>>38
>>39
Good taste is male tase for a reason , How many rock songs echo the attitude of Dion, they have been the control behind almost all of cultural creation. They set the standards of experience by which art is measured, Justified, and creations that fall outside of this experiential window have their designers “put down and misunderstood named by the (male) cultural establishment ‘lady artist’, i.e. trivial, inferior. And even when it must be (grudgingly) admitted she is ‘good’ it is fashionable… to insinuate that she is good bu irrelevant.”P.143 (Firestone 2003) spoilers mine and for this reason should be unsurprising “... that they are seldom as skilled as men at the game of culture”p.143 (Firestone 2003) because they have to compete as men in a male game where “...it is not just a question of being as competent, but of being authentic.”p.143 (Firestone 2003) and when the outright denial of their experience doesn't push them onto the psychologists couch to receive treatment that has “...proven worse than useless…”p.64 (Firestone 2003) for it is “... the operation of institutions only within the given value system, thus promoting acceptance of the status quo.”p.63 (Firestone 2003) is is not just men that are placed into a state of emotional repression then, women are barred from expressing any array that could be seen as negative, ruining their sweet character, from Reiks couch “I am afraid to show these emotions because if I did; it would be like opening a Pandora's box … I am afraid my aggression would destroy all.”p.61 (Firestone 2003) this has lead more than a few to simply try to adapt to into a persona of male psychology, subjecting themselves in a loveless detachment, to a drying up of the emotions, a shallowing sickness which couldn’t even approach liberation from the trade; all to avoid the perception that their side of things happens to be “... one long protestant complaint rather than a portrayal of a full and substantive existence…”p.143 (Firestone 2003). We inhabit an unfortunate case where culture is so saturated with bias that neither can give a comprehensive view of experience, though certainly the supply of one is lacking in quantity compared to the other, And so in Firestone’s opinion “It would take a denial of all cultural tradition for women to produce even a true ‘female’ art.”p.143 (Firestone 2003) an emergence which “... may signify the beginnings of a new consciousness,...”p.151 (Firestone 2003) for blossoms of the mind bear their fruits in reality, or what might be left of it.
What then is love? To Firestone it is the height of selfishness. A process by which “... the self attempts to enrich itself through the absorption of another being. Love is being psychically wide-open to another. It is a situation of total emotional vulnerability. Therefore it must be not only the incorporation of the other, but an exchange of selves. Anything short of a mutual exchange will hurt the other party.”p.115 (Firestone 2003)³ This exchange of selves is rarely what happens today. The successful process is blocked, “often resulting in … an emotional cynicism that makes it difficult if not impossible to ever love again.”p.115 (Firestone 2003) But the system which causes the blockage, a disparity of power dynamic most recently resultant from the Oedipus Complex, whose structures are proclaimed as healthy and re-enforced through the extrapolated authority of freudian psychoanalysis, needn't be the case. Where Firestone notes the roots of psychoanalysis and feminism being the same with the criteria for selection of one over the other being that “Fruedianism subsumed the place of feminism as the lesser of two’’ evils”p.56 (Firestone 2003) Feminism riding on the difference that it “... does not accept the social context in which repression (and the resulting neurosis) must develop as immutable. If we dismantle the family, the subjection of “pleasure’ to ‘reality’, i.e. sexual repression, has lost its function; and is no longer necessary.”p.56 (Firestone 2003)
One of the weapons Shulie identifies as a means of re-enforcing male culture, here the idea of a woman to be agrandized rather than understood, is erotism. Choosing an example written by herbert Gold What’s Become of Your Creature, floundering in his attempt to “...describe the whole spectrum of male/female experience”p.145 (Firestone 2003) in that he can't even attempt to see beyond the “male” angle. The story follows the philandering protagonist, Frank, whose failing marriage, unsurprisingly, ... for he needs her anxiety as a steady reminder that he is still “free””p.122 (Firestone 2003) begins to improve as he enters an affair with a young pretty girl by the name of Lenka. It progresses through all the expected stages. Frank, a college professor, begins his relationship with a student, and when it is broken off she confronts his wife with a letter ruining his marriage. Unable to undergo the mental effort to understand her reasoning, he remains baffled as to the cause. Years later, with a new young foreigner on his arm, he encounters Lenka again. Drug addicted and prostituting herself to make ends meet, when she makes a pass at him he having called her on the phone to meet recently (which she declined), he is overcome by an aversion to her uncleanliness, her disease, and “Because he could not bear her sorrows,...”p.147 (Firestone 2003) flees into the street. His story’ closing; happily embracing a wife, newly with child, wondering what could have happened to Lenka.
Frank, and by extension Herbert, expose their emotional shallowness. Unable to understand Lenka’s motivations; her heartbreak, her motivations for seeing him in the first place, her abysmal disappointment that he would leave her for someone he was cheating on “You cared more about a cold bitch than you cared for me just because you had a child.”p.146 (Firestone 2003) Defanging her efforts by granting her “full points for cruelty and sweetness”, he is incapable of relating to her as a person with her own plans and goals. Finally he abandons her in disgust, finding her used by other men as a means to keep the lights on.
Another example of this ‘male angle’ stunting erotism, of which are the majority, is the character Catherine in Trufants film Jules and Jim where “She kills the man who dared escape her, along with herself” “such vamps and femmes fatales... [are] in reality nothing more than women who refuse to accept their powerlessness.” P.151 (Firestone 2003) And though the art is accurate the feminine mystique exhibited by Catherine goes purposefully unprobed by Trufant, the feminine perspective purposefully ignored as a means of achieving erotism. However, “Erotism is exciting. Noone wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and routine affair without at least that spark.”p.139 (Firestone 2003) It is then worth looking at an example where erotism id done right. “Only a few artists have overcome this division in their work… if not through physical expression, then in some other way the greatest artists became mentally androgynous.”p.148 (Firestone 2003) Of which The story of the Eye by Georges Bataille proves a “...most accomplished…” study. Rather than relinquishing the female protagonist's perspective as the means of cultivating a mystery to induce erotism, Bataille makes the narrator's investigation of her perspective the main aspect of erotism for the first half of the book. An intimate search for a meeting and a realization in communication. Almost immediately after their first meeting she becomes split between two characters, Simone and Marcelle. Marcelle being the face she must present to the world to meet its standards, restrictions, and expectations in addition to the protective layer of the dance women must partake in. Simone, what lies underneath, the true meeting and communication with whom the narrator is after, and whom the split protagonist feels she must keep hidden. Three aspects are of exceptional import when entering the middle of tale; first is Marcelle’s retention in and escape from the mental hospital, next marcelle’s mention of marriage after escape, -just before her death- and third is Marcelle’s death occurring during the first copulation of Simone and the narrator. The notable line being “We were so calm, all three of us, and that was the most hopeless part of it.” This trifecta is the realization of the acquired commitment, dropping the act, relinquishing and the resultant lul in excitement when each party finally meets in the representative carnal act. But what distinguishes Bataille's story is the “X-ray vision… Increased sensitivity to the real, if hidden, values of the other…” the narrator displays in his pursuit of Simone, not Marcelle, who is only ever there under Simone’s insistence. For while Firestone criticizes “...’blindness or ‘idealization’...” she specifies “...if we could eliminate the political context of love between the sexes, would we not have some degree of idealization remaining in the love process itself? I think so.”p.118 (Firestone 2003) The spark that ignites the erotism in this story is the interest in meeting Simone, she who lies beyond the illusory Marcelle. Further, it should not be read that the political conditions are rendered moot in this story. Rather, following their meeting it is the narrator who becomes split, after a symbolic crossing of a river, between Sir Edmond, an economic provider who is emotionally distanced, and himself prior.
What Bataille displays is an attempt at an errotic and comprehensive picture of the split reality “... art which is guilty of only reflecting the human price of a sex-divided really, great care would have to be taken that criticism be directed, not at the artists for their (accurate) portrayal of the imperfect reality, but at the grotesqueness of that reality itself as revealed by the art.”p.152 (Firestone 2003)
Ursula K. Le Guin, publishing her story Left Hand of Darkness one year before the release of Firestones book may be one of the first volleys released “...out of this ferment…”p.150 (Firestone 2003)
A bizarre alien life of dualisticly mutable sex make up the majority of the subjects in the novel. Singular beings capable alternatively of siring or conceiving, their social arrangements, exceptionally foreign to our own. Not quite a freeing from the biologic through technology as prescribed by Firestone, but certainly a thought experiment towards sex equality approaching the proper direction, an alien culture. Genly, being a Terran of single sex, provides his observations about Gethen Winter its inhabitants and culture as the means of narrative. His lens the focus through which images are told. Our cultural bias exposed when projected upon the Androgynous alien culture and individuals he encounters. Excellently exemplified when he identifies an individual he is staying with as his “land lady” because “... he had a fat buttocks that wagged as he walked, a soft frame, and a prying, spying, ignoble, kindly nature.” p.50 (Le Guin 2000) Kind and gossipy with sexually charged characteristics make up femininity to Genly The things a male is not, for “Women are the only love objects in our society, so much so that women regards themselves as erotic”.p.133 (Firestone 2003) It would be a mistake to say this is the only way it could be. in ancient greece and other cultures where homosexuality was rampant, are the only places the male nude was in vogue. For this reason it is interesting to note today “Homosexuals are so ridiculed because in viewing the male as sex object they go doubly against the norm: Even women don't read pretty boy magazines.”⁴ p.133 (Firestone 2003) The preference for one over the other is in large part a trained condition, since males are hardly ever portrayed as sex objects. Although “... people might still prefer those of the opposite sex simply because it is more physically convenient. But even this is a large assumption.”p.54(Firestone 2003) “It would be quite wrong to say that women are more beautiful or even more desirable than men… but they lay themselves open to be desired.” p.130-31 (Bataille 1986) since women are in a condition there they must love not only for the basic need, mental health etc, but also to acquire social validation, it is no surprise that Genly would inquire of his ‘Land lady” how many children he had birthed. The answer being, none, but he had “...sired four.” His distaste for his own bisexual leanings becomes evident when his perceptions drift toward the opposite sex upon attraction. Recounting a weaver as female he treated as male previously and then after the fact , though not being able to resit attempting mind speech upon encounter. Coming to a maximum then crossing the ice with Estraven. When they enter Kemmer they are viewed by Genly as female for laying themselves open to desire. A fact he meets with an uncomfortable if mild disgust toward the strong male ally he had known him as previously.
It is perhaps Interesting, if not ironic, that Leguin’s forward scratches upon the same grooves as Shulamith in her chapter Dialectics of Cultural History following those giving shape to the concept of male culture. Perhaps a prophetic happening to some, Le Guin would deny it. “Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying” p.xix (Le Guin 2000) Lies however are their way of expressing what they've seen, what they know, how the world thy,ve met is, what their dreams are, and what their intuition has shown. Dressed through metaphor as illustration, the novelist delivers truth as “... a matter of imagination.”p.xxiii/1 (Le Guin 2000)
This of course, is only part of her concern in the foreword. She shares far more with Firestone than is originally let on. The artist, she proposes, as one who renders falsities as a career, is wrongly looked to as indicator of the future. Instead, as said before, they render what they’ve witnessed without a concern toward the possible. A scientist, Le Guin reminds, “... is another who prepares, who makes ready, working day and night, sleeping and awake, for inspiration.” p.xx (Le Guin 2000) Though they certainly are conditioned towards a particular way of being “The public image of the white-coated Dr. Jekyll with no feelings for his subjects, mere guinea pigs, is not entirely false: there is no room for feelings in the scientists work; he is forced to eliminate or isolate them in what amounts to an occupational hazard. At best he can resolve his problem by separating his professional from his personal self, by compartmentalizing his emotion.” p164 (Firestone 2003) Individuals out of touch or at best divided from their emotions, or as Le Guin would say “-Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship.” p.xxi (Le Guin 2000) and in her prescription that they pay a visit to Dyonisus she has run through what Shulamith identifies as “The Two Modes of Cultural History” P.154 (Firestone 2003) p.109 (Mackay and Avanessian 2019) True to form, Firestone has found the gendered dichotomy sparkling through; the bright masculine scientific logic of Apollo has relegated the dark passion fueled aesthetic frenzy of Dionysus to the realm of the unimportant. Vetoed from consideration, the Bacchoi Silenced⁵ . Combined, “...the attempt by man to realize the conceivable in the possible.” p.154 (Firestone 2003) but this current dichotomy is sick, dragged down and imprisoned even more in modernity than was the case in ancient civilization when though the aesthetic mode was still captured and and used toward development of male culture “the female principle - dark, mysterious, uncontrollable - reigned, elevated by man himself, still in awe of unfathomable nature.” p.159 (Firestone 2003) Today the emotionless technological mode has made magic, prophecy and legend the stuff of mockery, but it is this aesthetic mode which births religious and mythic sensibilities through which we become “... creature[s] of time - a historian[s] and a prophet[s]’”. p.154 (Firestone 2003) While the aesthetic inspires and the technologic actualizes, but in “the mechanistic, deterministic, ‘soulless’ scientific world-view, which is the result of the means to rather than the (inherently noble and often forgotten) ultimate purpose of empiricism: the actualization of the ideal in reality.” p.164 (Firestone 2003) and where Le Guin finds that people are already androgynous in the “... peculiar, devious, and thought experimental manner propper to science fiction,...”p.xxi (Harrison 1922; Le Guin 2000) Firestone is not only unafraid to proclaim that we damned well ought to bee, but takes the pains to identify the means of enforcement through which we are not. “What we shall have in the next cultural revolution is the reintegration of the Male 9technologic mode0 with the Female 9aesthetic mode0 to create an androgynous culture surpassing the heights of either cultural stream.” p.174 (Firestone 2003) There is however one place where Le Guin goes beyond Firestone in her critique of the dominant scientific sensibility. She questions whether something only has value if it points at a single fact, one sound solid quantifiable comprehensible to the rational intellect. She proposes the question of the value of the art of interpretation.
“A sentence or a paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence than by the attentive intellect.” p.xxii (Le Guin 2000)
“I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.” p.xxi (Firestone 2003)