Germaine Greer - pain, consent, sluttiness

One of the most interesting things I did this past week was to attend a session where Germaine Greer was interviewed. Of course, she loves to be controversial and she has always been controversial. Some people worship the ground she walks on and some people have nothing but scorn for her. Either way, she packed a full (large) auditorium. When it came time for the audience to ask questions  one woman wanted her opinion on the relationship between Feminism and Veganism and whether Feminists should be seriously considering Veganism.

Germaine has never been at a loss for words and she told an interesting story of watching a python in Queensland. An animal (unfortunately I don't have in my notes what type of animal it was) had been swallowed whole by the python and was clearly evident in the python's body. Along came another one of these animals and when reaching the python, made no effort to get away from danger.

This led Germaine to ask, did the animal get the sense that there was no danger because the python was already fed, or was the prey drawn  to the predator? She had my attention. That is a fascinating question. Ultimately, she suggested that we should be "eco-feminists" - feminists also interested about the land. "I am an animal with other animals," she said.

The conversation was wide-ranging. She talked of her disdain for marriage and she did not support gay marriage. Marriage was a "breeding contract" she said and if there was not a vagina and a penis involved, there was no marriage. A breeding contract does not sanction anal intercourse, she said. It was her view that marriage should be a contract like any other contract, with sub-clauses. People needed to sit down and sort things out. Who was going to do what? No good finding out that the husband was angry that the wife didn't Hoover more than once a fortnight when at the divorce lawyer's office, she said."The best people start to behave badly in marriage," she stated. She was all for making it easier for people to live together. A co-habitation contract could work, she suggested.

She was asked why she rejected up to a dozen offers to critique 50 Shades of Grey. She said that she wasn't in the least interested in spanking or sado-masochism or relationships where people were "hooked on pain". She'd seen the damage and dread caused to people she knew and she had no interest.

But, wasn't she talking about abuse rather than relationships in which there was consent, asked the young man interviewing her? I didn't make note of a direct answer. Rather, my notes then relate to her thoughts on rape and that "the notion of consent can't effect the mechanical pursuit of what he wants to do". How can she consent in advance if his desires push him into territory of which she (or he) is unaware in advance? This led to discussion about prosecution of rape, that the burden of proof is massive and hence there are very few prosecutions. Germaine would like to see the charge of rape dropped and instead there should be a single law of serial assault.

I rarely take things personally. I'm aware I'm different to so many people and what they want but I felt sensitive sitting there in that auditorium. Wanting what I wanted seemed to be going against 'the movement'; the vibe in the room.

Then, Germaine Greer said something particularly interesting to me. She was talking about a 'Slut Walk'. She said that people had forever made a connection between loose morals and dirt. "Being dirty" was one of the biggest insults someone could give a woman. There were all those "slimy, slithery words" like "slut" and "slattern" thrown at us if we didn't do what we were expected to do; if our morals were loose. We've been "blackmailed", she said, with "dirtiness". "Stop bloody cleaning clean houses," she demanded of us. Stop accepting this blackmail!

It was a lot to take in and I'm not at all sure that some things weren't contradictory. She wanted to make it easier for people to live together but wasn't happy about people living together whose relationship involved domination and submission, even if that was a consensual relationship...
 The whole darn thing destabilized me a bit. It was not okay to be in a power exchange relationship, it seemed, but perfectly okay to want to be slutty. I left a little confused.

Thoughts on androgyny

The research that I did on marriage and power exchange introduced me to many new thoughts and some new people. It cemented in my mind that there is no magic to gender. Dominance is not a masculine trait nor submissiveness a feminine trait necessarily.

Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues had me listening carefully to her when she said in an interview this week that she loves that state of androgyny when female meets male; that state which is neither one thing nor the other.

With those thoughts in my mind, I found the conversation with a close friend to be extraordinarily staid. Her niece has just married well (i.e. his family has plenty of money) and she said that her sister was acting like Mrs Bennett (of Pride and Prejudice) and summing up the men in town in terms of their suitability for marriage. This behaviour was making my friend feel that her daughters (in their late 20s) had 'missed the boat' and were destined for "spinsterhood".

I suggested to her that there seemed to be two streams of thought now: the holding onto conservatism whereby a daughter should settle down and find herself a suitable husband to sire her children and keep them living comfortably and safely, and a much more fluid society where such a notion was much less important and/or required.

Certainly, if you look at the statistics, marriage rates are dropping but the number of people in de facto relationships is not and it seems that the vast majority of us still look for a mate with which to live and share our lives.

Builders and developers continue to make small one bedroom apartments at an increasing rate, holding onto the belief that many of us will be single dwellers for at least a time. Perhaps, this is a trend towards not necessarily needing a relationship at all. An airline pilot friend of ours told me that in Japan not one of his crew was in a relationship. Beautiful air flight attendants were, rather than having a boyfriend or husband, making sex dates with no intention of pursuing the association further than fulfilling their sexual needs.

With all this in mind, I sometimes go searching for some dominance in myself. Maybe I would like to get on top of someone in some small way. Well, obviously, like anyone else, I try to get people to co-operate with me to get things done. To that end, I want my way. I'm going to point out if someone is overcharging me or if they are doing something in a manner that is not satisfactory.

But, if I do do that, I don't assault them with some supercharged me. I tend to try to use a mixture of politeness, femininity, reason and logic to get them to see my way. The more in control I feel of myself, the more likely I am to use strategies that allow them to adjust their state of mind to see things from my point of view. So, in my case, I never really forget that I am a woman and that I must handle things with some subliminal awareness of my femininity. Maybe it is the 'claws' at the end of my fingers these days, but the femininity, if not the submissiveness is always present.

What delights me about the research that I have done is that I feel completely accepting of all variations on this theme. Eve Ensler talked of how she hoped that next Valentine's Day (V Day)  1 billion people would "dance" to stop violence against women. In that group she included women and "good men" - those men that deplore violence against women. I truly admired her daring goal and her belief that we all, individually and collectively, had the ability to make a difference to the whole world. Suddenly, androgyny seemed like a very wonderful space - that place where femininity meets masculinity.

On the other hand, what she was asking for was really a very conservative stance, I think - a recognition that women are vulnerable and that men need to protect them against bad people and bad circumstances. It is a stand for good against evil; for good people to rise and do something. It definitely left me feeling that there is a strong force for peace in this world and that somewhere in our more fluid society, we may be onto a good thing.

Choice

There was a darling article in the weekend paper recently concerning feminists in the noughties. The author proposed "for noughtie girls, feminist demands are based less on political ideologies than on the experience of our day-to-day lives." She goes on to say, "For me, feminism is about having choices - from influencing who runs the country to choosing whether I wear high heels or flats."

I immediately liked this gal. She was making a lot of sense, as far as I was concerned. I sent my daughter to a school who demanded you aim high in your areas of choice. My daughter was fortunate, now that I look back on it, to be embraced for who she is: talented in both the performing and creative arts. That she would not go on to perform brain surgery was okay, so long as she worked hard to do her best in the subjects she chose.

Perhaps, having had three brothers has influenced her mindset but she isn't a strident feminist at all. I'm extraordinarily proud of her latest personal achievements and she is a girl on a mission to prove herself in a competitive industry. But she's sees, even at her young age, that a girl needs to be sensible about how life works. She has already discovered that even young men have rather strong opinions about how a girl behaves, and dresses, and no shouting from the rooftops about 'I am women, hear me roar' is going to change that.

Men enjoy women who show pride in their appearance; who are kind, warm-hearted and who appreciate what a man does for them. Good men want to see their women happy. They revel in their accomplishments and are the first ones to celebrate their successes. They do their best to ease the burden on them when things get tough, and, most importantly, they listen to them when they need to process their upsets and concerns. Men are not the enemy. Men are our salvation. My daughter already knows this and I am so glad she does. When the right man comes along for her she won't miss him.

The author of the article had this to say about 'beauty politics': "Noughtie feminism is perfectly compatible with aspiring to external beauty. If we want to wear make-up or attractive clothes, we can...But feminists know that beauty is never the best way of judging whether someone is a nice person..."

I think a man hopes for the whole package, frankly: a woman who cares enough to make herself look good for him and a person who is good on the inside, too. Together, men and women will support one another in their choices of what they want to be; how they want to live their lives.

In the past few years, I've taken a 'time out' to explore who I am, deep inside. My husband has supported my efforts and embraced the changes. At times, I have been unsettled, for change is not always easy. But, he has always been there for me, encouraging me in my choices and wanting me to be all that I want to be for myself. In the same way, I've supported his endeavors to the best of my ability. I continue to learn, each and every day, what a wondrous thing it is when two people enable one another to flourish.

All of us in my family strongly support each other's choices in life. We respect one another's differences and we are tolerant of our various mindsets. Feminists fought hard to enable choice and we are indebted to them. It has been an unsettled couple of days but the dolly is back where she belongs, letting her spirits soar. As a girl of the noughties, this is my choice.