DSK

Dominique Strauss-Kahn fell out of the news for a while, so maybe now I can write about him.  He induced such rage in me when he was indicted I could barely spit.  Also, women who support him induce rage in me, when they talk about seduction, and about how wonderful flirting is, and how a man is more attractive when he acts this way.  So, now that the case is going through its slow grind of the mills of justice, maybe I can think about the rage.

It all centers on that moment: the moment when you, a woman, think you're there for one thing, and a man tells you you're there for something else.  It can be physical force, or just coercion.  I've never been raped, and never had to fight off a physical assault, so I'll stick to the part I know, which is enough to bring up bile in my mouth.  It can be a comment or suggestion out of the blue -- when you're at work, say, focusing on whatever project you're doing, and some guy you're working with says he thinks you'd look cuter in a shorter skirt -- after all, he says, your legs aren't bad.  Or maybe at a job interview, the guy interviewing you doesn't offer you the job but asks you out instead.  And there it is: the powerlessness.  One moment, you were in control of your image, of what part of yourself you chose to present to the world; next minute, some guy has decided to ignore your choice, and reads you only in the sexually objectified way he's more comfortable with.  For that man, at that moment, his choice of how to look at you is more important and more legitimate than yours.  He has the power to override you.  And of course he's right -- the social consensus gives him that power.

Seduction and flirting are wonderful, but they can only happen between equals.  If a man flirts with you and you can't tell him to piss off because he's your boss or because he'll make fun of you, it's not fun -- it's actually a denial of your agency.  A woman who decides to flirt with a man at work is not treated the same way -- her flirtation is seen as an attempt to gain power through a man, to sleep her way to the top.  It's not seen as an expression of her desire at that moment; nor does the community grant her the power to turn the man she flirts with into a sexual object (thereby negating any other aspect of his personality).

Real seduction can't operate without equality; power inequality is only sexy when it's consensual.  Men like DSK play it very safe: they don't seem to want the real tussle between equals that takes place when two people with equal power choose to play sex games.  Flirting and seduction between two subjects (rather than subject/object) is a whole different deal: it's an arena in which both people get to choose what they will do, and to stop it if they want.  It's fun to be in play, to get a charm check, to put yourself out there to whatever degree you want in order to feel attractive -- it's fun to be a subject, not an object.

The rage I feel when I think of DSK is the rage of obliteration -- the soul-crushing moment when someone tells you they can negate who you are and what you want; when they can impose their desire on you and get away with it; when you are told -- if you dare complain or reject the advances -- that you're not attractive anyway and that no one really wants you.  This is the obliteration of female agency, which we put up with in varying degrees and thus also feel self-loathing for our own complicity.

And here's the final kicker, that makes the story itself even worse -- the media commentaries that seem to take seriously as explanation for DSK and all the other philandering men the notion that men are more highly sexed than women -- that men are in fact almost a different species than women (here we go, back to "Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus").   As a scholar of eighteenth-century studies, I am perplexed by the currency of this peculiar cultural concept: it's an idea that eighteenth-century people think about because it was invented then -- you can watch it come into focus over the course of about 60 years, from 1720 to 1780, and you can track the social and political reasons for that invention: it was very convenient for the rise of capitalism, for example, to re-imagine women as "naturally" virtuous and desexualized.  It's peculiar to watch the old, earlier concept of women as inherently lustful disappear and be turned on its head, after it had lasted from Ancient Greece to the eighteenth century.  Now we have the new enduring myth that girls and boys are deeply different, sexually and otherwise, and it's rearing its ugly head in new arenas: want an explanation for what boys are no longer performing well in school?  It's because school systems are designed for girls, who are completely different than boys, so boys can't possibly learn.  These are really dangerous ideas that make it even harder to think about real problems -- problems, for example, such as the inflexible, dysfunctional models of masculinity that are offered to modern boys.  Problems such as economic, social, and power inequality between men and women.  Which brings us back full circle to DSK.

SEEING SARAH PALIN

A couple of days ago I was jogging with my dogs on the boardwalk at Liberty State Park.  There's a little bridge there that leads over to Ellis Island -- not for the public, just for cops and people who work there.  Ever since 9/11 they've had a K-9 stationed there, sniffing all the cars.  So as I jogged up, there were two SUVS waiting while the dog checked them out; the back window of one of them was rolled down, and there were three people with video cameras pointing into the back window -- not press, just people (maybe Sarah's PR website chroniclers?).  As I drew closer, they pulled away from the car, and there I was looking straight in the open window at Sarah Palin, from ten feet away.  And I said nothing -- couldn't think of a thing to say.  Then up went the window, and off she went over the bridge on her "family vacation" tour of American monuments.  Surreal to see her there with no mob of security, no press, no nothing.

This really got me thinking -- first, about why Sarah Palin is such a compelling figure to me, and second, why I didn't have anything to say.

The truth is, I'm jealous of Sarah Palin: she's not a good girl, she's not book-smart, and she doesn't do her homework -- and she doesn't care.  She doesn't play by the rules and wait for people to give her the reward she deserves for being good and obedient.  She thinks her feelings are really, really important -- and that everyone else should take them seriously too.  When people criticize her, she doesn't go into a corner and hyperventilate while tears run down her cheeks-- she gets mad and lashes back.  Nothing stops her from going after what she wants.  I'm jealous of her.  I want to be like her.  I want amazing self-confidence and to be utterly sure that I'm right.

I still haven't quite put my finger on why Sarah Palin provokes this in me, and not, say, Michele Bachmann.

So why does it matter that Sarah Palin only cares about her own feelings?  One day in heart circle a wise faerie said something really interesting: "I had all these bad feelings, and I decided I wouldn't let them define me."  Years of therapy can be a good thing -- it's really helped me -- but therapy makes you lose sight of the fact that you in fact do not have to be defined by your feelings: you can have them, acknowledge them, and then decide to move on in a different way.  Such a simple, radical proposition: I choose not to allow bad stuff from the past rule my current actions.  Sarah Palin is a genius at tapping in to people's feelings -- that is, the feelings of the kind of white people who assume that they were entitled to run America, and who are upset because they now feel it's being taken away from them. (Let's not get into the issue that the people who really run America still do, and don't show up in tea party hats on TV.)  The very bad feeling of having what you thought was yours seem to slip through your fingers is powerful; in a utopia, we would have institutions to help people work through those feelings of loss and rage -- churches or schools that offered real tools for delving into "fear of the Other" and "over-entitlement."  But we don't: instead we have a 24-hour news/reality cycle that makes quiet self-reflection impossible and uncool.  The current climate makes feelings seem like the only real thing there is, and no one asks us to ponder the wisdom of letting our feelings dictate our lives.

Which brings me back to the question of how to talk back to Sarah Palin.  I'm an academic: for years I've been trained to footnote everything -- check multiple sources, compare notes, draw slow conclusions, cite my sources so others can check my train of thought.  Every time I make a big statement, I qualify it, out of habit: nothing's simple.  Which is why no one ever listens to academics.  So when I think about the most bothersome element of Sarah Palin's rhetoric -- her claims about American exceptionalism -- I can't figure out how to turn my concern into a sound bite.  Sarah, I want to say, surely you understand that the concept of American exceptionalism is rooted in racism, imperialism, and genocide?  And that we can't reclaim the concept for contemporary use simply by ignoring the past?  Let's talk about why Americans think God is on their side when they win, and why God wasn't on the side of the slaughtered Indians or the slaves.  ... Now, how am I going to turn THAT into a snappy retort so pointed that it will make Palin pull up short and re-envision her own worldview?  But if there's no speech that has this power, then why am I wasting my time as an academic?

You see my dilemma.