Mimi
Page 26
Enough lip service to women’s freedom and equality—just go ahead and empower them! Don’t creep up behind them on the street. Help them. Give women priority, give them a fair chance, give them the benefit of the doubt. Stop stereotyping them from birth to death. Stop criticizing and complaining about them. Stop glorifying that minute proportion of women chosen to act as examples of womanly perfection to beat other women with. Just enrich them all.
And stop taking up all the room on the couch! That couch was made for ODALISQUES.
Enough motherin-law jokes too, and all the jovial sneers at women. These are the condescending chortles of the slave-owner. Enough fatherly disapproval of daughters. ENOUGH. Dad, you’ve had your day. Show them you regret their being terrorized, show that you don’t condone the massacre of women all around us. Show them some respect. Stop sitting on your slave-owner ass talking the talk, and put your money where your mouth is: start freeing those slaves, man! GIVE WOMEN THE MOOLA.
I used to scorn the ancient womanly pursuits, like my mother’s bottling and baking. A cake, or a jar of jam, seemed feeble and futile efforts to me (compared to my father’s hotshot job at a gum factory!). I scorned domestic comforts like quilting and cleaning and childcare. I scorned cushions! But I was really just scorning femaleness, that half-buried force for good in the world, and those lowly female concerns like life, pleasure, and well-being. I had no respect for them (but I ate the jam!).
GIVE WOMEN THE MONEY. Respect will follow.
During and after the revolution there will no doubt be “pockets of patriarchy” (male tyranny): bankers banking on their banks, toy-boys toying with their toys, farmers who won’t hand over the deeds to the land. Vulnerable women, targeted by resentful men, may be persuaded to divert their newfound wealth to them. Don’t let this deter you. As with speed limits, you only need the majority of people to go along with the idea for it to work. Women will gradually get braver about keeping the cash.
Mayhem isn’t amusing anymore; we’re all sick of slaughter. The Odalisque Revolution is a last heroic stand against the male death wish. Therefore, its aim is an unobtrusive, undisruptive, nonviolent hand-over of power. The beauty of the Odalisque Revolution is its gentleness, and its voluntary nature. Giving your money away can be an entirely intimate, intuitive, personal, private, even clandestine, process.
In time, the Odalisque Revolution may be refined to become a truly cooperative redistribution of wealth—not communism perhaps, but commonism. Once capitalism, patriarchy, and war have been superseded, women will be free to rethink the entire monetary culture that has ruined life for everybody, and new designs for human happiness may be instigated. But that’s up to them, not us. All we have to do is clear the way for women to act, and assist them in carrying through their wishes.
Puccini’s Rodolfo would have given Mimì all his money (if he’d had any) but in the end, it’s Musetta who buys Mimì her muff. Let’s do something right for a change:
GIVE WOMEN THE DOUGH!
6. INSTRUCTIONS TO MEN OF FEELING
When combined, in order of appearance, the first letters of each item above form an apt final instruction, dependent of course on the woman’s consent. (H.H.)
$ GIVE women a chance: first chance. Never mind maintaining the “Supremacy.”
$ RELINQUISH any lingering sense of superiority over women. It is wholly erroneous.
$ ALLOW women to decide the future.
$ SCORN the mockery of women, the denial of women, the judging of women, and discrimination against them.
$ PRIORITIZE women’s welfare, women’s concerns, and women’s interests.
$ HAND OVER the dough (but without fanfare or self-aggrandizement). Regularly transfer any funds you can muster to a woman or women of your choice, and help any woman you can to acquire more money, so as to improve her social status and the status of women generally—any increase in women’s status will lead to greater safety for us all.
$ END all war, which has always been used to oppress women.
$ RESIST all impulse to bully, baffle, belittle, and buffalo women.
$ NOMINATE yourself to redress the injustices done to women and all the errors, misconceptions, crimes, and outrages committed in the name of your terrorist organization (patriarchy).
$ OBJECT to being a terrorist and belonging to a terrorist group (men). Your organization has pestered half the human race for thousands of years through violence, coercion, exploitation, and selfishness, helped along by financial, political, religious, medical, and psychological pressure. It has denied women rights, opportunities, respect, sex, peace, and pleasure. It has even denied them pie!
$ WITHHOLD your critical assessments of women’s looks, clothes, plans, aims, snacks, foibles, fripperies, and book choices. THEY ARE NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
Warning: For formal deeds and transfers of assets in the USA you will have to go to the County Clerk’s office. Retirement and insurance policies can be transferred only by written arrangement. Gift Tax is an impediment if you are handing money over to your wife. This will be taxable.
The OR (Odalisque Revolution©) takes no responsibility for individual consequences resulting from the policies proposed above such as outrage, affront, altercations, disinheritance, blackmail, family jokes, and jealousies which may result from your reallocation of private funds to a woman or women of your choice. It is up to each man individually to decide how best to accomplish this financial readjustment. Be tactful, and good luck!
ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS (TO BE DECIDED UPON BY WOMEN ONLY):
1. The immediate confiscation of all firearms and other assorted weaponry.
2. The automatic confiscation of the financial assets of any man convicted of committing any crime against a woman, women, or children, or violent crime against anyone. (Proceeds to go to women’s charities, such as the Bee Hanafan Foundation.)
3. Legal redress in a case of violent attack will no longer depend on the victim’s willingness or ability to press charges. All violence is a crime against society as well as the individual: the society can take the perpetrator to court on behalf of the victim.
4. Public and private disparagement of women to be made a crime subject to automatic fines. Likewise, incitement of violence against any person.
5. Reclassification of all violence, including war, as a crime against humanity.
6. Reclassification of the nuclear power industry as a crime against humanity.
7. The UN to be made the only body entitled to use force, and then only in direct relation to the procurement of peace. (A system of checks (or chicks) would have to be put in place to ensure the UN itself did not become a tyrannical military force set on global tyranny and Esperanto exams.)
8. All investment in defense programs, space programs, genetically modified food, oil exploration and drilling, fracking, strip-mining, and other polluting processes to be diverted to social improvement projects, health care, education, the arts, and environmental repair.
9. Encouragement of childlessness, through government incentives, so as to reverse population growth.
10. Education in female sexuality, and the place of women in history and prehistory, for all! Also, a working knowledge of gardening, first aid, midwifery, weaving, ceramics, painting, sculpture, music, literature, cooking, brewing, and contraception.
11. Non-compulsory sex camp for teenagers.
12. Car manufacture to be phased out. Cars eventually to be banned. Public transport and bicycles to be free. Emergency initiatives to save the environment to be set up.
13. The natural world to be placed under protective orders of all kinds.
14. Donkeys never to have to work again.
15. Everything essential to human health and happiness to be free: air, water, basic foodstuffs, energy, medical care, contraceptives, tampons, Band-Aids, aspirin, etc.
16. A cap on all income, with all further earnings above that level to be diverted to women’s charities (such as the Bee Hanafan Foundation)
.
17. Gradual abolition of TV, porn, pop music, computers, the internet, and other forms of mass hypnosis and enslavement. Also, energy-saving light bulbs.
18. Revision of the calendar to incorporate the lunar month: thirteen months in a year.
19. The abandonment of nations and borders: we are all citizens of the world.
20. Membership of the Odalisque Revolution eventually to be made a compulsory requirement of world citizenship.
*********
So ends The Manifesto of the Odalisque Revolution.
*********
O.R. CERTIFICATE OF MEMBERSHIP
ISSUED BY HARRISON HANAFAN, TEMPORARY ACTING HEAD
THE MEA CULPA DECLARATION
I, the undersigned, confess to having, consciously or not, overtly or not, been part of a worldwide terrorist conspiracy that has constrained women’s lives through centuries of violence, repression, distress, and discouragement.
I recognize that this treatment of women has been a ploy in a power game—the result of male cowardice, stupidity, perversity, and corruption—and that the status of men has been artificially exalted by it.
I acknowledge that vast numbers of women have been unfairly treated throughout the period of male rule. I therefore apologize for any tyrannical behavior of my own, and that of other men, and pledge to do my utmost to prevent such injuries, insults, and injustices from occurring ever again.
I apologize for stubborn male resistance over the centuries to women’s ideas, thoughts, decisions, and remarks—in the home, at work, in business, in the arts, in education, and in government. In light of this loss of female input over centuries, I now agree to abide by the decisions women make, without resorting to mindless criticisms or meaningless reflex contradictions and derision, no matter how wacko or whimsical the ideas expressed by women may seem to me to be.
I renounce male power and privilege, on the grounds that they were unsportingly won. I wish to relinquish all remaining economic, social, and political advantages I may have obtained, either as a mere consequence of being male, or because of my active participation (now regretted) in misogynist acts of terror, either overt or underground.
In aid of this, I have transferred and/or will transfer, and will continue to transfer, my financial resources to a woman or women, with no strings attached.
By such means, I hope to foster a more humane environment, in which women are less likely to be mistreated and maligned.
It is my hope that the hand-over of power and property to women will ultimately lead to a transformation of society, benefiting people, animals, and the natural world, as well as ensuring a future for human culture, and the preservation and continuation of artistic endeavors.
I believe in the pleasure principle, and therefore renounce the male work ethic as an indecency imposed by men who wished to profit from enslavement and subjugation. I hereby attest the inalienable right of all creatures to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
NAME:
DATE:
NB. For eBook readers wishing to apply for membership of the Odalisque Revolution, please download and print the Mea Culpa Declaration from the Bloomsbury website (www.bloomsbury.com/author/lucy-ellmann), sign it and send it to me, Harrison Hanafan, care of the publisher, accompanied by a letter of no more than two hundred (200) words, detailing the ways in which you have shared your wealth with women. If your letter is deemed satisfactory the certificate will be given the official Odalisque Revolution stamp of approval and returned to you. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope, and $5.00 (or the equivalent in other currency) in cash, money-order or check, to cover costs.*
Display your O.R. Certificate on the wall of your office, or over the fireplace at home! Expensive mugs and T-shirts available (front: “WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?” back: “THE ODALISQUE REVOLUTION!” or vice versa). bumper stickers also (profits to go towards the O.R. cause):
ODALISQUE REVOLUTION
HONK IF YOU’RE IN!
WE’LL ALL HAVE CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS
WHEN SHE COMES!
(Thank you for your support—H.H.)
* Please make out any checks to “Lucy Ellmann”. In fact, just send all your spare cash to Lucy Ellmann, care of the publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following people have helped me, whether knowingly or not:
John Aberdein, Leila Aboulela, Arlene Addison, Dawn Ades, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Jason Alexander, Woody Allen, Martin Amis, Malcolm Andrews, Sarah Anthony, Andrew Appleby, Sigrid Appleby, Edward Ardizzone, Michael Aris, Claire Armitstead, Caitrin Armstrong, Andrea Arnold, Aaron Asher, Linda Asher, W. H. Auden, Jane Austen, Johann Sebastian Bach, Emma Bainbridge, Karin Bamborough, Joann Baney, Angela Banner, Sarah Barlow, Roseanne Barr, Cecilia Bartoli, Jayne Baum, Alida Becker, Samuel Beckett, Ludwig van Beethoven, Kathy Belden, Steve Bell, Ludwig Bemelmans, Marina Benjamin, Lauren Berlant, Silvio Berlusconi, Thomas Bernhard, Harriet Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Quilly Bevan, Arwen Bird, Catherine Blackledge, Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, Julia Borossa, Louise Bourgeois, Seàn Bradley, Johannes Brahms, Beth Brandes, Blake Brandes, Rand Brandes, Alfred Brendel, Joseph Brodsky, Maria Brodsky, Charlotte Brontë, Charlie Brooker, Jean de Brunhoff, Bérangère Bruno, Thomas Bruno, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Peter Burnett, Christy Turlington Burns, John Burnside, Jonathan Burt, Neil Butler, Al Byrnes, Katty Byrnes, Lydia Cacho, Brian Cain, Alexander Calder, Chris Calhoun, Joseph Campbell, Rosy Canale, Frank Capra, Sorcha Carey, Mosco Carner, Ruby Carnivale, Catherine Carver, Pablo Casals, Johnny Cash, Brian Catling, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Nick Child, Alistair Chisholm, Winston Churchill, Susannah Clapp, Tom Clark, Barbara Clarke, Jeanne Clegg, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Connie Cohen, George Cohen, Paul Cohen, John Collier, Billy Collins, Andrew Conn, Joseph Conrad, Steve Cook, Geraldine Cooke, J. California Cooper, John Cruikshank, Billy Crystal, Barry Cuda, Effie Currell, Anita Cutting, Mary Daly, Larry David, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Gould Davis, Judy Davis, Sue Deakin, Patrick Deare, Patricia Debney, Arthur DeBoer, Eugène Delacroix, Teresa Delcorso, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Janet Dick, Charles Dickens, Eric John Dingwall, Ernst von Dohnányi, Robert Donat, David Downie, Jelto Drenth, Isla Drever, Jane Drouot, Lindsay Duguid, Carol Dunbar, Grace Durham, Aida Edemariam, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Elderfield, Barbara Ellmann, Carol Ellmann, Claudia Ellmann, Doug Ellmann, Erwin Ellmann, Mary Ellmann, Maud Ellmann, Mike Ellmann, Richard Ellmann, Steff Ellmann, Steve Ellmann, Nora Ephron, Barbara Epstein, Ralph Evans, Susan Evans, Carel Fabritius, Wuzzy Fawdry, W. C. Fields, Craig Fitt, John Fitzpatrick, Carol Flett, Caroline Forbes, Becky Ford, Harrison Ford, Tom Ford, Pat Fox, Rob Fox, César Franck, Helen Frankenthaler, Rena Fredman, Maureen Freely, Christine Froula, Sue Fyvel, Muammar Gaddafi, Nancy Gaffield, Chris Gaggero, Janine Garofola, Emily Gasquoine, Felice Gasquoine, Simon Gasquoine, Marion Gatherer, Giuseppe Giacosa, Paul Giamatti, Sara Gilbert, Marija Gimbutas, Lesley Glaister, Amy Goad, David Godwin, John Golding, Benny Goodman, John Goodman, Dolly Gordon, Rosemary Goring, Steve Gough, Gerard Gould, Glenn Gould, Lawrence Gowing, Francisco Goya, Cary Grant, Kylie Grant, Richard E. Grant, Yvonne Gray, Andrew Greig, Dorothee Grisebach, Simon Groom, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lucile Hadžihalilovic´, Ellen Hair, Elizabeth Hardwick, Barbara Hardy, Bridget Harris, Graham Harris, Anjum Hasan, Franz Joseph Haydn, Alfred Hayes, Alethea Hayter, Iris Hayter, Teresa Hayter, William Hayter, Antony Hegarty, Jascha Heifetz, Drue Heinz, Libby Henderson, Paul Henderson, Tilly Henderson, Paul Henreid, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Hepworth, Billy Higgins, Daniel Hilton, Tim Hilton, Alexa von Hirschberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jim Hobley, Julia Hobsbaum, Anat Hoffman, Alan Hollinghurst, Bill Hook, Margot Hook, Christine Hooper, Polly Hope, Bob Hughes, Ishtiaq Hussain, Sara Hussain, Leslie Hyde, Luigi Illica, Caithin Ingham, Lyn Innes, Daniel Irvine, Edith Irwin, Michael Jackson, Waldemar Januszczak, Elfriede Jelinek, Derek Johns, Kate Jones, Justine Jordan, James Joyce, Sebastian Junger, Maira Kalman, Ellen Kameny, Fred Kameny, Sasha Katsnelson, Molly Keane, John Keay, Grace Kelly, Samantha Kelly, Stuart Kelly, Andrew Kemp, John F. Kennedy,
Leslie Kenton, Graham Keppie, Ian Kerr, Nikita Khrushchev, Phil Kiggell, Ralph Kiggell, Tim Kiggell, Mick Kilgos, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard King, Naomi Klein, Chris Knight, Eric Korn, Peter Kravitz, Stanley Kunitz, Patrick Kurp, Aung San Suu Kyi, Donna Landry, Giles Large, Stephen Large, Philip Larkin, Alan Lash, Emma Lazarus, Louise Leach, Mike Leigh, Chris Lehmann, Jack Lemmon, Leonardo da Vinci, Elizabet Leonskaya, Jon Levi, Stephanie Levi, Alan Linsley, Michelle Lloyd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kristen Lowman, Philippa Lowthorpe, Molly Ludlum, Rod Lurie, Wendy Mack, Henry Mackenzie, Shirley MacLaine, Tam MacPhail, Guy Maddin, Katharina Malecki, Nelson Mandela, Ruth Marcus, Filippo Marinetti, Robin Marsack, Masaccio, Georges Matisse, Henri Matisse, Mio Matsumoto, Walter Matthau, Pam Matthews, Tom Matthews, Ann McClintock, John McClintock, Boone McElroy, Joe McElroy, Dick McEwen, Kirsty McEwen, Patty McEwen, Todd McEwen, Kirsty McLachlan, Catriona McLean, Duncan McLean, Fiona McMorrow, Maureen McWilliams, Margaret Mead, Marion Meade, Herman Melville, Alan Michelson, Peter Mickleburgh, Patrick Millard, Margot Miller, Lionel Miskin, Prue Miskin, Kenji Mizoguchi, Gunnie Moberg, Alfred Molina, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Moore, Barbara Mor, Heather Morgan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hugo Muir, Mary Munter, Arunachalam Muruganantham, Vladimir Nabokov, Denise deCaires Narain, R. K. Narayan, Anna Netrebko, Mary Newcomb, Randy Newman, Oscar Niemeyer, Ethan Nosowsky, Clarissa Notley, Barack Obama, Scott O’Dell, Claes Oldenburg, Irene Oppenheim, Jack Oppenheim, Alice Oswald, W. Benton Overstreet, Zac O’Yeah, Anna Pacheco, Kate Parkinson, Li Pasternak Slater, Harry Patch, Luciano Pavarotti, Chris Pavely, Rose Payne, Alistair Peebles, Jacquie Perryman, Makeda Peter, Darryl Pinckney, Ainhoa Pinero, Michael Podro, Mira Pospisil, Kyrill Potapov, Alexandra Pringle, Giacomo Puccini, Kate Pullinger, Sue Purdie, Thomas Puttfarken, Craig Raine, Claude Rains, Sajjad Raza, Peter Redgrove, Christopher Reid, John C. Reilly, Rob Reiner, Rembrandt van Rijn, Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir, Yasmina Reza, Adrienne Rich, Catherine Richardson, Thelma Ritter, Robin Robertson, Earl Robinson, Chris Rock, Derek Rodger, Jane Rogers, Irma Rombauer, Maurog Romer, Michael Romer, Caroline Rooney, Anya Rosenberg, Catherine Rosenthal, Philip Roth, John Rothery, Lynn Russell, Paul Rust, Meg Ryan, J. D. Salinger, Eric Satie, Wendy Savage, Mark Scearce, Simon Schama, Irv Schenkler, Richard Schiff, Michael Schmidt, Franz Schubert, E. F. Schumacher, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Martin Scofield, Janet Scott, Elzie Segar, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Selzer, Frank Shackleton, William Shakespeare, Susan Shatto, Sue Shephard, Kate Shiner, Mark Shiner, Raj Shrivastava, Penelope Shuttle, Simone Signoret, Astrid Silins, Neil Simon, Monica Sjöö, Christopher Smart, Fraser Smith, Graham Smith, Luke Smith, Margaret Smith, Rupert Smith, Valerie Solanas, William Soutar, Mike Spells, Alan Spence, Art Spiegelman, Hilary Spurling, Lorin Stein, Leslie F. Stemp, Alan Stewart, Jimmy Stewart, Igor Stravinsky, Meryl Streep, Rick Stroud, Carmel Sunley, David Swinburne, Ingrid Tait, Alan Taylor, Jason deCaires Taylor, Joseph Than, Franny Tietov, Titian, Leo Tolstoy, Marisa Tomei, Mary Tomlinson, Paul Tortelier, Barbara Trapido, Jeremy Treglown, Saskia Tsushima, Michiko Uchida, Dubravka Ugrešic´, Jean Uppman, Ted Uppman, Joe Val, Lindeth Vasey, Giuseppe Verdi, Johannes Vermeer, Louis Verneuil, Rolando Villazon, Paul Violi, Richard Wagner, Fats Waller, Wendy Waller, Sue Walsh, Janet Ware, Jeff Ware, Mary Warnock, Colin Waters, Roderick Watkins, Doc Watson, Alisa Weilerstein, Mae West, Chris White, Peter Wilby, Laura Ingalls Wilder, John Wilkinson, Sara Wilkinson, Nik Williams, Patrick Williams, Helen Wilson, Shena Winter, Glen Wisdom, Joyce Wisdom, Pieter Wispelwey, Tara Womersley, Sarah Wood, Joyce Wray, James Wright, W. B. Yeats, Emily Yoffe, Henny Youngman, Farhan Younis, Harris Yulin, Muhammad Yunus, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, Nicky Zeeman, Kairen Zonena, and others.