Get undressed for an 80 year old
Feb. 20th, 2005 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensIt could be the title of a photograph of Henry Miller A. (colleague and friend) showed me Friday evening: an old Miller playing table tennis with a young, blonde and very naked lady*. I only know Henry Miller by proxy. He's one of the more important characters in Anaïs Nin's journals – one of them is published with the title Henry and June after all. It is there that I came in contact with this somewhat pathetic figure, a troubled writer, trying to make it in this world and having an affair with Nin on the side. From what I read in Nin's diaries it was she that seemed to be the dominant figure in this relationship. Henry Miller came out of it as a tormented man needing guidance in his life, his writing and his marriage.
A. showed me a different Miller, a Miller who plays with women, sexes them up completely, uses them, but they let themselves be used, as if the sex and the attention are enough payment. (It must be here that A. picked up his own skills, for darn, if he hasn't got his way with women. Weren't I happily attached to P. I'd fallen like a brick – I did fall like a brick, but it's totally platonic, so I can, can't I?) It's just plain sexism: the many women, the scrawny old man, the naked beautiful girl. Have you ever seen a picture with the opposite arrangement? An old lady with a beautiful, young and very naked lad isn't something most people are looking forward to. Old men can be virile. Old women knit socks.
Talking with A. and seeing the open marriage arangement from the male side, I felt my feminist ideas rearing their heads again. I've put the good old feminist legacy on hold since I followed a course in women's studies at uni. It was this very female thing to begin with and let me tell you this: Women flocking together and bitching about male supremacy isn't my thing. Women flocking together isn't my thing, period. It's one of the reasons I stopped working in primary schools: It's all women that work there, baby! Having women sit together and talk about sexism is actually part of the problem, for sexism isn't open and straightforward. It is hidden in social structures in ways of seducing, in jealousy. When A. told us (another colleague, whose initial conveniently is A. as well – let's call him A.W. – was present as well) the little anecdote of one of his girlfriends telling him how hot Gabriel Rios looked, he sounded jealous. In a funny way, but still he was jealous. This is partly due to a human condition of possessiveness: You don't want to share your friend, but want them to share you – having the cake and eating it as well. With men this translates in looking at women with their girlfriends, but not liking that those same girlfriends look at other men.
I'm not saying an open relationship doesn't work. One of the blogs I frequently read and enjoy reading, because of the funny and because the writer gives me a look inside a morality that isn't mainstream is Bitch Ph.D. Prof. B. has a loving husband, an extremely bright kid and an equally loving boyfriend. The arrangement works out really fine. Mr. B. even reads the blog. My point is that any relationship requires equality, whether it's drooling over men, women or dogs or whether it's deciding who will make dinner and put out the garbage.
Remarks made by A. blended with a post by Prof. B. in which she talks about the reaction of her doctor to her being with several partners. When confronted with a relationship that isn't monogamous people tend to judge. They don't mean to, but they do, for they do not understand. It's the way men judge when they are confronted with women that show men-like behaviour. Women aren't supposed to look at other guys, women aren't supposed to be good in science, women aren't supposed to be sexual beings after the age of 50. These are unconscious prejudices that not only live amongst men. Because of their unconscious nature they aren't noticed. But they are there and they ask for constant attentiveness. I did not point out the sexist nature of his anecdote to A. I realised too late it was sexist, but I do realise it's very hard to get out of old moral structures, whether it's a monogamous life or the way we look at the place of women in our society.
*Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to the photograph in question. Think Déjeuner sur l'herbe, but at a ping pong table.
A. showed me a different Miller, a Miller who plays with women, sexes them up completely, uses them, but they let themselves be used, as if the sex and the attention are enough payment. (It must be here that A. picked up his own skills, for darn, if he hasn't got his way with women. Weren't I happily attached to P. I'd fallen like a brick – I did fall like a brick, but it's totally platonic, so I can, can't I?) It's just plain sexism: the many women, the scrawny old man, the naked beautiful girl. Have you ever seen a picture with the opposite arrangement? An old lady with a beautiful, young and very naked lad isn't something most people are looking forward to. Old men can be virile. Old women knit socks.
Talking with A. and seeing the open marriage arangement from the male side, I felt my feminist ideas rearing their heads again. I've put the good old feminist legacy on hold since I followed a course in women's studies at uni. It was this very female thing to begin with and let me tell you this: Women flocking together and bitching about male supremacy isn't my thing. Women flocking together isn't my thing, period. It's one of the reasons I stopped working in primary schools: It's all women that work there, baby! Having women sit together and talk about sexism is actually part of the problem, for sexism isn't open and straightforward. It is hidden in social structures in ways of seducing, in jealousy. When A. told us (another colleague, whose initial conveniently is A. as well – let's call him A.W. – was present as well) the little anecdote of one of his girlfriends telling him how hot Gabriel Rios looked, he sounded jealous. In a funny way, but still he was jealous. This is partly due to a human condition of possessiveness: You don't want to share your friend, but want them to share you – having the cake and eating it as well. With men this translates in looking at women with their girlfriends, but not liking that those same girlfriends look at other men.
I'm not saying an open relationship doesn't work. One of the blogs I frequently read and enjoy reading, because of the funny and because the writer gives me a look inside a morality that isn't mainstream is Bitch Ph.D. Prof. B. has a loving husband, an extremely bright kid and an equally loving boyfriend. The arrangement works out really fine. Mr. B. even reads the blog. My point is that any relationship requires equality, whether it's drooling over men, women or dogs or whether it's deciding who will make dinner and put out the garbage.
Remarks made by A. blended with a post by Prof. B. in which she talks about the reaction of her doctor to her being with several partners. When confronted with a relationship that isn't monogamous people tend to judge. They don't mean to, but they do, for they do not understand. It's the way men judge when they are confronted with women that show men-like behaviour. Women aren't supposed to look at other guys, women aren't supposed to be good in science, women aren't supposed to be sexual beings after the age of 50. These are unconscious prejudices that not only live amongst men. Because of their unconscious nature they aren't noticed. But they are there and they ask for constant attentiveness. I did not point out the sexist nature of his anecdote to A. I realised too late it was sexist, but I do realise it's very hard to get out of old moral structures, whether it's a monogamous life or the way we look at the place of women in our society.
*Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to the photograph in question. Think Déjeuner sur l'herbe, but at a ping pong table.
