Sex, drugs and rock and roll

The oddest thing just happened. I was browsing blogs, and trying to find people I used to know. I didn't find the person I was looking for, but instead found his daughter. YOW! (Ain't middle-age GREAT?)

The thing is, computing this person's birthday, I realized it is likely I was THERE when she was conceived. YES! I was there! (Or, at least there is an even chance.)

And at the time, I joked about it. I wasn't particularly upset or anything.

In my political collective, it seemed that there were two people who simply could not keep their hands off of each other, and fucked like bunnies. (So, you see, I might NOT have been there for her actual conception, but anyway...) On at least four occasions, they decided to copulate in space I shared with them: twice inside a tent, once in a motel room that housed 7-8 people, in DC for a mass demonstration (yes, we were trying to save money, okay?), and once in a non-converted loft in New York City, provided with limited mattresses. On that last occasion, I was actually ON THE SAME MATTRESS WITH THEM--which was what brought the jokes later. They said, hey, can we sleep here? Of course, the question was a mere formality, I would have been bourgeois and fucked-up to say no, and it would never have occurred to me anyway. They plunked down on the mattress, and within seconds, I could feel the mattress rocking. I remember thinking, Oh boy, these people need a fucking break! They were fairly quiet, although on at least two of the four occasions, she ordered him to SLOW DOWN! and he'd reply in a mumble sorry! and that was it. Pretty quick, and THANK YOU, so I could go back to sleep.

And now, I see this young woman's blog. She looks just like her dad!

As Joan Didion's fantastic book THE WHITE ALBUM (required reading!) made clear, the 60s and 70s were something else. What a long strange trip, etc. The situation above, also described well in Marge Piercy's VIDA (where the two political comrades end up having sex on a pile of dirty laundry--I loved that!), was not uncommon. Not at all. The whole idea was that everyone was supposed to be "less uptight." And yes, I am fully aware that this usually/often translated into women not being uptight, and therefore expected to put out on demand. I know that; I was there. But in the above-referenced example, I also know that the headstrong female activist who fucked the guy in my tent and on the mattress I was already occupying, was not forced by any man (least of all, that guy) to do it. I can also see, from the blog I discovered, that her daughter is as headstrong and into sex as she is, which is not surprising.

I also know that the "put out or you aren't helping the revolution" was a factor in early feminism and separatism, and I got as pissed off over that as any other feminist. Nonetheless, many of these early feminists were very sexual, as the aforementioned Marge Piercy was and is.

And so, I ask: what the hell happened? (One of my friends always blames Nancy Reagan, Just say no!, and the reactionary puritanism of the Reagan Revolution.)

Children saw people fucking. Like, right there, in front of them. This was live, not on DVD.

Children saw people fucking in the middle ages, too, if they were serfs and lived 12 to a room. I daresay, this is pretty common throughout the world in impoverished areas. Children live through the shock of the primal scene, really they do.

Keeping this in mind, what exactly is the fear of porn? Is it because it is highly stylized? The clothes? Rubber? Close-ups? I think the kids have probably seen a few close-ups already, if they are sharing a bed. I sure did!

During the 70s, it was not uncommon to hear people talk about children's rights, even "sexual rights for kids", etc. I'm not kidding! It HAPPENED, yes, right here in the USA! I heartily recommend Judith Levine's HARMFUL TO MINORS, which takes on the subject much better than I could:

Anthropologists concur that America is an exceedingly "low-touch," high-violence culture. But America's diversity, mobility, and high immigration probably belie any biological relationship between the first characteristic and the second. A more likely interpretation of these facts and Prescott's other findings is social. A culture that lavishes gentle attention on its young also may encourage tolerance of the vulnerable and discourage physical power-mongering. People brought up to be aggressive and suspicious of intrusions against their own body's "boundaries," on the other hand, will be more self-protective and territorial and thus more belligerent, both socially and sexually.

I am far more "shocked" by a customer's young child's report that they had actually seen a movie like HOSTEL. Certainly, violence towards women in media is at an all-time high, but this violence is not considered by the mainstream to be pornographic, and they give these movies R-ratings, despite how disgusting, over-the-top grotesque and misogynist they are.

Is porn the problem? I think not. However, I am not "pro-porn" by any means. But I must be honest here: I am more upset by the cookie-cutter appearance of women in mainstream porn (are there any flat-chested gals in porn????) than I am upset by anything they are doing, which I've probably done too. Or I've seen other people do. Certainly, my above example is far from the ONLY casual sex I've ever witnessed. (Are you kidding???) I only mentioned it because it is the genesis of this post.

I am far more upset by misogynist torture-horror movies like CAPTIVITY and SAW, than I am by blow-jobs, butt-fucking and so on. I'm just old-fashioned that way!

Since I have recently been excommunicated* from radical feminism, decided to take on the porn issue, which I have never felt comfortable with as a feminist crusade.

No reason to hold back now!

*as William F Buckley used to say, more about which in due course.

For a minute there, I lost myself

Here is my stunningly beautiful 23-year-old daughter, 1500 miles away. :( I miss her so much!

She'd kill me if she knew this was here. Luckily, she doesn't read this!

The tattoo has a shamrock in the middle, and says KARMA POLICE. I have a large shamrock tattoo also, same place, but no Radiohead.

She got hers after I did, which I thought was very sweet.

Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007

At left: Anna comforts the dying Agnes in CRIES AND WHISPERS



Ingmar Bergman loved women, and often made women the center of his movies. Sometimes, he lived with more than one woman at a time, and shocked everybody. He made the first movie I ever saw about a woman who felt stifled and restricted by motherhood and ended up abandoning the baby to dad, aptly named SUMMER WITH MONIKA, after the patron saint of mothers. I still remember the shot of a spider in a web, which I realized meant Monika felt trapped. (I saw that when I was a young girl, the first time I understood cinematic symbolism.) He presented one of the most incredible and intense studies of women's relationships ever, called PERSONA in which the women are parasitic, loving, hating, changing places, back and forth, their personalities merging, looping, swooping and coming to rest in the other's.

He said he thought of the movie when he saw the two actors Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman, standing together in a mirror.

When I first saw CRIES AND WHISPERS, I acted exactly like Roger Ebert's review said I would:

It is hypnotic, disturbing, frightening. It envelops us in a red membrane of passion and fear, and in some way that I do not fully understand it employs taboos and ancient superstitions to make its effect. We slip lower in our seats, feeling claustrophobia and sexual disquiet, realizing that we have been surrounded by the vision of a film maker who has absolute mastery of his art. "Cries and Whispers" is about dying, love, sexual passion, hatred and death - in that order.

Somehow, this man had figured out how to speak directly to my id. He was bypassing my conscious mind and going directly to my heart and soul. I DID slip lower in my seat, as I watched two sisters and their family servant, waiting for their third sister to die. Almost as soon as we feel pity for the dying sister, Agnes (obviously, signifying Lamb of God), played by the electrifying Harriet Andersson (also in SUMMER WITH MONIKA), we realize we are mistaken about who deserves our pity. Agnes is indeed the blessed one, as her illness has given her very clear vision. She has no time for grudges and neurotic silliness. She concentrates on savoring every second. She knows the seconds are finite.

Meanwhile, Maria (Liv Ullman) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) bump up against each other with their old dance, sibling rivalry. They show unbridled disgust with the choices the other sister has made. Certainly, my post on Saturday fits the reality of the women in CRIES AND WHISPERS, who want a release from their hatred of each other, and yet... this very hatred has created their personalities; their self-definitions are largely based on NOT being the other sister:

In a moment of conjured nostalgia, Maria and Karin remember their closeness as children. Now, faced with the fact of their sister's death, they deliberately try to synthesize feeling, and love. Quickly, almost frantically, they touch and caress each other's faces, but their touching is a parody and by the next day they have closed themselves off again.

And then there is the servant, Anna (Kari Sylwan). Dear God! Has any one character ever moved me so much in movies? It was bad enough, when I initially saw it, that I looked like this woman, but I now realize: I had never seen a large ox-like feminine woman in a movie before. At first, I resented the role of the servant as the sensitive, all-giving one, but at the end of the movie, I wept my heart out.

When Agnes cries out in the night, in fear and agony, it is Anna who cradles her to her bosom, whispering soft endearments.

The others cannot stand to be touched.

Bergman dares to say that us working-class folks who clean up puke and poop and listen to people cry, are closer to them, made human by them. We touch and are touched by others.

Finally, Agnes dies. We knew she would, we are told in the first five minutes that she is dying. But did we expect to SEE? He makes us see:

The camera is as uneasy as we are. It stays at rest mostly, but when it moves it doesn't always follow smooth, symmetrical progressions. It darts, it falls back, is stunned. It lingers on close-ups of faces with the impassivity of God. It continues to look when we want to turn away; it is not moved. Agnes lies thrown on her deathbed, her body shuddered by horrible, deep, gasping breaths, as she fights for air for life. The sisters turn away, and we want to, too. We know things are this bad - but we don't want to know. One girl in the audience ran up the aisle and out of the theater. Bergman's camera stays and watches. The movie is drenched in red. Bergman has written in his screenplay that he thinks of the inside of the human soul as a membranous red.

And then, Anna speaks to them, after death. This, for me, is the biggest JOLT of the film, since the dead woman is speaking to us about the meaning of life:

The film descends into a netherworld of the supernatural; the dead woman speaks (or is it only that they think they hear her?). She reaches out and grasps for Karin (or does Karin move the dead arms? - Bergman's camera doesn't let us see). The movie, like all supernatural myths, like all legends and fables (and like all jokes - which are talismans to take the pain from truth) ends in a series of threes. The dead woman asks the living women to stay with her, to comfort her while she pauses within her dead body before moving into the great terrifying void. Karin will not. Maria will not. But Anna will, and makes pillows of her breasts for Agnes. Anna is the only one of them who remembers how to touch, and love. And she is the only one who believes in God.

These two scenes - of Anna, embracing Agnes, and of Karin and Maria touching like frightened kittens - are two of the greatest Bergman has ever created. The feeling in these scenes - I should say, the way they force us to feel - constitutes the meaning of this film. It has no abstract message; it communicates with us on a level of human feeling so deep that we are afraid to invent words for the things found there.

I consider myself Christian, so I found the ending of the movie incredible. And yes, here is where I cried my eyes out. I cry now, just remembering the passage:

Is there a God in Bergman's film, or is there only Anna's faith? The film ends with a scene of astonishing, jarring affirmation: We see the four women some months earlier, drenched with the golden sun, and we hear Anna reading from Agnes' diary, "I feel a great gratitude to my life, which gives me so much."

I would love to have met the artist with such transcendent, creative vision, who forced us to consider what being human meant, and presented WOMEN as his examples of humanity.

Rest in peace.

It's Sunday! Time for Feminist Church!

Here at Daisy's Dead Air, we strive to bring you cutting edge theological breakthroughs, and today is NO EXCEPTION! Everybody stand for the hymn!

Thanks to fabulous Elizabeth McClung of Screw Bronze! for today's Sunday School lesson!

Turn in your J-Pop hymnals to GOD IS A GIRL! Check it out!

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The girls want to be with the girls

Renegade Evolution has posted that she is "walking away from feminism"--something I hate to hear women say. Kim has expressed similar sentiments on her blog, too. But that brings up another subject, endlessly discussed in the women's movement's earliest days.

Can women be friends?

We used to talk about this openly, at least for awhile. No more.

Renegade Evolution is a beautiful woman, and I think some feminist dislike of her and other highly sexual women (most especially sex workers who show a high level of independence), is based on jealousy and rivalry. (At her blog, certain anonymous comments make this rather obvious.) In the early days of feminism, this was a given. We talked about female rivalry as the predictable fall-out of patriarchy, but now, everyone is in major denial.

Well, not everyone. Here are some descriptive excerpts from Tripping the Prom Queen: the Truth About Women and Rivalry by Susan Shapiro Barash. All italics are mine.

Reluctantly I began to admit that I, too, had felt competitive, envious, even jealous of my fellow females. I, too, had walked into a dinner party and done a quick tally of how I stacked up. Was I as talented as the other women? As pretty? As prestigiously employed? During my divorce, before I met my second husband, I, too, had looked longingly at the few women I knew who seemed truly in love, thinking, "Oh, to have what they have." I, too, had caught myself viewing my daughters with something close to envy for their youth and self-confidence, for the advantages their generation would have that were so far beyond my own. I had even wandered through my local bookstore while I was working on my first book, checking out the other women writers, envious of their apparently secure place on the bookshelves when I wasn't even sure whether I could find a publisher.

[...]

So I designed a study whereby I could interview five hundred women -- again, from a wide range of ages, classes, ethnicities, and religions -- asking them directly about their experiences with these feelings. I wanted to know the role that women's rivalry had played in their lives, their experiences as both targets and perpetrators of female envy.

[...]

What I found astonished me. I heard from women whose colleagues, best friends, and sisters had stolen their boyfriends and husbands. I talked with women whose fear of female rivalry was so strong that they chose to live in small towns, "so there would be less competition"; women who avoided certain parties "because I don't want my husband to meet too many single, beautiful women." I heard about girlfriends dropping a woman when she snagged a promotion at work, or finally found a great guy, or even when she became pregnant. Women described the wear and tear of constant competition, of continually comparing themselves to friends, coworkers, sisters, even to their daughters. Many women confessed that they had spent their lives trying to steer between two painful courses: reaching for the advantages that other women seemed to have and struggling to defend themselves from other women's envy. Although I had known that female rivalry was a theme in many women's lives, I emerged from my research feeling as though it must be a theme in every woman's life. We're just not allowed to talk about it.

[...]

In fact, when I recovered from my first wave of shock at the extraordinary stories I was hearing, I was able to boil down my findings to three conclusions:

1. Despite all the efforts of the women's movement to change this troubling pattern, we're still willing to cut each other's throats over what we value most -- jobs, men, and social approval. Although we've moved into the workplace and the public arena as never before, we tend to ignore men when it comes to competing, focusing our rivalry almost entirely upon each other.

2. We'll do anything rather than face up to female envy and jealousy -- especially our own. Between traditional social pressures to be the "good girl," and feminist expectations of female solidarity, we sweep all evidence of a bleaker picture under the rug. Indeed, in these postfeminist times, women are often rewarded for romanticizing female friendship and punished for telling the truth about female rivalry.

3. Even though my focus is on female rivalry, I have also found some wonderful examples of female bonding -- within families, between friends, among colleagues. In these positive instances, I found that the key was for women to have realistic expectations, of themselves and each other. When we stop demanding total, unconditional support; when we accept our loved ones' differences as well as similarities; when we own up to our own rivalrous natures; and when we confront problems rather than ignore them, we can create extraordinary bonds that nourish us throughout our lives.

[...]

We can't understand female rivalry without understanding the pressure to conceal it. Although the women I interviewed spoke readily of competing with mothers, sisters, coworkers, and friends, many of them also seemed to buy into the myth of female solidarity, lamenting their own isolation from what they saw as a world of camaraderie and support.

[...]

For virtually every woman in this society, our definition of ourselves is bound up in our perception of other women. We see ourselves through comparisons with our mother, our sisters, our friends, and our colleagues. For a whole host of reasons -- some psychodynamic, some social -- we have a hard time seeing ourselves as separate individuals with destinies of our own. Instead, we view our identities as a kind of zero-sum game: we succeed where our mothers fail; we gain what other women lose. We can't envision succeeding or failing on our own terms; we can only measure ourselves against other females. So first we envy the powerful women we see in the media, and then we symbolically triumph over them as they crash and burn. After all, we can never compete against them. Who can be as beautiful as a movie star or as powerful as a princess, a president's wife, or the head of a business empire? If we can't beat them ourselves, at least we can enjoy the sight of them competing with one another, and we enjoy even more seeing them fail.

What does everyone here think? Do you have close female friends, IRL? How have you nurtured that friendship, or was it an instantaneous identification with another woman that blossomed? Are you colleagues? Are you "alike"? What is your friendship based on, if that is quantifiable?

As with the trans issue(s), feminism won't go anywhere without confronting the issue of female rivalry and jealousy, the fact that we all compete ruthlessly with each other (and NOT with men) for what has been allotted to us. We have to stop playing games about it, and confront it, head on.

And to do that, we need to talk.