Dilemma
of the Feminine
by Eleanor
Bowman
In
the 1970s, when NASA spacecraft performed
docking maneuvers in orbit, the Apollo and
Saturn modules consummated their couplings
without the aid of a very large (but quite
simple) male plug and female socket. The
Soviet space agency of that same period
equipped its Soyez vessels with a
male-female interlink almost identical to
NASA's. However for the linkup between
Apollo 18 and Soyez 19, in July of 1975,
U.S. and Soviet aerospace engineers
designed an incredibly complex (and
inefficient) set of docking clamps that
bore no resemblance to the genitals of any
known sex. This was necessary for one
reason only: on that historic "first date"
between the two rival space agencies,
neither participant was willing to take
the "female" role, which would require its
spaceship to be penetrated by the other
nation's "male hardware.
[Excerpt
from a letter from F. Gwynplaine MacIntire
printed in the February, 2000, issue of
the Atlantic
Monthly]
I
do not claim that my childhood was in any way
typical. I grew up an only child in a family of
adults. No doubt I was some sort of aberration,
since not only the topic of reproduction, but
reproduction itself, was apparently frowned
upon. In addition to my mother (mother of one)
and grandmother (mother of two), the influential
women in my mother's family included four great
aunts -- five if one included my great aunt
Martha who was married to my great uncle Horace
-- and only four out of the five had given birth
-- to one child each, all of whom were grown. On
my father's side, my grandmother had had four
children, but I was the only grandchild, my
father's sister and brothers having had no
children at all. The only reference my mother
made to childbirth was that thankfully she was
knocked out which was OK with her, she really
didn't want to know anything about
it.
The
women in my mother's family understood at some
deep, unarticulated, unconscious level, that to
be valued by the men who had access to and
control of resources and who could ensure their
survival -- rich men -- they had to put as much
distance between themselves and their "animal
femaleness" as possible; in short, they had to
transcend their femaleness and all those
disgusting associations with female animality
and female reproductive behavior. They had to
transcend these behaviors because they had no
cultural value whatsoever. They were instinctive
behaviors, associated with the animal world,
unattractive, whereas they, white women of the
South, had to be attractive to
survive.
They
accomplished this distance from femaleness,
oddly enough, by choosing to be "feminine."
Femininity had to do with artifice and beauty
and charm; femaleness had to do with
reproduction and domestic labor. Feminine women
were decorative and never hardened their soft,
slender hands with real work. Females, on the
other hand, were household drudges. To be valued
by the men in their world, these women were
supposed to transcend their femaleness. They
were feminine; they were "ladies," they were
"girls." One never used the insulting terms
female or women in reference to them. Only by
distancing themselves from their female bodies
and from their reproductive work could they have
any real value.
One
way they could do this was by unloading their
"women's" work onto the shoulders of black
"women" -- who symbolically carried their bodily
femaleness for them. Therefore, most of the
physical labor -- washing and ironing, mopping
and dusting, and some of the cooking -- was done
by hired black "help." This situation did not
signify any special affluence, nor did it have
anything to do with a heavy load of housework;
it was just the norm for white middle class
women in the South in the first half of the 20th
century.
For
example, when I was a little girl, my
grandmother had two laundresses who came once a
week to run the dirty linens and clothes through
the washer in the basement, hang it out on the
lines, and then iron the dresses and shirts and
run the sheets through the mangle. In addition,
she had a live-in cook-housekeeper. All this to
help her look after one man and a two-bedroom
house. My grandmother had domestic interests,
but those interests could only be properly
exhibited in household management -- even though
there was not much there to manage.
My
maternal great aunts distanced themselves even
further from the domestic. They were all
musical, playing the violin, the piano, and the
harp. I was closest to the two aunts who were
the pianists -- one of whom also wrote music and
read Virginia Woolf and e.e. cummings. In the
midst of this frenzy of artistic activity, the
duties of the domestic life were pretty far down
on their list of priorities. But what concern
was that to them? They, like my grandmother, had
"help."
However,
over the years, as it became more and more
difficult to "get good help," these women were
often "forced" to do their own housework. But,
to maintain the illusion of their femininity and
the distance from their femaleness, they did
their women's work secretly, behind closed doors
with shades drawn, so no one would ever know --
it was as unspeakable as sex -- and believe me,
when I was growing up, sex was unspeakable. And
although their houses were as well-kept as their
bodies, I never once caught them "in the act."
For these women, doing housework was clearly
shameful -- a disgrace.
Another
way to combat their natural femaleness was to
make everything about themselves as man-made and
artificial as possible. If they were naturally
dark, they became blondes; if blonde, they
highlighted and darkened; if hair was straight,
they curled it; if curly, it got straightened.
They permed and dyed, plucked and penciled,
covered their faces in foundation, painted their
lips and nails, encased their breasts and hips
in stays and elastic and their legs in nylon,
anything to distract attention from their
underlying natural bodily selves. And over all
this, they were always dressed "to the nines"
(whatever that means). I never once saw them
unless they were in "full body
armor."
This
striving for a totally artificial, unnatural,
disembodied existence extended to all bodily
processes. I and other women of my mother's
family were not supposed to defecate, urinate,
menstruate, or fornicate -- which, of course, we
did. Evidence of any of these activities was a
dreadful embarrassment.
In
spite of the fact that women's embodied
femaleness and its associated work was not
valued and that these women themselves clearly
bought into or accepted this devaluation, I
don't think it had ever percolated up to their
conscious minds. I don't think they had a clue
as to why they did what they did -- or that they
ever questioned the wisdom of it. And, in spite
of the fact that these women were some of the
most intelligent and able human beings I have
ever known -- any man's equal in that regard --
they never even considered leaving the home and
seeking value in the world of men's work. They
apparently perceived that to be the most
socially degrading of all -- almost a fate worse
than death.
My
mother was the most perfect example of the
disembodied feminine I have ever encountered.
She had been brought up in almost perfect
ignorance of her femaleness. Menstruation came
upon her with no warning, nearly frightening her
to death, and, up until the time of her marriage
at age 21, she had no idea of how babies were
born. It fell to her husband to explain it to
her. She told me later that she had imagined the
process as being somewhat like a persimmon
bursting open. Understandably, that also
terrified her. How to explain such willful
ignorance and determined lack of curiosity?
Perhaps this lack of interest was part and
parcel of her total denial that she in any way
participated in female animality.
For
her, to be a woman was to be perfectly sweet and
perfectly ornamental. In her eyes, my father's
role was to provide the perfect setting for her
sweetness and ornamentality. Unfortunately, he
fell far short of this goal. With changing
economic conditions -- both national and
personal -- my mother had to do most of the
housekeeping and child care herself. These were
not tasks she took to gladly, and, as a child, I
felt the degradation she felt when faced with
mopping a floor or cleaning a bathroom. She was
also "forced" to work outside the home when my
father ran into financial difficulties. This was
not looked on as being liberated, but as being
greatly "put upon."
Her
marital relationship was conventional in that my
father was the dominant and "independent"
husband, she the dependent and subordinate wife.
She could never take a step without his
permission. She was the child, the little girl,
and he the adult. This attitude was supported by
my mother's unshakable, traditional Christian
faith. In spite of all evidence to the contrary,
she believed that "God's in his heaven and all's
right with the world" (or that it would be if
everyone obeyed God's law the way she does). Her
faith in God extended to all persons and
institutions in authority (males, of course) in
whom she also devoutly believed, as she truly
saw them as representatives of God on Earth.
This adoration naturally extended to my father
(at least in the early years of their marriage),
which must have made my mother very attractive
to him.
Interestingly
enough, these roles and attitudes were never
articulated and, although my mother complained
bitterly that my father would never do certain
things which she wanted done, she never showed
any inclination to want to "take the reins"
herself; and, although she often complained
about him, she never complained about "men." I
also never once heard my father make any
disparaging remarks about women. Indeed, his
relationship with me, which was characterized by
a refreshing equality, led me to believe that
his behavior toward my mother was a result of
her own ultra-feminine, childlike dependent
personality rather than any negative feelings he
might harbor about women. I think my father had
very ambivalent feelings about women, being
drawn to the childlike femininity of my mother,
yet also valuing a very different kind of woman,
one much more like the women in his family. I'm
also sure that his ambivalence had an enormous
effect on me.
In
contrast to the women in my mother's family,
women in my father's family worked within the
home and outside of it, but the major portion of
the work was done outside. By choice or chance,
they looked to society, rather than the men in
their lives, to give them value. And they
counted on their intellect, rather than
"femininity," to gain them that value. That is,
they counted on their intellect to distance
themselves from their femaleness. Perhaps this
was the only ploy open to women who did not have
the financial means to "hire out" their
femaleness or to spend hours hiding their
femaleness under a cloak of artificiality, but
who were educated and had some pretensions to
intellect. If society valued intellect in men,
it should logically follow that it would value
intellect in women. Having intellects, they used
them to argue themselves to this logical
conclusion. But, like many other women before
and after them, they were gravely disappointed.
A key term of the argument was invisible to them
and everyone else it seems; society values
intellect in men. Being women, they weren't even
in the running.
My
grandmother was "forced" to go to work when my
grandfather died in 1917, leaving her with four
young children to support. My father's sister
graduated from law school in 1929 and worked
both before and after her marriage. My
grandmother, essayist, poet, and valedictorian
of her high school class in Magnolia, Arkansas,
labored as an office clerk for forty years, and
my aunt, even with her law degree, never got
beyond secretarial work. I never felt that
either my grandmother or my aunt really ever
found work which was up to their abilities or
that they ever really enjoyed their employment
outside the home. When my aunt was able to stay
at home, she did.
Oddly
enough, I never heard either my grandmother or
my aunt fault the system. They always identified
closely with men and had a very low opinion of
women -- especially non-working frivolous
"feminine" women like my mother and the women on
her side of the family. Faced with believing in
themselves and devaluing the system or valuing
the system and devaluing themselves, they chose
the latter. Perhaps they told themselves that
their intellect set them apart from other women.
But at some level they couldn't escape knowing
that their low opinion of women included
themselves.
In
all my years growing up around the women on both
sides of my family, I never even heard the word
feminist; I never heard any criticism of men or
the system; I never heard a whisper that these
women ever in any way believed themselves to
inhabit any sort of devalued position. However,
no one had to say anything. Actions do speak
more loudly than words. The fact that my female
relatives put a lot of effort into being
psychological contortionists and bodily
illusionists was not lost on me, and I, too,
began my apprenticeship in psychological
contortion and bodily illusion, settling on an
illusion of ethereal femininity as the most
appropriate for me to strive for. (However,
somewhere along the way, my wires must have
gotten crossed, because in my case, at age 12,
the contortions manifested themselves physically
instead of psychologically in a curvature of the
spine, my body bowing to the patriarchal values
that my mind refused to acknowledge.)
My
liberal arts education only increased my
striving for ethereality. If I had known about
eating disorders, I'm sure I would have become
anorexic in a last, desperate effort to
de-female myself. In chapel, we worshipped the
God of the spirit; in classes we exalted the
life of the mind. I read poetry and pursued
intellectual young men. I aced all the courses
-- at least the ones I cared about. I was
mentored and encouraged. Through my intellectual
talents, I transcended femaleness, but I also
maintained my femininity; I got to wear pretty
clothes and go out with boys. I had the best of
both worlds. My success only increased the
exaltation of the intellectual at the expense of
the domestic, the spiritual at the expense of
the physical, and -- still unrealized by me --
the male at the expense of the female. I never
doubted the reality of the liberal image of a
transcendent unsexed androgynous God and the
transcendent unsexed human made in "his" image.
When
I graduated in 1963, I had gotten and was giving
a very mixed set of messages. I was
male-identified in that I identified with my
father rather than my mother; he was clearly the
superior partner in my parents' relationship; he
was logical where my mother was illogical; he
was competent where my mother was incompetent,
etc. I was male identified in that I was a
product of a liberal arts education which
celebrated the glory that was Greece and the
grandeur that was Rome and all the humanistic
(male) virtues. I was male-identified because I
valued the life of the mind over the life of the
body and had spent four years honing my
intellectual skills.
Yet
I also made a project out of being feminine --
the artistic, eccentric, bohemian feminine --
putting enormous care into hair and dress (a
studied "sweet disorder") and making sure that
my intellectual skills were only used to make me
more interesting and entertaining to men --
knowing that the value of my intellect for them
primarily resided in the fact that I had the wit
to value theirs. But why was I doing this? What
did I want?
Well,
I know what I didn't want. I was absolutely
terrified of making the wrong marital choice and
losing myself in the vortex of domesticity. One
talented young philosophy student ruined
everything when he sweetly told me that when we
were married he would make sure I had a washer
and a dryer so I could take could care of him.
Clearly he didn't know who I was. That was the
end of that relationship. A promising young law
student took me home to visit his parents and I
witnessed his mother rising early to cook
breakfast for the men of the family, going to
early mass, taking a bus across town to work,
and returning home early enough to provide a
variety of baked goods for her husband and sons
at dinner. She also stood during meals and
served, having eaten earlier herself. Her
husband rose much later, ate what she had
prepared, went to the heated garage and drove
three blocks to work. It was a truly horrifying
experience.
Like
many young women who had grown up in the
sexually repressive 50's, my sexuality was
terribly conflicted. When I had started dating
seriously in college, my father took me aside
and sternly warned me that the family honor was
in my hands and that if I ever got pregnant I
would find myself out on the street. I didn't
speak to my father for three weeks after this
admonition. How could he underestimate me so?
Didn't he realize that I didn't need his warning
to understand the seriousness of the offense of
pregnancy outside of marriage. No one had to
convince me that pregnancy spelled disaster --
and it was something that I wanted no part
of.
I
had known this for some time. The Florence
Crittenden Home for Unwed Mothers was across the
street from my grandmother's house in Little
Rock, set far back from the street and
surrounded by a high wrought iron fence topped
with spikes. As a child, I had spent hours in
fascinated horror, straining to get a look at
these disgraced young women whose lives were
irretrievably ruined. I assumed that these
stained young women were incarcerated for their
crime and, since no one ever talked about "it,"
no one told me any different. It was a terrible
fate to contemplate.
In
addition, I believed that only virginal purity
or the illusion of same would catch the kind of
man I was interested in. But to be popular, one
had to be sexually attractive, and to continue
to get dates, one had to engage in a certain
amount of sexual activity. And to make matters
worse, one's own body seemed bent on betrayal.
The trick was to be able to sexually attract
males, to engage in sexual activity which skated
perilously close to disaster, but to stop just
short of risking pregnancy.
What
I did want desperately was to be valued -- but
valued how? By a man or by men (society in
general)? As far as I could see, there were only
two paths open, and neither was attractive. The
first one meant assuming the role of the
"socially acceptable feminine" -- that of "the
lady" as represented by my grandmother and great
aunts or the more updated version, the
"perpetual girl," as exemplified by my mother.
The second one meant assuming the role of ersatz
male.
The
seriousness of this dilemma (and the
consequences of choosing wrongly) was brought to
mind when I read that one of George Sand's
lovers, awakening early to find her up and
crouched before the fireplace engaged in the
task of starting a fire, was so repulsed by
seeing her in this unfeminine pose and engaged
in this unfeminine activity that he leapt out of
bed and left her on the spot. Even George Sand
had to deal with this??!!
In
choosing the "feminine" path to female worth, a
woman was viewed as being true to her nature by
denying her femaleness -- by being true,
instead, to the feminine ideal. The feminine is
neither male (human) nor female (animal). It is
something totally artificial and man-made. It
has been made by men for men, in much the way
that Eve was constructed from Adam's rib. A man
could safely be intimate with this artificial
being and maintain the illusion of his own
transcendence.
Understanding
what was valued and not valued and never
questioning the rightness of this social
evaluation, I decided to opt for the feminine,
but not the female. The world I was striving for
was the world of poetry and art and music -- not
loading the washer or hanging the clothes on the
line -- not changing diapers or staying up all
night with crying infants.
But
in opting for the feminine I felt like a
complete fraud, for my femininity was as
completely superficial as it was artificial.
And, although I achieved the outward illusion of
the feminine -- or at least I think I did, I
certainly tried hard enough -- inside was a
different story; I had been so intent on
emptying out and eradicating my femaleness that
it had never occurred to me that what I was
doing was emptying out my self as a woman.
Inside I wasn't anything at all.
Eleanor
Bowman, 59, recently graduated from Vanderbilt
Divinity School with a Masters in Theological
Studies. She is divorced, the mother of two
sons, 21 and 24. Her mother who is 93 lives with
her. "I describe myself as a post-Christian
ecofeminist cultural critic."
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