I am having the same conversation a lot lately. It goes like this:
“Don’t you see,” I say, “that the personal narrative is crucial to the history of women’s literature, and to feminism, rooted as it is in various literary antecedents, some as ancient as Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book and others as recent as Riot Grrrl zines, not to mention the second-wave practice of consciousness-raising, wherein intimate stories were shared as a means of piecing together our shared experiences and placing them in a political context? I maintain that the personal narrative remains a valid and important form for women today!”
“Ah,” they say, “but what have you to say about the phenomenon of the ‘overshare’?”
“Let’s be honest,” I say. “Y’all didn’t know how our genitals worked until about thirty years ago.* You thought we were imagining our menstrual cramps! Our inner lives were a complete mystery to you, and your fear and confusion gave rise to way too many terribly unconvincing female characters in literature, along with the idea that we were all ‘crazy’ and ‘moody’ and unpredictable. Women, as Others, were unreadable to men, and because men controlled the discourse, we became, to a certain degree, unreadable to ourselves. If we didn’t feel the way men thought we ought to feel, we believed that we were crazy or defective. Some of us still think that way. I think we ought to share as much as possible.”
“Mmmm,” they say. “Interesting points. Perhaps you should look at this.”
“I have changed my mind,” I say. “We should shut up right now. Truly, we are a lost generation.”
*UPDATE: Maybe it was closer to 50! “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” was published in the early ’60s, I think, but it was in a very tiny ladies-only magazine. Then, at a certain point, it became a topic of conversation, and folks were like, “whatever! The clitoral orgasm is the frigid woman’s defense against penetration! Freud told me this, and I know it to be fact!” Then the ladies were like, “no, it actually just feels kind of good, so maybe could we focus on that, por favor?” And folks were like, “once again, whatever, bra-burners.” Then, in the super-funky ’70s, folks got to reading D.H. Lawrence again, who said that women who experienced clitoral orgasms were all secret lesbians and should be shot. He also called it a “stabbing beak,” which suggests that Dave Herb dated some unusual ladies, and suggested that we all put flowers in our cooches and give them pet names like “Lady Jane,” which I think was also a plot from an episode of “Sex & the City.” At any rate, in my estimation, it wasn’t until the ’80s when folks stopped really debating how lady parts worked, and started debating whether we should use them at all, and, if so, why, with whom, and how often (see: Porn Wars). It’s been a complicated conversation.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: consciousness-raising, feminism will eat itself, julia allison, julia allison's terrible friends, nonsociety, on keeping a notebook, overshare
No Responses Yet to “Q: What Do Women Want? A: Something Terrible.”