An Ungodly Mess
Bells said:
[Insert going into foetal position and making keening noises here]
Golf clap?
Sorry, the demonstration is just so apt; is there a polite way to point out the actual infantilization of women taking place in some of this ideology?
Here's a fun one, because we're only a hundred fifty or so years removed, and there are a handful of cultural references I would pass over because, well, right.
But you know how children sometimes ask straightforward questions that make the grown-ups uncomfortable for various reasons. So, the next time you happen to be around some sort of museum or other such display of, say, fashion history, and one of the kids stands and stares at a dress from a particular late-century European fashion period, and asks the obvious question, give the obvious answer.
A couple versions:
"How does she go to the bathroom in this thing?"
―[looks puzzled] What do you mean, 'go to the bathroom'?
"How does she go to the bathroom in this thing?"
―She doesn't. Er ... ah ... rather, well, yeah. Like you said. How does she go the bathroom 'in this thing'?
Because right up there with eating chalk or cotton balls, refusing cancer treatment, and high heels for the career woman, there
was in fact a time and place when soiling herself was simply part of the price of being a fashionable, proper woman.
And while it's hard to sketch an analytic outline of the modern notion that calls itself
"Christian Domestic Discipline"↗ insofar as, like the Men's Rights movement, it appears to be a fairly small population of unmitigated sickness―only more so―neither is it
remotely surprising. And while that cohort might be extreme in its definition and praxis, it is in achieving that extremity merely an escalation of historical themes in which lust and misogyny make some naughty, and proudly present that bizarre bastard offspring in which the line between youthful vitality and openly juvenile ceases to exist and becomes a standard of merit for woman's presentation, because, well, you know, above all else, the good obedient girl is the good obedient
sexy girl.
But if London and Paris in the nineteenth century are a particular emergence of a neurotic priority on a fairly massive societal scale, and as much as I want to make a crack about the good reverend here, the "About" page on Larry Solomon's website is merely another insanity that blows all this to hell.
London and Paris.
Oh, yeah. That's it. Okay, so Victorian and Edwardian societal mores can easily be collected for psychoanalysis; it's a scary undertaking. But what would this "spank your wife" Disciplinary movement be by comparison? Because the IT guy's thesis on what women owe men is considerably closer to the
"What the fuck?" of the other than the heavy sigh, shaking of head, and exasperated, "O! humanity!" that comes from trying to figure out Victorians and Edwardians.
Maybe it correlates with time for some reason. I mean, compared to pissing yourself for fashion, what the hell am I supposed to think of the Duggars? This tech dude with a wannabe sexy orthodoxy
is the punch line. You know, the
Guardians of Female Chastity, keeping our daughters pure for our later exploitation, or something.
It's like the seventy-two virgins thing. And, you know, one of the last times I ever saw Dennis Miller actually being funny, his punch line was, that it would be boring to have seventy-two virgins because every once in a while you want a woman who knows how to slip you the finger.
Go figure.
But I wonder, compared to this arc of institutional sexual deviance, how many Christians would really want to answer for this rape factory called marriage.
You know, since we're supposed to have a problem with Muslims and their seventy-two virgins in Heaven. Can we spare a thought for the Christian women on Earth? That kind of thing.
But if the purity cult is the setup, Mr. Solomon is the punch line.
And Poe's Law
is in effect here. To that point I would simply note that if Mr. Solomon has dedicated such effort to crafting some manner of provocateur's joke, well, sure, I'll applaud, but I will also worry about the artist's state of mind. It's possible to go too deep.
And this? I really wish I could promise you it's some sort of joke. But I'm too often wrong when I say such things, and it's also true that he's hardly innovative. That is, he might be the one who just came out and said it. I've heard myriad degrees of this stuff over the course of my life; it is nearly a crystallization of the ambient misogyny into which I was raised.
If I said, "What ever happened to Fay Wray?" I doubt I could explain the joke. Funny, that. I started with a piss joke, because it was funny and relevant. I don't mean to mansplain, but the truth is that this Mr. Solomon has done nothing more than attempt to collect and organize the underlying misogyny of a twisted virtue so close to my memory it's like family.
And it has its effect. Why do you think I'm so terrified of myself? Mr. Solomon has distilled a tremendous amount of how I, a receiving gay man―and thus, by the bigoted custom of my time, the
woman in a gay male relationship―learned to view women as relationship partners. With so many disease vectors, and intimate and sexual violence numbers virtually untrackable, it's really easy to terrify myself. And, you know, one might be tempted to think one of the privileges of masculinity is never having to put up with that shit. Actually, the privilege of masculinity on that count is never having to see it from a woman's perspective. You know, because I
can't. And some days that seems like a blessing.
And while I've learned over the years what's wrong with such expectations, yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure we all would be better off had I never learned the expectations. And it's true, there are apparently places to find women who can fulfill such artificial needs, but I have never been materially suited to the head of any household; nor can I (
ahem!) "fake it" for Jesus.
And while I can say my big mistake was failing to recognize that the distinction between "person" and "lover" is not exclusive, or even polish my knobs with a #NotAllMen, I'm not certain the question of crossing this line or that really has any meaning insofar as the rest of the bullshit is concerned. I might easily dispense lines about the millions of times daily women let it pass, because it's their husbands or boyfriends groping and pawing and pressuring, but only
most days can I look at myself in the mirror. The lack of a felony or body count is what it is, but the human rights
disaster is such to tremble and cringe in shame. So in this context I can at least say that it's hard to thump my chest for any notion of progress since I and, especially, my female partners throught his lifetime, would have been much better off had I skipped the voyage entirely by never learning such stupid notions as a husband's prerogative and a wife's duty.
And it's like looking at an old photograph:
Really? That's me?
Except with a twist. Think of it this way, it's the reason why it took me so long to pick up on why Steinem is correct about pornography. Because that is supposed to be me, so it can't be bad. So, for the record, to those who think this is all stuffy and stodgy and depressing, yeah. What ever happened to Fay Wray? I can't tell you how much I enjoyed resolving that one.
But this evil is pretty much nostalgic. And that's why it scares the living fuck out of me. I know the power of
this Dark Side.
Wait. Here we go. Got it.
No, really, this is almost entirely real time.
Okay, look, this is also the reason I consider myself unsuitable for gender transition.
No, really, if I say I'd rather be a woman, just what does that mean? What, in this context, is womanhood?
Because it sure as hell ain't all
this.
That is to say, what attracts me to the idea of actually being a woman is, in fact, twisted jealousy. And when I think about what I envy, I seriously
must be crazy. Why in the world would
anybody make that trade? Except they're not me, so I can't say what my brothers and sisters are chasing. And, yes, for me these outcomes whisper ominous potential, and what seems even more horrifying is that I will never face the true heart of the evil. It is impossible, and unhealthy, to speculate what sort of misadventures my miseducation might contribute to, but if it ever comes to that, I'm still a man, and the man across from me or on top of me or whatever will know that, and it will be a different dynamic, and in the end I will still be a man, so that sort of shit won't be every fucking day of my life.
But, yeah. There you have it. I mean, sure, it's incomplete and all, but there's no way I can circumscribe the whole thing. Mr. Solomon's is a particularly sharp expression of mixed themes so familiar to me they might as well be the air I breathe.
At the very least, though, somebody finally went and tried to say it all at one time. I'll give him that credit at least, though it's probably offset by what I perceive as the requisite desperation of undertaking the task in the first place.
