dominance in books and movies? Hmmm. Could be.
Mr. Darcy is way sexier than Mr. Bingley.
Exactly with the Mr. Darcy.
DeleteIt makes for good fantasy. It's when we forget that's fiction and seek those kinds of symbols in real life - for that is what those characters are, symbols - we run up against very real people and sometimes to disastrous effect.
My other thought (because I can't let this out of my teeth) is that the article assumes a basically healthy person. There's the very real cycle of abuse where child abuse victims perpetuate the cycle by finding partners who will abuse them. This kind of thing is not an intellectual exercise - oh silly girls, can't we be more feminist? - it is a stark and painful reality that is very difficult to overcome and that shouldn't be discounted.
Excellent point about the abuse part needing to be separated out. Excellent. Excellent.
DeleteI laughed a little when I read your facebook post about this. Something about the 'need to be overpowered emotionally' struck me as so ridiculous. Then, all day I've been thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteI've seen this often in the relationships around me, even in a couple of my own before I was married. I've been pondering why this happens, because I don't think anyone should be overpowered. Then, I looked at my own parents' relationship. While my dad is not mean or abusive in any way, he is most definitely the head of the household. My mom hasn't changed her hairstyle for years because she knows dad doesn't like it. She cooks things he likes and rarely goes anywhere without him. Not because he forces her to, she does it 'to please him'. I feel like that is a bit of emotional overpowering. And, after growing up watching that kind of relationship, I thought that's what I wanted. A very strong man who would take charge of our home and our lives and I would be the sweet, submissive wife who stayed home and had babies.
So, sometimes, it stems from our history. We see what works for someone else and try to emulate that. (It worked for my parents, who have their 49th anniversary next week.) I'd say it also comes from a lack of self-confidence or self-awareness. All too often, women are fed a steady diet of 'you're the lesser, weaker sex' and after a while, that bitter meal becomes so familiar it starts to taste sweet. It can be easier to let the man lead. No decisions to make, less responsibility. But, we're selling ourselves short when we accept that.
I firmly believe that men and women were created to be partners- side by side. No leading or following, simply working together. There will be times when one or the other will need to pick up the slack, or give more support, but for the most part, it's a team.
(While I did stay home and have babies, and I am sometimes sweet, my husband would laugh at the idea of me being submissive.)
"I laughed a little when I read your facebook post about this. Something about the 'need to be overpowered emotionally' struck me as so ridiculous. Then, all day I've been thinking about it."
DeleteThat is totally how the whole thing unrolled on me. First-Pshaw! Ridiculous! Then, I started to think. I admit to using a bit of inflammatory language to draw people into the idea. But that really IS the question.
I think, even in a relationship with all the trappings of an egalitarian partnership, some issues of power imbalance can arise. Assumptions surrounding whose responsibility it is to provide for what make a house a home, to be attractive physically, to hold multiple family calendars in one's head at once. It's all fine as a woman if you WANT to be the main one doing this. It's when you don't, and you realize you are trapped by your ovaries and society in some sort of contract for life, that it gets tiresome.
For me, I have to look at the places in relationships I have had to ASK. Can I have some money? Can you watch the kids? Will you help me clean up? These are the places I have felt disempowered. Not what Barreca is talking about at all, but disempowered, perhaps overpowered, all the same.
There are varying shades of disempowerment. Apparently that's not a word. In this, as with most everything, it would seem that it depends not on the specific actions (staying home with the kids, getting dinner on the table, etc.) but with the attitude behind them. Some people like being bound and gagged and whipped. From my perspective, that would be somewhat disempowering, but if there is a mutual respect and understanding involved, who am I to judge. Where the problem comes in is when we don't like being bound and gagged and whipped, but we agree to it because we're afraid he might leave us. Not that I'm equating housewifery with S&M.
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ReplyDeleteI so want to participate in this conversation. Just not from my smartphone before I've had a nap. I can't wait to read all the comments!
ReplyDeleteGreat. It seems to have ebbed so you must be just what we need to get the action going again.
DeleteThe image on this link doesn't exactly fix this conversation, but it does fit the post and it made me laugh:
ReplyDeleteWoman like bad boys... http://cdn.9laughs.com/files/2012/05/bad-boys-632x3605.jpg