Eliza is a feminist. She has been for as long as she can remember. Thinking about it, she figures it is a product of her upbringing and family dynamics. She is the baby sister of two older brothers and there have been times when she found there was no choice but to adapt and measure up. Eliza has either fought for equality or celebrated her diversity as a female to even the odds within the family structure. Instant tears came in useful when she was fast losing ground, for example. When all else failed, a well-planted kick brought her eldest brother to his knees every time. It was worth it, even when he made her pay for it later.
Her Mother is passive aggressive and her Father; well Eliza once worshipped him and was going to marry him someday. It is irrelevant now. Her family was torn to shreds years ago and she remains determined to journey through this life armed with whatever it must take any modern day symbolic warrior woman to succeed.
Eliza has always loved men but she cares deeply for women. Their welfare and safety prey upon her when she encounters it and she respects them greatly. She is one, so it seems natural that she seek truth in their honour. Eliza knows she is conditioned to fit a prescribed gender role and actively rejects the idea of a patriarchal society. She despises its long history of the degradation of women and feels angry that women’s issues are so medicalized as to be totally ignored. She is autonomous, political and holds ideals that address her inner sense of right and wrong. She will always love men but she does not insult other women over them.
Eliza is very incongruous. She has never quite worked out why she is the way she is. No doubt her Father is responsible somewhere in her ****ed up psyche. Despite her belief system, despite that she is a strong voice on issues relating to inequalities, Eliza finds herself in a submissive state whenever she interacts with men sexually. She is driven to serve them because inwardly she ‘knows’ it to be the natural order of things. One might say men are Gods and she cannot get satisfaction unless she has reassured them of their status. She is left to question which parts of her are actually genuine.
When Eliza was little, her Mother would leave her and her two brothers in the bath together. Her older brother used to force her head under the water so her legs would flail up in the air and open wide. It was terrifying as she hopelessly struggled underwater certain in the knowledge that she would drown. Trapped in her water dungeon, Eliza’s brother would give her fanny relentless hard punches or karate chops before releasing her. She would come up gasping for air, not knowing whether to be grateful to him that he had allowed her to live or indignant about his assault on the very core of her femaleness. Other times when he was scared of the dark, he would force her to go to the toilet with him and make her sit there perfectly still while he pissed over her back and in her hair. He wasn’t a monster, just a bully. Eliza was mindful to always aim her kicks at his groin as carefully as she could.
When her parents split up, her Father would visit infrequently, until one day he stopped coming all together. At age ten Eliza had to find her own way to Rockingham if she wanted her Father’s affection. Today, Eliza suspects there is a pattern somewhere. They say parents are in the bedroom watching you. Her Father was busy watching other women, which according to Freud, could be the problem. She simply does not know.
Eliza is no psychiatrist so she cannot explain the flushed, choked up feeling about men and their mastery over her. She thinks it is about power but such a word is so obscure now as to blind sight her senses. Eliza knows she has a certain degree being female and all. Boys have been jacking off at a moments notice over girls since time began. Everyone knows that. She does not want to be powerful over men. When Eliza is with a man, she feels a burning desire to serve him. When she was younger, a boy had generously given her a lesson in the art of fellatio and told her that cum is ‘good for your complexion’. A thousand girls must have been told this lie and she doubted even then he was right but Eliza obediently swallowed every drop of his prescribed dosage and she has never suffered from pimples or skin problems since. Driven to do as she was bade, Eliza had no wish to question such God like authority.
As a teenager, she thought boys were strange specimens. They acted tough yet revealed their pathetic, inadequate groping neediness, which desired her to do all sorts of stuff to them. Their passion was reached within seconds, as they clutched on to her desperately in their throes of hot sticky, jerking ecstasy then, as it subsided, they collected themselves and proceeded to act tough again. Eliza watched fascinated as boys battled with power over girls. They hated, feared and loved them all in the one extraordinary cumulative feverish moment. Decorum and social rules of engagement ensured that Eliza behaved always as if she first needed to be conquered and claimed as a prize if only to quell the Hercules egos of boys. Humankind has been re-writing this corny theme for as long as boys have been jacking off.
Eliza’s self-mortification screamed out in her head; You stupid, dumb *****! Don’t ever do that again. Men have no authority over YOU! Her prim, modest Mother had spun the same airy-fairy bull**** too. ‘If he loves you, he will wait’. When the chips were down though, Eliza’s need to give God-like status to a boyfriend kicked in and completely engulfed her and the interaction. Her prudish Mother never told her about that part. Somehow, Eliza’s acquiescent self managed to dictate how things should be.
Her ex-partner had been the crowning glory in ‘clarifying’ her real position. He had tweaked her nipples while she was performing oral sex and murmured softly in her ear one day ‘You belong there’. When he touched her clit, she came so hard she almost wet herself. He held her off always after that, making sure that her throat had run dry before he sought satisfaction in his own authority over her. He played with her like a toy using his **** like an alluring bait to whet the appetite. Like a classic movie line Eliza was cued to say ‘Please Sir, I want more’ and he would subject her to episodes of submissive pleasure or pain. Eliza knew well his abuses of power but it was immaterial to her. Regardless of the stakeholder, she still needed to be in her rightful place. If he thought he had cast some magic spell over her, he was sadly mistaken. He had merely gazed into a mirror and saw the reflection of his own supersized male ego. From the very beginning, Eliza’s sexual self had placed her at the feet of men.
Eliza is totally out of sync with her feminist ideals. Privately, it is the only time when she knows without argument that men rule the earth. They all should be great, strong, heady and masterful and Eliza has a drive to defer to their inner strength and pay homage to them just as the laws of nature dictate.
It is because of her Father probably and how he had ****ed off so early in her life. Eliza had no choice but to seek his love. In a world that demands she fight and love them in a public and private sphere, men remain to Eliza an enigma. She wonders how both arenas of her life can co-exist when they seem to be so utterly at odds with each other. She weakly attempts to overcome it and to this extent she fantasizes about being powerful over men but each time it is without success. Somewhere along the plot, Eliza loses the clear, definitive meaning of power, she stumbles from her haughty attitude; her main motivation yanked sharply out of focus till she realizes once again, her true self….
Eliza will never be powerful. She knows structures often exist within superstructures, yet her place remains unclear. What is lucid is Eliza is a feminist who instinctively likes to help people, and seeks justice for all. It is an integral part of her nature. She cannot imagine any more cohesion in her holistic life than that.
Eliza is under the impression her life should gel together beautifully and be with as few bumps as possible, the challenge being to iron them out along the way.
She believes the Honourable Mike Brady developed this sunny-walk-in-the-park theory.
