What do we gain from our situation, to make it worth collaborating so keenly? Why do mothers encourage little boys to be noisy, while little girls have to keep quiet? Why do we still admire a son who stands out from the crowd, while heaping shame on a girl who draws attention to herself? Why teach little girls obedience, pride in their looks, and deception while male kids are shown that the world is their oyster, at their command, theirs to decide and choose? What is so beneficial to women about the way things are that we accept it so easily, and pull our punches so softly?
The thing is that those of us at the top are those of us who have become the allies of the powerful. These are the women most able to keep quiet when betrayed, to stick around when scorned, and to otherwise flatter the male ego. The women most able to accept masculine domination are obviously those given the top jobs because it is still men who admit or exclude women from the corridors of power. The most stylish women, the most charming, the friendliest to men. The women we hear speaking are those who know how to get on with men. Preferably those who think of feminism as a secondary cause, a luxury. Who aren't going to get too worked up about it. And good-looking to boot, because the most important thing is still for us to be pleasant to behold. Women in power are the allies of men, those of us the best able to submit, and to smile in their subjugation. To pretend that it doesn't even hurt. The others-the enraged, the ugly, the strident-are stifled, dismissed, and invalidated. Non grata amongst the snobs.
I've got a soft spot for Josee Dayan, a cigar-smoking woman, butch film director. I tingle with pleasure every time I see her on TV. Because all these other females you see-even the novelists, journalists, sportswomen, singers, chief executives, producers-feel obliged to display a hint of cleavage, a pair of earrings or a nice little hairstyle as proof of their femininity and pledges of their obedience.
We're all familiar with the syndrome of the hostage who identifies with his captor. That is exactlyhowwe have ended up policing each other, judging each other through the eyes of those who keep us under lock and key.
Around the age of thirty, when I stopped drinking, I started seeing analysts, healers, and other wise men. They didn't have much in common, except that they kept telling me, "You must reconcile yourself with your femininity." I always spontaneously replied the same thing, "Yeah, I haven't got a kid, but ..." and each time, they interrupted me, this wasn't about motherhood. This was about femininity. And what did they mean by that? I received no clear answer. My femininity ... I am not a pig-headed person, especially if something is said several times and with great conviction and obvious kindness. So I tried to understand. Sincerely. What I was lacking. I had the feeling I was saying everything, not trying to be more like this or less like that, being unrestrainedly myself. So what was this femininity business? The setting in which I saw these therapists was always comfortable, and I would be feeling calm and well disposed. I am not a full-time lout. In fact, I'm rather shy and retiring; since I've stopped drinking you couldn't even say I'm noisy. Of course, sometimes I crack up and go haywire. Admittedly in a not particularly feminine way although it does happen, surprisingly, to be quite effective. But on these occasions they weren't talking about restlessness, or aggression, but "femininity." Without being any more specific. I thought a lot about this. Did it mean I should be less intimidating, more reassuring, more accessible, maybe? Because even if I wanted to, that would be tricky. In the end, being the girl who made Baise-Moi is a kind of joke. Sometimes, it's simple, I feel as if I'm Bruce Lee. As he described in interviews how men were constantly tapping him on the shoulder, trying to pick a fight. They wanted everyone in the neighborhood to see that they were strong enough to beat Bruce Lee. In my case, it's the tiny-dicked local morons who feel obliged to challenge me, just to show their buddies how they dared put me back in my place. I won't go into what happens when these idiots realize that the chicks they'd like to fuck would all rather sleep with me. That really sets them off. Is it my fault if they've got less sex appeal than a rusty old Renault? They seem to think that if I didn't exist, they'd have bigger pricks. Not worth arguing about. In any case, from that point of view it doesn't matter whether it's me or some other woman, it's never enough. Whatever you do, it's always too much for the neighborhood dickhead and he has to get involved, to put you back in line.
The less manly the guy, the closer the watch he keeps on women. And conversely the more confident a man is, the better he can handle attitude in women, and female virility. That's why you're never as strictly and stridently called back into line as by the upper classes, where male masculinity is far from self-evident and females are required to play it ultra-submissive.
The "happy slapping" sequences they show over and over again on TV, in which some kid has got a friend to film him slapping a girl two feet shorter and a good deal lighter than him so he can show off to other guys, are presented to us with great distress and consternation, as if to say, "These Muslims, with their polygamous fathers, they've no respect for women! We've had enough." Except that this is precisely what a third of your white male literature describes. Showing off about how you've used your dominant status to abuse girls you've chosen from among the weakest; describing how you cheat on them, fuck them, humiliate them to look good in front of your friends. A cheap triumph. It would be so much more entertaining if the happy slapper bust up a guy four feet taller than him, so much more amusing if you laid into the fiercest of the tribe, or the worst-tempered woman. But that isn't what spurs them on. Cheap triumph, the weak man's strength. Look what they do to women in a third of contemporary white films. The triumph of the coward. Men must be reassured-that's what it's all about.
After several years of genuine, sincere, and rigorous research, I have come to the conclusion that femininity is the same thing as bootlicking. The art of servility. You can call it seduction to make it sound glamorous. But it is very rarely a skilled sport. For the majority of women, it's the simple habit of behaving as an inferior. Walking into a room, checking whether there are men in it, wanting to please them. Not talking too loud. Not being forceful. Not sittingwithyourlegs splayed to be more comfortable. Not speaking with authority. Not talking about money. Not wanting to claim power. Not wanting a position of authority. Not seeking glory. Not laughing too loud. Not being too funny. Pleasing men is a complex art, which requires that one should eliminate anything remotely concerned with power. While this is going on, men or at least those of my age or older-don't have bodies. They are never old, or fat. Any booze-reddened, bald, fat-bellied, dodgy-looking idiot can comment unpleasantly on a girl's appearance if he doesn't find her classy enough, or obscenely if he is gutted by not having any chance of laying her. Those are the advantages of his gender. They try to pass off the most pathetic dick-simpering as generous and impulsive. But few men are Bukowski, for the most part they are just your average fuckwit. As if, just because I possess a vagina, I might imagine I am as desirable as Greta Garbo. Being insecure-now that's femininity. Unassuming. A good listener. Not too intellectually impressive. Just cultured enough to understand what some asshole has to say. Chatting is feminine. Anything that doesn't leave a mark. Anything domestic, in need of redoing on a daily basis, unnamed. No great speeches, no great books, no great things. Little things. Sweet. Feminine. But drinking: manly. Having buddies: manly. Clowning around: manly. Earning lots of money: manly. Owning a fast car: manly. Slouching around: manly. Sniggering as you smoke joints: manly. Being competitive: manly. Being aggressive: manly. Wanting to fuck loads of partners: manly. Responding with violence to something that threatens you: manly. Not taking time to spruce yourself up in the morning: manly. Wearing clothes because they're practical: manly. Everything that's fun to do is manly, everything concerned with survival is manly, everything that gains ground is manly. Things haven't changed much, these last forty years. The only obvious progress is that we can now support them financially. Because the daily grind is too restrictive for men who are artists, thinkers, complex and terribly fragile cr
eatures. The minimum wage is for women to earn. Of course, it's very important to also understand that being dependent can make a man violent or unpleasant. Don't think it's easy not being the one who brings the bacon back to the home when you descend from the great hunters. For men, life is cool with us spending our time trying to understand them. Because great despair has a gender, too. What we practice is plaintive complaining.
I am not saying that being a woman is in itself a painful constraint. Some women do it very well. It's the obligation which is degrading. Of course the great seductresses are right up there in terms of reputation. Figure skaters are pretty cool, too-but no one expects us all to be figure skaters. Horsewomen have their own special charm-but you don't get given a saddle and bridle the moment you want to exist.
Consider this: cable TV documentary on suburban girls. More precisely, on their disturbing loss of femininity. You see three good-looking girls swearing like troopers as one of them tries to grab hold of someone in a stairwell in the hope of administering a good slapping. Bad neighborhood, idle youth, kids who know they probably won't fare any better than their parents, that they'll get fuck all. Images-always a bit disturbing for someone my age-of a France that has become a thirdworld country. Extreme poverty juxtaposing obscene wealth. What is worrying the commentators, and they declare this without a trace of irony, is the fact that the girls never wear skirts. And that they swear. This genuinely surprises them. They complacently imagine that little girls are born into some kind of virtual rose garden and should naturally grow up into peaceful, gentle adults. Even in a hostile environment, where you'd better know how to headbutt if you want any kind of life at all. Women should take care of the nice things in life: watering flowers while humming sweetly. The only thing that really bothers these guys in everything they've recorded is that these women aren't like the women uptown, the kids in the magazines, the university girls. The journalist who wrote the script thinks that the kind of femininity that surrounds him is something that comes naturally, that femininity is not a question of race, of class, of political construction. He believes that if you leave women to just organically become what they should be, in a most respectful, poetic manner, they will turn into the kind of women who work and have dinner with him: wellbehaved, white bourgeois ladies.
It was not only my own deep nature, in its difference, roughness, aggression, and power that I began to subdue. I also learned to disown my class origins.
It wasn't a conscious decision. More a strategy of social survival. Restraining my gestures physically, opting for gentler movement. Speaking more slowly. Making time for things that weren't frightening to others. Going blonde. Getting my teeth done. Coupling up, with an older, richer, better-known man. Wanting a child. Behaving as they did. After the scandal of the film. Blending into their surroundings. Taking time to suss things out. Stopping drinking-as much to keep my looks as to avoid the disinhibiting effect of alcohol. The masculine behaviour that goes with it: sleeping around, clapping your neighbor on the shoulder, being rowdy, laughing too loud. I returned to my category, as defined by my new friends. Wore pink, and sparkly bracelets. Did my best to fit in. Really. It wasn't by accident. I consented to become a weaker person.
Luckily, along came Courtney Love. In particular. And punk rock in general. A taste for conflict. I rebuilt my mental health, in the shadow of that blonde persona. The monster in me had retained its grip. I got dumped, I didn't have a kid. The day I turned thirty-five, still dying to have one. Not sure if I was looking for proof, for something to show the world I was a woman like any other, since they were always telling me that I "hated all men." I had been hoping to prove them wrong. What a strange idea. Trying to prove that I was a loveable woman. Who even had kids. As the journalists recommended. But we lead the life that is meant for us, because none of that really worked for me. I am not sweet I am not lovable I am not a middle-class girl. I get hormonal highs that send me into peaks of aggression. If I didn't come from the world of punk rock, I would be ashamed of what I am. But I do come from the world of punk rock, and I am proud of not fitting in.
The first task of the woman writer is to kill the Angel in the House.
-Virginia Woolf, "Professions for Women," 1931
ON THE INTERNET ONE DAY, I COME ACROSS A LETTER WRITTEN by Antonin Artaud. A break-up letter or at least a letter aimed at making space, addressed to a woman he claims he cannot love. I do realize that from the inside his love affair must be complicated. But what you get in the end is this: "I need a woman who belongs solely to me, who I can find in my home day and night. I am desperately lonely. I am no longer able to walk into my room alone at night, without finding any of life's amenities at hand. I need a domestic life, and I need it now, and a woman who will constantly be looking after me in the smallest of things. An artist like you has her own life, and cannot do this. What I'm saying is terribly selfish, but that's how it is. I do not even need this woman to be very beautiful, nor do I want her to be excessively clever, and especially not to think too much. It will be enough for her to be fond of me."
Since averyyoung age, I have loved inverting things, just to see. "I need a man who belongs solely to me, who I can find in my home day and night." It has a very different ring to it. Man is not supposed to stay at home, nor to be possessed. If I should nevertheless need or desire a man who was mine and mine only, I would be urged from all directions to moderate my wishes and, on the contrary, be entirely his. It's not the same thing. Nobody has received the political assignment to sacrifice his life in order to sweeten my own. The usefulness factor is not reciprocal. In the same way I could never write, in selfish good faith, "I need a domestic life, and I need it now, and a man who will constantly be looking after me in the smallest of things." If ever I do meet such a man it will be because I have the means to pay his wages. "I do not even need this man to be very handsome, nor do I want him to be excessively clever, and especially not to think too much. It will be enough for him to be fond of me."
My power will never be built on the allegiance of the other half of humanity. One human in two has not been brought into the world in order to obey me, take care of my domestic life, bringup my children, please me, entertain me, reassure me about the power of my intelligence, provide me with rest after battle, worry about feeding me correctly ... and thank God for that.
In women's literature, examples of insolence or hostility toward men are extremely rare. Censored. I come from the sex that doesn't even have the right to be disgruntled. Colette, Duras, Beauvoir, Yourcenar, Sagan-a whole history of female writers who all took care to prove their harmlessness, to reassure men, to beg pardon for the act of writing by repeating how much they love, respect, and cherish men, and most of all don't want-whatever they might write-to create too much trouble. Because, as we all know, if you don't, the pack will certainly sort you out.
1948. AntoninArtaud dies. Genet, Bataille, Breton: men are crashing through the barriers of the expressible. Violette Leduc starts writing what will become Therese et Isabelle. A masterpiece. As soon as she reads it, Simone de Beauvoir writes, "As regards publishing this: impossible. A story of lesbian sexuality as coarse as Genet."
Violette Leduc tones down the text, but Queneau refuses it immediately, "impossible to publish openly." She has to wait until 1966, when Gallimard eventually decides to publish. I am of this sex, the one that must keep quiet, that is kept quiet. And that must take it gracefully, once again proving their harmlessness. Otherwise, you're wiped out. Men know on our behalf what we may say about ourselves. And if women want to survive, they have to learn to respect this order of things. And don't tell me that things have changed and that this is no longer the case. Not to me. What I put up with as a woman writer is double what any man would have put up with.
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