cliterature

There is a lot of commentary these days about children, especially girls, being ’sexualized’ too young.  I have mixed feelings about this.  It does seem that many kids have a lot of sexual experiences very young and under cultural pressure–often without appropriate precautions to prevent pregnancy and disease.  But where does this problem really come from?

But  I think the focus is too often on surface aspects like clothing and music.  I mean, I do think that young girls are wearing things that have elements many adults read as suggestive, which is bad taste.  But there is a huge subjective element.  I mean, my Dad flipped when I wore a pretty normal denim miniskirt as a teen.  So we cannot assume that we know what clothes mean to children and their peers.  The same applies to popular music, which has always made a lot of sexual references.  Is mainstream rap or emo really any different from rock and roll or R & B?  I think we forget that the songs from previous eras that we remember are the best ones–and others were more sexual and often rather crass and sexist–just like today. 

In contrast, not a lot of attention seems to be paid to how American culture encourages romance roleplay even in infants.  This is not just media or clothing, but training very young children in roles were they should orient romantically to the opposite sex and mime gestures that in adults within this culture are considered sensual.  I remember watching US TV shows, like sit comes, and being astounded that prepubescent children were routinely shown having crushes, dating and so forth.  And this with the active encouragement of parent, presented as cute and appropriate.  The very notion of acting like this was completely absent from my upbringing until well into my high school years.

 While thong underwear for seven-years-olds may be questionable, and child beauty pageants outright perverse, but I think it is far more important that girls not feel the need to play act flirting and courting behavior well before most of them have any interest in it.  This just teaches children to act not on their own wishes but to fit the feminine and masculine roles in soliciting romantic ans sexual attention and ignore their own feelings–or lack thereof.  That is how people who are exclusively gay or asexual end up not only feigning heterosexuality but going as far as marrying and having children–just continuing in the roles they have been taught from their earliest ‘play-dates’.

There are plenty of roles for kids to play act and practise, but dating, kissing, and flirting need not be part of this.  It is not media and fashion that teaches young children that there is only one way to regard the opposite sex.  They could dress in and listen to anything and not change their own behavior at all.  It is not media and fashion that create a culture where people can ask: is it possible for a man and woman to just be friends? 

It is our own gendering of child relationships were some people grow up never mixing freely with male and female playmates just doing the things that kids do.  Little kids cab just play together, older kids can just hang out together–and pursue more romantic relationships only when they really want to and are able to select someone they know well and be safe together.

 The sexualizing of children is not done by the evil retailers, but done (or not done) by families in an age where playing with Bratz and dressing like Madonna-lite may be a hell of a lot healthier than ‘playing house’ and kissing under the mistletoe because the adults think it is cute.  Listening to sexy songs maybe be far less important than being made to hug and kiss grandfather whether you want to or not–which is not to say that granddad is a perv, but that lessons in being in control of how and why you express physical affection begin early.  And it is when a girl loses her sense of that autonomy that she becomes vulnerable to pressures that may ultimately lead, not to the abstract ‘being sexualized’, but actually having sex early, unwilling and unprepared.

* For a bonus point, which recent catalogue included this illustration?

“Altered Art” is basically something make out of scrap, discarded objects and other bits and pieces.  It can be scrap-booking, cyberpunk taxidermy or pretty much anything.  Recently I have been making cute little monsters out of old My Little Ponies and mythical creatures from scissors confiscated at airports.  (I just put the finishing touched of ‘My Little Cthullu’ and sprayed on that coat of sealant that means I have to stop fiddling with it).

I recently suggested that it might be fun to make altered art based on a page from a romance novel.  This is normally done by selectively blocking out some of the words to create a different message.  It is a method often used by the poets, but can be a fun exercise for anyone (well, I thought so).  As it happens, I wasn’t exactly stampeded by people taking up the challenge.  But what was lacking in quantity was more than made up for by quality.

 Bree Bridges came up with this stunning digital approach (shown below).  Bree is half of the wonderful writing team Moira Rogers.  So show some appreciation of her obvious talent by visiting her/them at moirarogers.com.  (Go on, go and have a look.)

And here is my rather less skillful stab at the same idea–which is not at all digital and predictably came out…well, a bit rude. (Quelle surprise).  And a little bit rude in an M/M sort of why.  (ditto).

If anyone else wants to have a go at it, please do send me the results and I will be sure to post it.  That would be worth at least 5 bonus points, maybe even as many as 10.

What, nobody wants a toaster?

I recent picked up a copy of Lovers in Art, a small book with color plates showing paintings of lovers.  In the whole it is a nice collection and does not avoid more sexual depictions so long as they have a fine art provenance.

One particular painting, excerpted to the right, is Jean-Leon Gerome’s Pygmalion and Galatea.  The basic story of Pygmalion is that he was disgusted by the women in his town.  The back story is that a man in the town had refused to worship Venus, and so his daughters had become (according to this fable) the first prostitutes.  Pygmalion was so disgusted by women being so sexually active that he would have nothing to do any women–and just occupied himself carving, um, life sized realistic nude females.  One of which he fell in love with.

So, quick recap, because some of the women in town were selling their bodies he wouldn’t touch them (or any other woman), but he fell in “love” with a simple depiction of physical beauty that he himself created.  I mean I understand wanted a lover who isn’t sleeping with every other man in town, but isn’t it something of a leap to go from avoiding hussies to only wanting a woman that you created to match your exact physical ideal?

Pygmalion starts giving gifts to the statue, “caressing” it and decking it up in jewellry, laying it on a couch, and referring to it as his wife.  So, basically he had created a precursor to the ‘realdoll’.  He then prayed to have a real wife just like the statue.  Venus saw the statue and thought it look rather like her, and perhaps partly from that flattery brought the statue to life to be his real wife.

 I understand this myth was written by and for people from a very different culture so the strands of moral condemnation of female sexuality, desire to completely control and actually create your wife from scratch, not to mention that the closest biological equivalent of marrying your creation would be daughter-incest…. well, that’s put that all to one side.

This book was assembled in the 90’s and is is meant to depict people in love.  I would argue that of Galatea was in love upon her creation it was not of her free will, if indeed she possessed any.  And Pygmalion may have thought he was in love with a non-sentient ivory statue but that is lust at best and more like puritanical insanity.  I just do not see that, for a modern book, this picture qualifies as depicting what we would define as people freely and romantically in love.  And yet, looking online, I see this myth often listed as one fo the ‘great romance’. 

Really?

(And on a minor note I find the description of the painting rather coy.  Specifically “Galatea was only colored above the waist”.  I don’t know about you, but that is not where I keep my waist.)

For a bonus point: in what way was the artist Gerome just like the mythical figure of Pygmalion?

There are not very many books that really stick with you.  But recently, after I had a very bad week, I asked a fried to lend me some books.  And one of them was When I am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, edited by Sandra Martz.  And it was like meeting an old friend.

I read this book back as a teen and it had an impact on me then although I don’t know really what it was.  The idea of being older was something I looked forward to then–just to get out of the hell of high school.  The thought of eventual death was some terrifying but distant horizon.  The idea of me, personally, being old was somehow absent from my world and this anthology was a kind of frank but gentle introduction to the idea.

Reading it it again in my mid-thirties feels different but again this book is so vivid to me.  Being ‘old’ feels closer now, not imminent, but closer.  I think that in this culture it is hard for most woman, myself included, to look forward to being old.  But through this collection there is a feeling of the naturalness, the calm inevitability of being old and the diversity of that experience for women. 

Reading now I feel the pieces written by young women about older women sometimes have a slight air of pretension to them, but in general they combine realism with an understand of being old as… just being old.  Not better than being young, or middle-aged–and not worse.  Just a place that we go and some snapshots of what it is like to be there from both the point of view of outside observers and old women themselves.

It is so rare to find a book that is about understanding and accepting, but not mindlessly glorifying or sugar-coating–that is positive without being cloying. I don’t know why this balance seems so hard to find.  Whenever I hear something like: “60 is the new 40″ I think: what they hell does that mean?  60 is 60.  What it means to be 60 may have changed just like everything else does over time, but what of it?  We can learn to think different about that life stage, I am sure.  No color is ever really the new black, and no age is ever some other age–and saying so seems to me to spring from a denial of aging, not a positive outlook on its new possibilities.

And even disregarding the topic of the book there is something about its tone that I think speaks to me.  I have said to several people recently that I think someone needs to write a book of positive affirmations for cynical bastards.  I am a positive person, but it is a practical positivism.  I try to be a good person, through my work I try to make the world even just a tiny bit better, I enjoy my leisure activities and appreciate my successes, and I value so much about the world and am (as I should be on this day) thankful for my lot.  I am a very fortunate person and I try, in my own way and probably not as much as I could, to help others.

But I do not believe in a positivism that glosses of realities, risks, the possibility of failure or the existence of dangers and obstacles in the world.  I do not thinking meaning well substitutes and any way for doing good.  And not being a saint, or someone given to extremes, I generally aim to do ‘tiny acts of goodness’–like providing information about small presses to authors through my website ERECsite.com.

But so often when I ask questions or give information, like mentioning that a certain small publisher might have rather limited abilities when it comes to selling books or is doing something that some authors might find counter to their own ethics to some degree (that determination being up to them), this is characterised as negative at best–and even jealous, spiteful,  mean, witch-hunting and McCarthy-istic.  And there does seem, to me, to be a gendered tone to it along the line of ‘good girls know that if they can’t say something nice they shouldn’t say anything at all’. (Except there also seems to be a high level of hypocrisy in the ad hominem responses.)

But all I want is for other authors to meet their own goals, which normally involves selling a good number of books.  I want to encourage them to place their book with the best publisher for them.  I don’t even know them but I want to urge them to make consider their options, gather their facts, make good choices and enjoy the success they dream of.  If, having realistically judged the likely level of success they will achieve with a certain publisher, they make that choice.  I don’t care what an authors goals are, or why they choose a certain publisher, so long as they are not walking blindly into disappointment because they choose to be willfully ignorant of the limitations of the company they selected. 

I want all writers to achieve their goals and I want all publishers to prosper.  The latter is not something I can have much impact on, with the former I do my meagre best.  I love writing, I respect writers and publisher, I adore ebooks and small presses and the opportunities they have given me and so many others.  But there are publishers that sell a lot, a little, or just a few copies of each title.  This is much a fact of life as people being different ages.  It is not a value judgement to say one epublisher tends to sell 1000 copies in the first year, and another only 20.  This is just a fact and it can be proffered out of a positive desire to inform, completely without condemnation or judgement.  And if an author think 20 sales combined with whatever else that press is offering them meets their goals for that book, then that is the publisher they should choose.

Epublishers are not the new commercial paperback presses.  They are simply different things and feeling the need to foretell the end of print publishing, or pit the formats against each other, seems to me to spring from a failure to understand the value of epublishing and small presses in their own right.  (e.g. epublishing is not the new paperback publishing–although it is much bigger and netter than it used to be).  Epublishers and other small presses are accessible, diverse, flexible, adaptable, fill niches others don’t, and offer a source of stable (if not enormous) income that can be a lifesaver for people (often women) working from home, in their spare time or seeking an outlet for their creativity.  It is fully in the knowledge of this value that I say some of them can also be unstable, not follow the industry norms, and be not only unprofitable but in some circumstance causing the author to experience a net financial loss–and to never actually get their book in the hands of readers that would have appreciated their work.

So I guess what I am saying is that an anthology can mention the infirmities that come with age, and still inspire a positive understanding and acceptance of aging.  And I can mention the meagre sales and uncertainties that are part of publishing with a small business and yet still support small presses–which I so fervently do in having publishing in excess of 20 novels and novellas through several of them.

So maybe I do need to add to the cause of pragmatic positivism somehow–and actually come up with some positive affirmations for cynical bastards.  Like maybe: trying to help strangers is more important than being liked by them, or speak truthfully (but retain a good lawyer) or try to to do the right thing, but don’t expect applause.   If you have any other suggestions that fits the general theme of being positive without being credulous, please let me hear them.  Because although I know what I am trying to do here it is proving a lot harder that I expected.

The preface of Dr Smith’s Smaller Classical Mythology (a.k.a. A Smaller Classical Mythology: With Translations from the Ancient Poets, and Questions Upon the Work) states: “The following work has been prepared by a lady, for the use of schools and young persons of both sexes.  In common with many other teachers, she has long felt the want of a consecutive account of the Heathen Deities, which might safely be placed in the hands of the young.”

What do I think about this, let me count the thoughts:

#1: So Dr Smith’s Smaller Classical Mythology was not written by Dr Smith.  The work was in fact “drawn up under his superintendence” at which point he put his name not only on the cover, but in the title as it is printed on the spine of the book.

#2: The female author of the actual volume is not even named.

#3: The involvement of a lady writer is implied as helping in removing (I imagine with some difficulty) the sexual references from ancient Greek mythology.

#4: No wonder there is an association between women and book writing.  Because during a period ranging roughly from the mid-eighteen century to the Edwardian period when this book was published many women from reasonably well-off or traditionally higher class (but sometimes impoverished) families were very well educated–but barred from almost every profession.  The only way a woman of education but little fortune could earn money was as a teacher or as an author (or in this case, both).  And the feminization of these professions extends to some extent to the present day.

#5: At least 10 editions were printed within the life of the books copyright.  I wonder how much the “lady” was paid for her scholarship and authorship.

#6: I would love to somehow, no matter how belatedly, discover the name of the actual author of the Smaller Classical Mythology, but does anyone know how this could be done?  Because the copy I own (a 1905 10th edition) credits only William Smith as the “editor” and other version available online (i.e the 1882 original) simply state the book is “by” William Smith.

 p.s. 5 bonus points for anyone who can come up with the author’s name.  (Current point tally–Judi: 1, Boone: 1).  You my exchange 100 points for a toaster, or one of my scissor sculptures–whichever you prefer.

So what did I read last night?  After reading the foreword of Wish I Could be There by Allen Shawn I got started on The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. (You might be more familar with her previous novel The Lovely Bones).   As I read this novel I had two thoughts.  And I don’t mean I had one thought and then they other–they were repeating on a more-or-less endless loop.

 #1 This Woman Can Write!

I mean, dude.  I don’t mean just make sentences.  Her characters seem like real people before the end of the first sentence.  Her observations about the details of life are so well observed and so well expressed.  She used a nonlinear approach were the central story bristles with flashbacks without so much as a scene break–and yet at no point did I find this confusing or annoying.  As I said, she can write.  She writes female characters who are fully faceted and innately fascinating.

#2 Could this Story Get any More Depressing?

I only read three chapters before I realised I needed to get some work done on my rewrites for a non-fiction book that my alter ego, Dr Emily, is writing.  But I am pretty sure the answer to this question is: yes.  The book opens with the main character in a rather depressed, irrational state smothering her very elderly and ill (essentially moribund) mother… to death.  (So, not a romantic comedy then.)  The only reason I can relate to the main character at all is the aforementioned #1: the quality of the writing and especially the nuanced characterisation

I am not ‘genre bound’.  Despite facing the assumption many times that, depending on the assumpter, I read only serious scientific stuff, or I read only romance and porn, I am actually rather widely read (as I do, obviously, say so myself).  But I must admit that I do not all that much modern literary fiction outside of magical realism and novels with strong gay romance themes.  I don’t see this as innately a problem.  Literary fiction is just a genre, one amongst many.  There is no rule that says you have to read a lot of it.

 It may be a new idea to a few readers that literature is a genre rather than some kind of fiction nobility, but really, it is.  It is a shelving genre, is is characterised by subject and to some extent style, and it has a particular fan base and some writers that specialise in it.  It is not innately better written or more cleverly plotted than, say, science fiction (Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler spring to mind). 

So what is the content of the literary genre?  I was told once, and continue to believe, it is this: literary fiction is making a comment about the human condition.  This definition has been kicking around for a while and I don;t know where it originates from.  But I recent saw it expressed by Brett Lot, Editor of Best Christian Short Stories, as: “literary fiction confronts us with who we are, and makes us look deeply at the human condition.”

So  Fine.  But am I the only one to notice that the vast majority of recently (e.g. last 20 years) literary fiction is a complete downer?  The main comment it seems to be making about the human condition is that the human condition sucks.  And no matter how beautifully this sentiment may be expressed there is only so many times I want to read about it in any given year.  After all, the human condition is actually a pretty mixed lot and the literary obsession with banal but poetic depression punctuated with brief glimpsed of bliss and ending with some disilluminating ambiguity doesn’t connect much with what I want to ponder about life, the universe, and day-to-day existence–or what I think the human condition really is.

And besides–if it is somehow compulsory to read literature to be considered a fully-rounded human being, there is always the classics.  Apparently if genre fiction remains popular for over 50 years it becomes ‘literature’ regardless of authorial intent (kind of like receiving and honorary degree for just being good at what you do).  So, Jane Austin and the Brontes, here I come….

I have noticed that of the three topics I am blogging about, one seems to be receding into the background: books. The main reason for that is very simple: I haven’t been reading anything. Work has been particularly ‘worky’ lately. Then there is my writing, the internet stuff, walking a hyperactive dog, a massive “spring” cleaning that was long over due, that monster that stomped on my apartment, um… yeah okay. Those are excuses.

We have time for what we make time for. And I don’t know about you but I was always exasperated by those writers (usually young, usually male) who wanted to be an author but had not interest in reading. That is a bit like being an anorexic chef, possible but hardly a good idea. Nor is spending your entire childhood reading enough to hold you for the rest of your life. Reading is part of a lifestyle, and for a writer it is an essential part.

So anyway, I am going to sign of now and read a book.

For a bonus point: name the monster that destroyed my apartment (shown above)

 The repeated objection to all kinds of sexual art, fiction and entertainment is that it turns people into a sex objects.  I have never really understood the visceral horror this thought seems to provoke.  Because when a person is depicted in writing or art, this is the creation of an object.  And if this object is intended to be erotic, it is a sex object.  In fact, even a performance piece like a dance is an object in a sense–it is something a person does with a specific intent, not their identity (or lack thereof).

It seems that the accusation stems from magical thinking–that erotica is a kind of voodoo doll so that however the work is view, so to will the model be view.  And not only the model but entire demographic groups.  Getting turned on by a photograph of a women (for example) we are told, immediately leads to seeing women as entities that exist entirely to provide sexual gratification.

In contrast, the average human being is considered to comprehend the separation between fantasy and reality by the age of 7 0r 8.  This by the time any person is purchasing a pin-up, an erotic romance or a pornographic DVD they should have a pretty good grasp on the fact that roles, characters and depictions are in fact objects.  Objects that are sexual are sex objects–and there is nothing wrong with that.

 What people think about other people may or may not be significantly effected by what the read, view, create or are otherwise exposed to.  Research results are mixed, pretty weak, and subject to interpretation.  But I truly think that most people realise that a poster of a cute guy may be a sex object, the person is not.  A Chippendale dancer on the stage is offering a sexual display, in the supermarket he is just some guy, a stranger that you should leave alone. He may, depending on your taste, be seen as sexy, but not as an object–and to me that is the end of it.  No matter who is depicted or how.

 If a person models for, or creates, sexual depictions they create objects for consumers.  If consumer doesn’t know how to treat people with respect, that is their problem, not that of the erotica industry.  Sex objects surround us: neolithic statue, Roman mosaics, Victorian oil painted nudes, Penthouse, Raging Stallion DVDs, erotic romance books, Victoria’s Secret catalogs.  Blaming erotic products for a lack of empathy or sexual selfishness is not different to blaming rock and roll for delinquency or masturbation for mental deficits.  Inaccurate, archaic, insulting and an excuse to offered to people to excuse actions that are entirely their own while condemning the erotics industry based on outdated implicit attitudes–that sex is a sin.  Not just a religious sin, but a feminist sin, a sin against literature as the only true genre, a sin against fidelity. 

My position about sex objects is that they just are.  They are objects and they are sexy and there is nothing more to it than that.

In movies and literature casual mention is made of the femme fatale, but have you every thought about what this means?  The femme fatale is a dangerous woman.  Dangerous, implicitly but specifically, to a man (the ‘hero’).  She is seen as sexually attractive, but she is aloof and does not allow the man to reliably establish or control a relationship.  Indeed, if a relationship occurs she normal initiates it–she is thus labelled a ’seductress’.  And by entering this relationship the man puts himself in a dangerous situation.  Whether or not the dangerous is directly a result of the woman’s intent does not seem to factor into whether she attracts this label. 

Across history strong-minded men have been sexually magnetic, have seduced women, and in doing so have endangered them–at the very least by ruining reputations, but also potentially spreading disease, causing unwanted pregnancy, or drawing the attention of a villain to the woman and putting her life directly at risk–sometimes to directly exploit her by learning her secrets. They have, for the most part been call rakes and womanisers, normally with more admiration than horror. These men are essentially thinking of themselves, of the women they want, of their own goals and desires, and of using women to further these goals and desires. They are putting themselves and/or their cause first. In many cases, from Casanova to James Bond, these characters are heroes.

The femme fatale is simply a female character who puts her own needs and goals first. She may exploit the hero or she may be indifferent to his needs, in some cases characters called femme fatalesaren’t  trying to harm the hero at all they just fail to sacrifice themselves to protect him. The femme fatale is, in essence, a virile action hero with a vagina.

With time powerful horror/villain figures have cross the line to become potential hero material. Stories have been written or filmed with heroes who are vampires, thieves, assassins, or even serial murderers. With time, perhaps, the same will occur with the same for the femme fatale. The women who is who pursues her own agenda, and who is sexual–not to be gratuitously manipulative, or to be a sex object, or due to some deviant nymphomania–but simply because she is if she wants to have sex, she has sex–and if she sex will further a goal, she will use it.

It is time we saw more female characters who act as a hero, or as a villain, but always as herself and for herself–as the protagonist not the ‘love interest’ who is judge only in accordance with her suitability for that role for the hero’s self-interested point of view.  Goodbye femme fatale; enter pussy puissant.  The action hero who is a woman, without any conflict between the two roles.  The female hero (’heroine’ becoming as obsolete as ‘actress’) who is sans bikini, bitch-personna, or drag-king roleplay.   She may have a love interest or a sidekick, but will never be one.  Her time has come, but can you guess which characters I think fit the bill?

p.s. bonus points for identifying the character below.

When I was going through high school the New Zealand government was really pushing a campaign where the slogan was “Girls can do Anything”.It was a good idea to try and open up the vocational opportunities for women, and get girls to think about the issue when they were still at school deciding whether to pursue math and science subjects.

However the campaign quickly started producing some annoying side effects.  Because I scored well in chemistry, several teachers made a concerted effort to convince me to continue to to take chemistry.  But chemistry did not, for the most part, interest me–and other subjects did.  And while I was good at chemistry I was equally good at those other subjects.  The implicit message seemed to be that if, as a girl, I could excel in a traditionally male-dominated discipline I was under an obligation to pursue it. 

I get a similar feeling every time someone sees me reading a romance and expresses surprise.  Or they find I write romance and ask me why–as if, given that I am a reasonably bright professional women, an interest in genre romance is an almost inexplicable aberration.  Yes, I can and do read literature, scientific non-fiction, technical manuals and epic poetry and ancient Greek plays.  I also read westerns, thrillers, romance, fan fiction, comic books and erotica. 

 I don’t feel the need to justify my interest in romance.  Girls can do anything.  Girls can read anything.  Girls can write anything.  The operative word her is anything–including romance, stories with the goal of sheer gratuitous entertainment and various “chick” genres.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with chick stuff.  In fact, isn’t suggesting that an intelligent woman should not be interested in traditionally feminine genres and vocations actually reinforcing, rather than challenging, the deeply embedded-sexism that is still clinging to our culture?