Originally Posted by The Unnamable
It looks like I’ve upset a few people yet again. First of all, Rachel – you know that I don’t mean it when I play Devil’s Advocate. Regit challenged someone to speak for the man so I did. As Jackyyyy points out, I was quoting (Woody Allen) when I said, "as empty experiences go it is one of the best." There is certainly some truth in it but that isn’t how I lead my life. It’s freely available here around every corner but I spend my time on things like this Forum instead. As meaningless experiences go, it’s not so bad. Gozeta considered the lines I quoted from Dylan’s Idiot Wind to be the views of someone who will never meet a good woman. This is to make the same mistake that some appear to be making with the poem – it’s not how I feel all the time, just at certain moments. Besides, and I hope this appeases Petrarch’s Love as well, Dylan goes on to say,
“Idiot wind, blowin' thru the buttons of our coats
Blowin' thru the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind, blowin' thru the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.”
Incidentally, I’ve just spent the past few weeks in the company of a remarkable woman who is nobody’s fool and loves Dylan. She knows too much to argue or to judge but wouldn’t take kindly to me evaluating her worth according to how much she holds society together through her feminine qualities. Yes, she’s a woman but she is a thinking person in her own right first and foremost.
Nevertheless, I do think that the respective idiocies of men and women are different. I am more disappointed by the latter because I hope for better. I have heard many, many women deriding and criticising the kinds of attitudes espoused by the man in the poem. Those same women are then so flattered when the attention is directed at them that they suspend their objections and capitulate.
On the question of patronising attitudes to women, I find it alarming that no woman can see my point. The idea that women exist to check the behaviour of men and to provide a nurturing effect is simply another form of patriarchal control. Men define you and evaluate your worth according to how it suits their agenda. It doesn’t view them as people in their own right but as some kind of emotional plasma that lubricates society’s cogs. My comment aimed at women is singled out as one-sided and so unbalanced. Had it been a (supposedly) positive comment like Virgil’s, I suspect that I would not have been challenged. Make negative generalisations about women and you are guilty of lacking balance; make positive generalisations and you are a gentleman. If you want genuine equality, all such generalisations should be considered inaccurate. I guess the inconsistency proves my point.
This is the key for me – the implicit assumption that men want sex and women either consent or refuse to consent to that want. Do women have no desire of their own? Why is it that you might hear a woman say to her badly behaved partner, “right, that’s it – no sex for you tonight,” but you seldom hear a man saying the same to a badly behaved woman? Why can’t women desire loveless sex in the way men do? Why does such sex have to be considered shallow? The desire from many women seems to be that men see things the way they do (in some comments this is assumed to be more ‘meaningful’) but is this any different from men wanting women to see things their way? As ever, we are simply witnessing an ideological battle.
I hope it’s okay if I don’t choose one of your reasons and suggest one of my own. At the risk of sounding like a new age prannet, I would say ‘respect’ and a mutual desire for a companion with whom to explore the ‘million-petalled flower of being here.’
Exactly. You prefer being flattered, even though the idea of what constitutes a ‘loving family member’ is a predominantly male ideological construct. And it might come as a bit of a shock to you that, by and large, the ungentle sex prefer crisps. :D
Finally, I find it interesting that Donne’s viciousness in Love’s Alchemy doesn’t appear to have offended anyone as much as either my comments or KAP’s. He is saying that once you have had your wicked way with a woman, she is nothing more than a mummy. Please note, umbrage grabbers, that it was Donne who said it and not me. He could obviously teach me a thing or two about charm.
