One of the things that is often overlooked in debates about the sexual objectification of women in the arts, media and society, is the fact that it does not just attempt to impose a restrictive model of femininity and a norm of female behaviour. It also - just as insidiously - constructs male identity, determining how men should view women, as well as understand their own selves and their relationships to others.
Thus the so-called lads' mags - to take an example that has been much discussed of late, thanks to a campaign co-organized by UK Feminista - do not merely objectify the girls stripped naked on their covers and within their pages; they also subjectify their adolescent male readers and provide a masturbatory and misogynistic channeling of what is wrongly assumed to be an instinctive and innocent flow of desire.
Lawrence was only half-right when he said that women need to follow ever-changing patterns of femininity and to constantly adapt themselves to male fantasies and theories of womanhood. Young men also seek codes of conduct to which they might subscribe and conform; they learn how to sit, how to stand, how to walk, how to talk, how to love, how to hate ...
The truth is there are no real men any more than there are real women. Gender is entirely a matter of cultural artifice and whilst the patterns we construct of manhood and womanhood may sometimes be very beautiful and sometimes truly grotesque, they're never "perverted from any real natural fulness of human being". This is simply a piece of idealistic naivety: for no such underlying metaphysical essence exists.
And so the real question is: what models of manhood and womanhood are we going to create as a society (if such models there must be); who will determine them; how will they be circulated and encoded; and what variations and infringements will we allow?
I would hope that we might do better than what we are presently stuck with; tired and lame patterns of men and women within a very regrettable system of dualism that shame us all in their emotional and imaginative poverty.
Note: See D. H. Lawrence, 'Give Her a Pattern', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (CUP, 2004), pp. 160-65.
" ... what models of manhood and womanhood are we going to create as a society (if such models there must be); who will determine them; how will they be circulated and encoded; and what variations and infringements will we allow?"
ReplyDeleteThis begs the question of what this thing called society is if it is not the opinions, needs and desires of the few in commanding positions of power. Surely, no-one determines our sexual identity but our own selves in defiance of the claims of others. Then the negotiation with others can start since we will be sterile if we do not negotiate ... but to give the game away to 'society' at the start of the game is the act of someone who is too bored or distracted to play. Such a person is defined by others. They have ceased to be at some fundamental level.
It is not for feminists to define the sexual desires or pleasures of young men as good or bad according to their revised social norms. The young men can choose their own position on sexuality. The interesting part comes when young men and women negotiate shared territory. Too far in one direction or the other and nobody has pleasure and nobody breeds happy and secure children.
Modern young men tend to go for the quiet life and put up with feminist nonsense, not realising that feminism represents a struggle for power and not an attempt at truth. They cede ground. They become weak. Paradoxically, they lose their attraction precisely because they did not fight back. Sex should be a struggle of equals since concession destroys the erotic charge necessary to its fulfilment. To replace a patriarchy with a matriarchy is no victory for anyone.
But you are right about the dualism ... any man or any woman can choose one of many sexualities at any time in their life as befits their desire.
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