Random Acts of Poetry (and another blog you should read)
The Connoisseuse of Slugs -- Sharon Olds
When I was a connoisseuse of slugs
I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the
naked jelly of those gold bodies,
translucent strangers glistening along the
stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies
at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel
to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt,
but I was not interested in that. What I liked
was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the
odor of the wall, and stand there in silence
until the slug forgot I was there
and sent its antennae up out of its
head, the glimmering umber horns
rising like telescopes, until finally the
sensitive knobs would pop out the
ends, delicate and intimate. Years later,
when I first saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.
This random act of poetry brought to you by my reading of Hugo Schwyzer's post, Shame, mystery, and vulnerability: a very long post about the penis and the longing for acceptance. I found his commentary in this post about male frontal nudity (noodle frontity?) in movies, and how it tends to connote innocence and vulnerability, really fascinating, and some of his other insights even more so. I'll leave you to read it if you want.
I've been bouncing around his blog the last couple of days (many thanks to woolf for the link). Some of the other posts I've found really fascinating and/or relevant to my life and perspective:
“Why is everyone hugging here?” More on hugs, teaching, and boundaries
As a teacher (formally and informally), acceptable amounts and forms of affection with my students can be a matter of substantial consideration. I've often thought that my discipline permits a bit more than others, if only as a matter of stereotyping artsy types as opposed to those in business or the sciences: like Hugo, while I don't tend to initiate contact, I'm comfortable hugging back. Sometimes I think, in our antiseptic, zero-tolerance world, that non-exploitative forms of physical contact are radical acts. I really dig this post.
Bonding through revulsion and desire: a note on homosociality and strip clubs
I've always found homosociality (that is, as per Wiki, "same-sex relationships that are not necessarily of a sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship or others") fascinating, particularly among men. The way people interact with each other in same-sex groups, as opposed to mixed groups, is just so interesting! I find interesting Hugo's suggestion that "The effectiveness of strip clubs as a homosocial bonding strategy is thus linked to two things: the shared sense the male patrons have that their wives and mothers disapprove of their being there, and the opportunity to establish their credentials as 'red-blooded, straight American guys' by sharing the experience of objectifying women’s bodies." Perhaps even more interesting on that note is his related post, “If they could see me now”: sex, homosociality, and the internalized male audience, wherein he comments on the recent Tiger Woods infidelity media circus. In response to the seeming contradiction between a secret affair and the cookie-cutter conventional beauty of Woods' extramarital partners, he asserts, "status-seeking young men don’t just perform for other flesh-and-blood males (fathers, brothers, coaches, Alpha guys) - they perform for the internalized audience of those figures" -- it's an interesting idea, and one I think I can get behind. Cultural expectations get into your head, and they can be awfully persuasive.
Men, women, homosociality and weight
Speaking of cultural expectations, this post is a response to something that made the rounds on the Fatosphere around the same time as Hugo wrote about it. Now, everybody who's known me for more than an hour has probably figured out that the politics of the body -- incorporating size, shape, sexuality, and so on -- is a major area of interest and thought for me, if not the biggest (I haven't quantified). His analysis of the situation may be the best I've read: "Before discussing strategies for tactfully approaching our partners about their weight, men need to cop to their real reasons for wanting their girlfriends and wives to be slender. Many men are reluctant to admit the degree to which their partner’s perceived attractiveness in the eyes of other men bolsters their confidence and their sense of status....The key thing men need to do is get honest about their own desire to use female desireability to establish status in the eyes of other men. And here’s where pro-feminist men can do a terrific service by challenging one another and holding each other accountable for the ways in which we are tempted to use our wives and girlfriends as trophies." This dovetails nicely, if uncomfortably, with the experiences many of us (and by "us" I mean "women who deviate from present-day cultural norms of beauty") have had, of being good enough for the sheets but not for the streets. My brain is having a party.
On seeing the Vagina Monologues again
This is, of course, a topic near and dear to my heart, and Hugo makes an argument similar to the one I made in an undergraduate paper on TVM, back in the day: "I’m not the keenest observer of cultural developments, but having taught gender studies at a community college for nigh-on fifteen years, I do notice a clear increase in the openness my students have in talking about sexuality and their bodies. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same anxieties as an earlier generation; it does mean that they have a more complete public vocabulary with which to talk about those fears. The Vagina Monologues, in its glorious ubiquity, has played no small part in contributing to this welcome cultural shift towards greater openness."
What's in it for men?
I'm just going to quote, this time: "I am a feminist because I want to see a world in which both men and women are free to become complete people. When we shut down women’s anger, women’s desire, women’s impetuousness - we create half-people. When we shut down men’s tenderness, men’s vulnerability, men’s empathy - we create half-people. Half people alternately long for a partner to complete them, and resent the hell out of those partners for being able to do for them what they could not do for themselves. It makes for a pretty miserable existence, characterized by the strange and odious way in which men and women simultaneously long for and loathe each other. That’s not nature, that’s a social construct that needs to be dismantled."
And now I'm going to stop, because I should try to get something done today.
When I was a connoisseuse of slugs
I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the
naked jelly of those gold bodies,
translucent strangers glistening along the
stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies
at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel
to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt,
but I was not interested in that. What I liked
was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the
odor of the wall, and stand there in silence
until the slug forgot I was there
and sent its antennae up out of its
head, the glimmering umber horns
rising like telescopes, until finally the
sensitive knobs would pop out the
ends, delicate and intimate. Years later,
when I first saw a naked man,
I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet
mystery reenacted, the slow
elegant being coming out of hiding and
gleaming in the dark air, eager and so
trusting you could weep.
This random act of poetry brought to you by my reading of Hugo Schwyzer's post, Shame, mystery, and vulnerability: a very long post about the penis and the longing for acceptance. I found his commentary in this post about male frontal nudity (noodle frontity?) in movies, and how it tends to connote innocence and vulnerability, really fascinating, and some of his other insights even more so. I'll leave you to read it if you want.
I've been bouncing around his blog the last couple of days (many thanks to woolf for the link). Some of the other posts I've found really fascinating and/or relevant to my life and perspective:
“Why is everyone hugging here?” More on hugs, teaching, and boundaries
As a teacher (formally and informally), acceptable amounts and forms of affection with my students can be a matter of substantial consideration. I've often thought that my discipline permits a bit more than others, if only as a matter of stereotyping artsy types as opposed to those in business or the sciences: like Hugo, while I don't tend to initiate contact, I'm comfortable hugging back. Sometimes I think, in our antiseptic, zero-tolerance world, that non-exploitative forms of physical contact are radical acts. I really dig this post.
Bonding through revulsion and desire: a note on homosociality and strip clubs
I've always found homosociality (that is, as per Wiki, "same-sex relationships that are not necessarily of a sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship or others") fascinating, particularly among men. The way people interact with each other in same-sex groups, as opposed to mixed groups, is just so interesting! I find interesting Hugo's suggestion that "The effectiveness of strip clubs as a homosocial bonding strategy is thus linked to two things: the shared sense the male patrons have that their wives and mothers disapprove of their being there, and the opportunity to establish their credentials as 'red-blooded, straight American guys' by sharing the experience of objectifying women’s bodies." Perhaps even more interesting on that note is his related post, “If they could see me now”: sex, homosociality, and the internalized male audience, wherein he comments on the recent Tiger Woods infidelity media circus. In response to the seeming contradiction between a secret affair and the cookie-cutter conventional beauty of Woods' extramarital partners, he asserts, "status-seeking young men don’t just perform for other flesh-and-blood males (fathers, brothers, coaches, Alpha guys) - they perform for the internalized audience of those figures" -- it's an interesting idea, and one I think I can get behind. Cultural expectations get into your head, and they can be awfully persuasive.
Men, women, homosociality and weight
Speaking of cultural expectations, this post is a response to something that made the rounds on the Fatosphere around the same time as Hugo wrote about it. Now, everybody who's known me for more than an hour has probably figured out that the politics of the body -- incorporating size, shape, sexuality, and so on -- is a major area of interest and thought for me, if not the biggest (I haven't quantified). His analysis of the situation may be the best I've read: "Before discussing strategies for tactfully approaching our partners about their weight, men need to cop to their real reasons for wanting their girlfriends and wives to be slender. Many men are reluctant to admit the degree to which their partner’s perceived attractiveness in the eyes of other men bolsters their confidence and their sense of status....The key thing men need to do is get honest about their own desire to use female desireability to establish status in the eyes of other men. And here’s where pro-feminist men can do a terrific service by challenging one another and holding each other accountable for the ways in which we are tempted to use our wives and girlfriends as trophies." This dovetails nicely, if uncomfortably, with the experiences many of us (and by "us" I mean "women who deviate from present-day cultural norms of beauty") have had, of being good enough for the sheets but not for the streets. My brain is having a party.
On seeing the Vagina Monologues again
This is, of course, a topic near and dear to my heart, and Hugo makes an argument similar to the one I made in an undergraduate paper on TVM, back in the day: "I’m not the keenest observer of cultural developments, but having taught gender studies at a community college for nigh-on fifteen years, I do notice a clear increase in the openness my students have in talking about sexuality and their bodies. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same anxieties as an earlier generation; it does mean that they have a more complete public vocabulary with which to talk about those fears. The Vagina Monologues, in its glorious ubiquity, has played no small part in contributing to this welcome cultural shift towards greater openness."
What's in it for men?
I'm just going to quote, this time: "I am a feminist because I want to see a world in which both men and women are free to become complete people. When we shut down women’s anger, women’s desire, women’s impetuousness - we create half-people. When we shut down men’s tenderness, men’s vulnerability, men’s empathy - we create half-people. Half people alternately long for a partner to complete them, and resent the hell out of those partners for being able to do for them what they could not do for themselves. It makes for a pretty miserable existence, characterized by the strange and odious way in which men and women simultaneously long for and loathe each other. That’s not nature, that’s a social construct that needs to be dismantled."
And now I'm going to stop, because I should try to get something done today.