Hey, imogen and Magoo [sole voices of reason at the time of attempted posting -- ed], you beat me to it. I've never commented on this blog before, although I've often commented upon it (mainly upon its poorly constructed prose, total conformity to retrograde stereotypes and inherent anti-feminism), but the de Beauvoir comment was just the final straw.
I doubt very much that Simone de Beauvoir would read a syndicated dating column, but were she a) not dead and b) to peruse this blog, I am sure that she would throw up her hands at having her seminal treatise cited alongside this excruciating tripe and utter something violent and French.
Apart from having authored one of the most influential feminist works around, and as well as being a formidable scholar and philosophe, de Beauvoir was famously progressive in her relationship with Sartre, with both of them taking lovers and participating in menages a trois. This was before "feminism, the pill, and books like Why Men Marry Bitches", which I'm sure is a charming tome, turned women into voracious sexual creatures who are - quelle horreur! - having sex on the first date. Somehow, I think she’d be okay with having sex in a nightclub toilet.
Like I said, I read Ask Sam fairly regularly and usually respond with an eye-roll and a snarky comment, because I accept that there's not much meat in a dating column that maintains that everyone is equal, unique and deserving of respect, and because I accept that Ask Sam represents the views of one woman with whom I disagree heartily but who nonetheless has the right to her own opinions. But as soon as one of the founding mothers of feminism is used to justify the whining of a man who doesn't understand why women leave him when he makes no attempt to "please them or live up to their expectations", I find that I can’t just leave things with an eye-roll.
Its disappointing and upsetting the short shift feminism is given on this blog – it seems most often to paint feminists as man-hating, embittered hags who bitch at other women and constantly emasculate their men. All of which is fine as long as you accept that Ask Sam inhabits the same artificial landscape as Cosmo or Ralph, where the dynamics of social interaction are distorted and exaggerated for a cheap 300 words and which seems to be about 25 years behind the rest of society. But as soon as you invoke de Beauvoir, you describe another landscape, one where women (and men) can be strong, opinionated, promiscuous and independent without fear of being labeled ‘dominating’ (although I strongly suspect the word Sam is grasping about for here is ‘domineering’).
Simone de Beauvoir was such a woman, and the women who follow in her footsteps probably do scare the fuck out of Sam’s friend, who seems to look at the richness and intricacy of sexual and romantic relationships and see only constant opportunities for petty point-scoring. As to the question of whether women or men should be more ‘dominating’, I think the answer we are looking for is that no person should ever ‘dominate’ another based on something as arbitrarily prescribed as, say, gender. Hey, that’s pretty much feminism in a nutshell! Sometimes, it really is that simple.
4 comments:
Ha! SB totally meant 'domineering'. You're so right and I'm now smiling that the mods were too chicken to post something in the comments with reasoned argument because it would contrast too sharply with the original post.
Heh. In all honesty there's a slight possibility that I may have just somehow submitted incorrectly, but I like your theory better, so I'm gonna roll with it.
Freshly-squeezed bravos to the both of you.
sam in the city reminds me how much the media rewards banality. It makes want to hide and/or forget how to read; and its there in the corner everytime i go to read the age.
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