Feminism seems almost quaint in our non-binary moment but Carlene Bauer insists the stakes remain as high as ever for women who don't want to be defined by their gender:
But the point is that it takes real work for a woman to sustain the creation of something outside herself that is not a child. Real will, because we are always going to be tempted in a way men aren’t to wander off the road and find someplace to get knocked up so we can relieve ourselves of the burden of trying to figure out what everything in life is really worth and then, as a reward for this abdication of responsibility, get ourselves worshiped as if we’d climbed Mount Everest when all we’d done was let nature take its course. Men don’t walk around with a door inside them that they’ll constantly have to worry about –should I open it, should I keep it shut, does it lock, well wait, if I can if I lock it, can I call a locksmith to get it back open, how long does it stay open, what’s the data on what happens if you’ve left it open for a really long time, can anything get through? Should I shut it or keep it open? Shut it or keep it open? Shut it or – you get the idea. This is why men will never experience their underutilized freedom as a perversion. They don’t have this inherent, latent source of power serving as a standard against which they can measure every other way they can access power, or every other dream they might have, and then run the risk of finding those dreams or that power wanting in comparison to the thing their body could do. So men will never put too much pressure on their freedom and it will never put too much pressure on them.
Basic biology more than anything--including intelligence, education, culture or politics--is at the root of the quandary, just as it was 50 years ago when I first began reading about feminism and sympathizing with oppressed women even as I envied their predicament. From my gay male perspective, it seemed women had an option that straight men didn't: relying on their male partner to support their family. Spending 70 hours a week doing something you absolutely hated doesn't exactly chime "freedom" to me. Nor does child care for that matter.
But Charlotte and Rose--the girls they write songs about--aren't particularly interested in men as anything other than sex partners which, in my view, makes them just as culpable in their unhappiness as the men they can't live with or fuck without wanting something . . . more! Only Charlotte's doting father meets her impossible standard for exemplary male behavior and that's probably because it's the only non-sexual relationship she has with a man. The two BFFs eventually have a falling out over principles that ends the most fulfilling relationship either of them ever has had. This development seems absolutely bananas to someone who has endured exactly what Charlotte has: the gradual loss of a best friend to marriage and motherhood. Why react with estrangement rather than accommodation?
When confronted with life choices, people make decisions they regret and some they don't according to how things play out. In other words shit happens and while principles are useful in navigating early adulthood, holding on to them in the face of reality can be more damaging than never having had any at all.
People like Charlotte--who ends up living vicariously through another woman's child--need to get over themselves. That said, it's just as important to remove systemic obstacles (i.e. anti-abortion laws, pay inequality & gender bias) that prevent women from living as selfishly as men. Neither Charlotte nor Rose do anything in that regard which makes Bauer's well-drawn if frustrating characters more worthy of mild contempt than empathy.
No comments:
Post a Comment