Are bad boys simply boys, and bad girls sluts?

A blog friend and I were discussing the appearance choices (clothing, tattoos, piercings, hairstyles) of alternativly minded people when she wrote:  “My back is up by the insistence of the word ‘slutty’—you can’t be seriously telling me you meant that to apply to both male and females surely?”

First, I will only admit to being sexist inasmuch as I regard women as more moral than men due to the fact that evolution made it desirable for males to impregnate every woman in sight, and for females to find a safe environment in which to raise their precious few eggs. Because the male impulse is detrimental to a stable society, it would clearly be for the common good if men were more like women. It would also save countless male politicians and preachers from losing their jobs.

Second, I refuse to avoid gender-specific criticisms simply because they are gender specific and therefore don’t fit the current definition of how I am to think if I value gender equality. We all have a general idea of what slutty dress and behavior look like, and that both are specific to women (sleazy has a somewhat similar meaning and can apply to both genders). Because appearance and body language represent a profound statement of whom we are, I would argue that slutty is an accurate description rather than a sexist insult.

Third, I don’t see the word slut as deprecating of women but only of those women who dishonor womanhood. Manhood should mean more than testicles, and womanhood should mean more that presenting oneself as a likely object with which to have intercourse. I realize that women who present themselves as sluts sometimes do so falsely, whether through naiveté or because they find gratification in watching men slobber, but this doesn’t negate my point. For a woman to dress and behave in a sexually suggestive way constitutes a negative statement about her self-worth whether or not she’s promiscuous.

Until the advent of the birth control pill, women were the guardians of morality because they were the ones who had the most to lose due to pregnancy; hence words like whore and slut applied to them alone. As a result of the pill, the expectation that women take the lead in guarding morality has been greatly lowered, yet it is still true that men behave like so many bower birds in their desperation to win the favor of females. Men simply don’t need to send permissive signals by the way they dress because the term “permissive male” is all but redundant. The same is not true of women, so women of questionable character always have and always will find it desirable to signal their availability. 
 
If a woman wants to excite a man, she need only display her thighs and cleavage, but if she wants to win his respect, she needs to be his moral superior because, to put in bluntly, evolution made men—to continue with my critters analogies—like so many dogs in the gutter (which is why both genders are hard-pressed to sell sex to anyone but men). On this, I would assume that many of those who insist on complete gender equality would agree because theirs is not an equality that cuts both ways, but rather a veneer over their hatred of men. As I see it, equality must take differences into account—the rub is in determining what differences. Does this not mean that I too hate men? No, I hate it that the power of testosterone is so enormous—and so beyond the understanding of women—that it leads men to be as promiscuous as I have been.  

"The time I’ve lost in wooing,

In watching and pursuing
The light, that lies
In woman’s eyes,
Has been my heart’s undoing.
Though Wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorn’d the lore she brought me,
My only books
Were woman’s looks,
And folly’s all they’ve taught me."

—Thomas Moore 1779-1852)

Two other things make it necessary that women assume greater moral responsibility and therefore deserve greater condemnation if they fail to do so. One is that young men, at least, live in such an intense state of sexual arousal that it qualifies as torture, while women have to build into arousal. The other is that women suffer more severe consequences from herpes and pelvic inflammatory disease. It therefore makes sense that, even with the pill, a double standard not only continues to exist, but that it is proper for it to exist because, to repeat myself: (a) women have the most to lose, and (b) women are better able to say no.

Margaret Deland had much to say about gender issues, and they are completely congruent with my own experiences. The following sampler is from her novelette “Amelia,” which appeared in her book Dr. Lavendar’s People in 1903.

“… the companionship of an eminently worthy wife is almost never enough for the male creature.”

“…as every intelligent…woman knows, men like fools; feminine fools.”

“…a man wants more than to just look at a pretty girl across the table.”

“…the male creature, good and honest and faithful as he may be, is at heart a Mormon.”

I have attempted to show why I think it behooves women to put their emphasis on attractiveness rather than sexuality. Even so, there is lot of ground between, on the one hand, taking the position that gender-based realities don’t exist, and, on the other, arguing, as do millions of Moslems, that women are fire and men are gasoline, and women must therefore cover themselves from head to foot so that poor, desperate horny men won’t be forced to rape them. 

The worst thing I can say about what I regard as slutty dress and behavior isn’t how it affects men but what it says about women. For a woman to present sexuality as her dominant visual statement about herself is to imply that her existence is a triviality. In the early days of modern feminism, women who presented themselves as “sex objects” (the term used at the time) were severely condemned by the feminist community, so how is it that we went from that to the current belief that such dress and behavior are not only consistent with equality, they are equality, the result being that people like myself whose views were once consistent with feminism are now labeled as sexist because we don’t agree that behaving like a dog in heat is a noble endeavor?

A movement’s high ideals can quickly degenerate for various reasons. For instance, there might have been a loss of strong leadership; or an absence of focus and clarity once a movement’s primary goals were achieved; or the movement’s original values might have become the status quo; or those too young to remember how hard it was to achieve those goals might take them for granted. So it is that, in my lifetime, Civil Rights and feminism have become trivialized; the demand for freedom of expression has become the tyranny of political correctness; and the Peace Movement has fallen off the radar. When such weakening occurs, superficiality becomes the order of the day; goals that were once considered unworthy are that’s left; and behaviors that were once unthinkable become acceptable. Deland (1857-1945) saw all of this coming, and grieved for the growing social fragmentation of the 20^th century, a fragmentation that she recognized as an unintended consequence of what started as the movement for women’s suffrage. The trouble of ridding society of negative values is that positive values can also be lost in the change.

Who should die for whom?

As a teenager, I often daydreamed of dying for one pretty girl or another by pushing her from the path of a speeding car. I would breathe my last while her tears fell upon my face like angelic anointment. I later joined the Masons, and had to swear that I would risk my life to save a fellow Mason if the odds of my survival were at least 50%.

I have no doubt that I would die for Peggy, but when I asked Peggy if she would die for me, she said she didn’t know, and I said I wouldn’t want her to. This isn’t about, “If you love me, you’ll die for me,” but about a man’s obligation to give his life for his family by virtue of the fact that he is a man, and although he would be grievously opposed to them doing the same.

You might ask how I can be so sure I would die for Peggy. I have several reasons. One is that it’s my responsibility as her husband. Another is that my life would be hell if I were to outlive her. A third is that if I saved my life at the loss of hers, I would be overwhelmed by self-hatred. The fourth is that she would deserve it by virtue of her goodness. You might ask if I too am not good, and I would answer yes, but that I receive Peggy’s devotion in different ways, which I’ll go into in a moment.

I’m touched when I reflect upon that frigid night in 1912 when the men of the Titanic drowned in order to save the women. Surely, many of those men opposed suffrage and considered women their physical and mental inferiors, so what was it about women that they so valued that they were willing to die for them? I believe their behavior was a product of their gender. What this means in regard to my relationship with Peggy is that nature didn’t create in her a feeling of obligation to die for me, but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that she loves me less—not that I would care if she did, unless the imbalance was significant. 

Here is what I know about Peggy. If, in order to save my life, she had to give-up everything she owns and spend the rest of her days nursing me, she would, partly out of love and partly out of duty. If, instead of her doing these things for me, I were called upon to do them for her, I would regard it as a far greater challenge than merely dying outright. It is generally the case that men simply aren’t well equipped to provide years of care to a spouse whose decline is continuous and inexorable. We are fixers rather than caretakers, and nothing alarms us more than being helpless where our wives are concerned, yet where nobility exists, it surely involves ongoing sacrifice rather than a speedy death.

Back to the Titanic. I wouldn’t face certain death to save a woman I didn’t know, but to pretend to be a woman in order to get into a lifeboat would be to choose survival at the cost of dishonesty and humiliation. Yesterday, I read a sentence by Margaret Deland that seems relevant to this monologue if one substitutes the word survival for happiness:

“…it seemed to her than no one, for his happiness, had a right to do a thing which would injure an ideal by which the rest of us live.”

I can think of exceptions to her statement, but it is certainly true that the ideals of one’s society should not to be dismissed so lightly as I have often done. It is my hope that men and women never become so “equal” that men forget they are men, and women forget they are women, but I fear that is where political correctness would have us go. For instance, as of last month, American women can  assume any combat position that is open to a man.

I recently learned of a pitbull attack in Canada in which the husband locked himself in their bedroom while his wife was mauled by two dogs in the living room.* Is it conceivable that the demand for gender equality has overturned two-million years of evolution and made male cowardice acceptable? Surely, it would be preferable to die by her side than to listen to one’s wife scream while doing nothing to save her. I can’t conceive of a man, who is worthy of being called a man, who would be other than horrified by the thought of his wife facing almost certain death to protect him, yet I can’t conceive of a man, who is worthy of being called a man, who would choose to live if it meant letting his wife die alone, even if there was only one chance out of a million of saving her. If I were to fail in this, it would be to pronounce my very existence a mistake.

I don’t know the extent to which the word honor can be applied to the actions of the majority of men on the Titanic since they were but obeying a societal demand that was itself based upon an evolutionary impulse, but I’m quite sure that dishonor applies to those who saved themselves by pretending to be women.

Manhood and womanhood involve more than physical differences, although this seems to appear anything but obvious to many. While it is true that men can nurture and women can protect, there are significant and unalterable gender-related differences in emphasis and manner. I can even see this in the way Peggy and I parent our cats. It’s not that I’m less nurturing or she’s less protective, but that the ways we undertake our roles are as apparent today as they were in our childhoods when she changed the clothes on her Patti Playpal doll and I shot bad guys with my Roy Rogers’ cap pistol. No amount of political correctness can make men and women the same, but it can make them dishonest, confused, and cowardly.

*Later reports gave a different story, but the truth of what occurred in a specific instance doesn’t invalidate my concern.

I Become a Delandist

Margaret Deland 1857-1945

Since October, I’ve bought fifty books by or about Margaret Deland, most of them first-editions. I’ve never taken such an intense interest in either an author or in old books, but I’m finding it immensely gratifying to hold in my hands that which previous generations enjoyed and held in their hands. I’m also head-over-heels in love with what these people wrote in their books, inscriptions such as, “For my dear little girl, Christmas 1915,” and “Geo, this was Little Mamma’s book.” Then there are the beautiful old names of the books’ owners: Grace, Clara, Effie, Fanny, Alice, Lillian, Cordelia, and Adelphia.

Prior to coming across Deland’s novel, John Ward, Preacher (1888), in a St. Vincent de Paul store, I assumed that the remembrance of brilliant writers was insured, and that the world’s best reading could be found simply by seeking-out authors whose work has survived the decades if not the centuries. How fortunate I am to have come across someone who is practically forgotten but who struggled with the same issues I face, issues that people tend to dismiss with, “You think too much,” or, “You take things too seriously.”

It’s not only Deland whom I’ve discovered, but through her my clearest window into the place and era that interests me most, America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The forgotten dead speak to me so strongly that it’s a shock to suddenly recall that they are dead, and that the brevity of their lives is being mirrored in our own. I have also been forced to conclude that the educated people of the late 19th century were far better educated than ourselves in regard to scope, profundity, and the ability of even non-writers to express themselves with depth and perception. It is so easy to dismiss past generations as somehow less-than, but my studies have convinced me that in regard to the era about which I am most interested, they were not only less-than, they were more-than.

Phillips Brooks 1835-1893

I so wish I could have known some of them, for example the psychologist William James and the Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks who was the only clergyman from whom Margaret sought counsel. When she confessed to him that she considered the Apostles’ Creed nothing more than “a beautiful, antique edifice of words,” and asked if she should continue taking communion, he wrote:

 “…I do believe that any, even the least, sense of Him gives you the right to come to Him, at any rate, to come to where He is and try to find Him. I cannot tell you how anxiously I write. But what I have written, I solemnly believe. May the great Wisdom and Love bless you and lead you.”

Brooks’ exchange with Margaret reminded me of the one I had with (Father) Brent. The fact that I, a nonbeliever in regard to the supernatural, find meaning in communion has caused both believers and nonbelievers to assure me that I need to choose one path or the other and be done with the matter. To find in Margaret a reflection of my inability to let go of that which I can not intellectually accept yet have an unwavering need to accept—by which I mean a belief in immortality that would enable me to think of life as other than tragic—is more rewarding than I can say. As she put it,

“My feeling was not just an academic perplexity about doctrines; it was a shuddering of my heart at the significance of Love in the same world with Death! ... I knew that what I wanted was a certain word, either written or spoken, which would make me sure of...immortality.”

But the problem goes beyond mortality and into the meaning of a life built upon inescapable ignorance and inadequacy, failings that the intervening providence of a sympathetic supreme being would overcome. Without such a being, we founder in weakness, desire, and loss for perhaps eight decades, and then we die. Does this not constitute a valid objection to having lived at all?

As did Margaret—who died at 87—I have long since come to feel that my most central issue is mine alone to bear, and while others have brought me hurt and alienation, no one but Brent has tried to make me feel welcome in a “house of worship” without expecting that I change. Since anything short of acceptance would constitute rejection, Brent represents my only tie to organized religion. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any more evidence of an intervening providence or immortality than I. When Margaret asked Phillips Brooks whether he knew that we would live forever, he was silent for some time before answering:

“It must be true; life would be too terrible if it were not.”

Brooks’ admission of the baselessness of what he wanted so much to believe was admirable, but hardly more satisfying than the certainty of those who put their trust in the imagined authority of church and Bible. This leaves me, as it did Margaret, very much alone because there is no meaningful reassurance regarding that which no one can prove.

When her husband died, Margaret went the way of Conan Doyle who became a spiritualist after his son died, although she avoided the embarrassing public credulity of Doyle who became so  delusional as to believe in fairies. The post-World War I era saw millions seeking contact with their beloved dead, and her eventual acceptance of the proposition that we are all a part of the divine consciousness and therefore incapable of death is alien to me, but her questions are not, and, as did mine, they started during her fundamentalist Christian upbringing and brought her the reprobation of those to whom she turned for answers.

Katherine Mansfield, 1888-1923

Yet, Margaret was not the first author with whom I experienced such a strong personal connection that I could not accept that she was dead. For that, I must point to New Zealander Katherine Mansfield who wrote,

“Oh, God, the sky is filled with the sun, and the sun is like music. Music comes streaming down these great beams. The wind touches the trees, shakes little jets of music. The shape of every flower is like a sound. My hands open like five petals…”

Perhaps there are those who can cheerfully accept that such beauty of spirit can appear out of frigid nothingness like a warming spark only to immediately and eternally fall back into the same, but I am not among them, and I never will be. Of all the supposed truths that there exists something more, the only one that resonates with me is my inability to accept the alternative, but I don’t know if this suggests need or insight.

One day, while walking in the desert, I felt that Mansfield was with me, so I asked for proof of her presence. I immediately saw a painted and bejeweled stick several feet away in the sagebrush, and even a skeptical Peggy commented that I walked to it as though led. I kept the stick in my closet for years before discarding it as a teaser rather than an answer. If asked what would constitute an answer I could but say that it would have to be something that couldn’t be explained through ordinary means, “...a certain word, either written or spoken, which would make me sure of...immortality.” 

As did my atheist father when old age robbed him of his strength, Margaret believed that she had found such a word. In the second of her two autobiographies (one about her childhood and the other about her marriage) she wrote:

“Recognizing a Conscious and Infinite Universe, we know that in It we live, and move, and have our being. We are workers together with It. We are sharers in Its immortality. Oneness with Its will is Peace, and we can endure. We call It God.”

I can’t know whether her courage to endure a world without hope finally failed her, or whether her decades of study and reflection provided her with a vision that is of little use to anyone but herself. I don’t believe that anyone can fairly stand in judgment. John Lennon wrote, “Whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright,” by which I think he meant that the final test of what constitutes ultimate reality cannot be demonstrable truth because that is unattainable. Rather the final test is whether one’s belief is hardening or opening, and in Magaret’s case, it was most certainly the latter. I could never put so much time and energy into a writer of whose goodness I was not completely convinced, and so it is that I put my faith in Margaret.