Through The Looking Glass
Dudes. I actually got mentioned over at Smart Bitches. Candy responded to Tuesday’s post (the one about misogyny in romance) with a long thoughtful post about how the older she gets, the less likely she is to believe there’s any subversive value to the misogyny in romance. (Plus other stuff. Go read it. I’ll wait.)
Someone in the ensuing discussion made a fascinating point: that romance heroines have had a very slow empowerment curve, even as women have moved out into new areas of empowerment. (Despite a Republican President and Congress with a far-right theocratic agenda, I might add.)
Comments on my post ranged from “I use romance novels to line my hamster’s cage” to “maybe romance novels are inoculating us against dissatisfaction from social conditioning.” Increasingly, it seems, the romance genre is all things to all people. It’s a convenient punching bag for those who see it as a collection of hacks exploiting misogyny and a subversive self-empowering statement by creative females, and everything in between.
Usually when a genre gets this Protean, it means it’s more a slate for people to project their hopes and fears on. Not precisely a tabula rasa, more of a creature whose glamour feeds back to one’s eyes what one most wishes to see–or doesn’t wish to see. Remember when sci-fi/fantasy used to be about what was wrong with society and how we could change it by grokking or believing in the purity of our stand against evil (with a little help from the Valar, ha ha. When I start reading the Silmarillion before going to bed, you know my head’s full of weird stuff)? Some books–like Stranger in a Strange Land, Farenheit 451, Catspaw, Steven Gould’s Jumper, Anne McCaffrey’s To Ride Pegasus, McKinley’s Deerskin–you get the idea–are not so much about chicks with swords or hobbits with rings as they are about very deep injustices, social issues, and protests. Whether their authors realize it or not. I think we’re seeing a similar flowering in romance lately–or maybe not lately, maybe since the idea of books written by and for women started being a viable economic engine.
I still think that the naming of the beast and the depictions of misogyny, however subtle and deep-rooted, in romance are part of an ongoing liberation conversation. (Cha cha cha.) I do not think this conversation is conscious, mostly. I think it’s more like a zeitgeist–as women gain more real economic power (despite the glass ceiling) and stop settling for being owned objects, we are going to have lots of fiction/film/art noise about “traditional” gender roles being broken. (As Ann Crittenden points out, the more “sacred” a role men profess motherhood to be, the more women are economically screwed by it.) We are going to have more slow incremental liberation of heroines–consider, for a little while, the fact that a social phenomenon is usually only glorified once it’s past. (King Arthur, anyone? Courtly Provencal love? Andy Warhol, or the Sixties as a whole?) We may be seeing the fruits of the work done by feminists in the Sixties and Seventies becoming a for-granted part of the culture at large, and hence slowly working its way into romance novels.
With a little help from stiletto heels and kickass heroines, of course. And always in service of a ripping good story.
I thought I had chewed this over to my satisfaction. It seems there’s some juice left in it. Hm. Off I go to chew…
Related posts:
March 18th, 2007 at 8:56 am
“the more “sacred†a role men profess motherhood to be, the more women are economically screwed by it.”
Ok, so I read the article at The Bitchery (stayed for some cover snark..Lama Land, omgwtf?), and read what you had to say…and I chewed a bit..and after all this time, I just had to come back and comment.
Besides the point ‘ya all were making, in romance, but directly related to what I quoted, something that I rarely see discussed, is that while we were making strides socially, economically and culturally, the ONE place in our lives that were traditionally considered, “women’s business, and only women’s work”, pregnancy and childbirth, we got fucked over, and are continued to be fucked, six ways to Sunday.
The lack of respect, starts the minute we walk into an OB’s office and tell them we are pregnant. Not when we bring our babies home from the hospital.
As we moved into the public space and gained power, at the same time, we started having “medical birth”. The “sacred” women’s space, moved into hospitals and therein, we lost more than most realise. We lost the control over the one thing, that truely, only we can do. (cue here, “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better”, from Annie Get Your Gun)
Stay with me here, for I shall ramble, but I do have a point.
Modern gyn/ob research and training, have saved more lives, than any other medical group or invention, save for penicillin and blood transferring. Hands down, bar none. Apgar testing (invented by a woman, who was not, an actual medical doctor, but who wanted to be, and was told she wasn’t “capable” by some damn asshat) changed how babies were treated after birth, millions were saved. YAY! Birth was finally taken seriously, medically, and considered important, so important, that at most hospitals, it accounts for 60% of the hospitals income! The one place in the world, besides fashion and cosmetics, where women=big money!
The downside, was that birth is treated medically, and accounts for 60% of a hospitals income. No longer is birth an individual event. There are time limits, check lists, schedules to keep. Doctors who wander in for a few moments, make a judgement call, then wander back out. Nurses who are overseeing several laboring women at one time, bouncing from room to room. Machines and charts are listened to and watched more than women are. IV’s are hooked up, drugs are given, strangers come in and look at women, and demand choices be made. Money is to be made. The more bells and whistles, the more charges on the bill. The less people givng one-on-one care, the less cost. We, as women, are lost in the shuffle.
We will take to the streets for our opinions, we will face down people who get in our way, we won’t take crap from people who tell us to know our “place”…but we all but cower in hospitals, during our most vulnerable times, and do whatever we are told, by people who do not have our best interests at heart, but who are following hospital and insurance company guidelines, and factoring in how many inductions are scheduled and how many more patients they can see, before their shift is over.
Our doctors (and by that, I mean, OB’s are only women’s doctors, thus are “our” doctors), are not our advocates. They do not even consider themselves Service Providers. They are in a Profession. Their training, is the best in the world…its in the practice, were they fail, and do so, much worse than most women understand.
The US has one of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the industrial world. It also has the most medical of birthing models. (Australia, which follows the same model, is over taking the US, with a 40% c. section rate, compared to the US’s 30%) The link, is not happenstance. American women have become powerful political citizens, some of the most powerful in the world, however, in this area, that of our bodies, we are the weakest.
Every drug given in labor, crosses the placenta. Every drug, given to induce labor, has an FDA warning on it, that it is dangerous to infants. Women are not told that. Monitors, at birth, are proven to increase the need for a c. section. Women are not told that. Not allowing women to eat during long labor, causes their blood sugar to drop, interrupting their ability to stay focused. Women are not allowed to eat. Labor causes dehydration, with makes it harder to handle contractions. Women are not allowed to drink. Laying in a bed, prolongs labor and makes it harder to handle contractions. Women are often forced into a bed, by IV’s and monitors. Laying on their back, is the single worse position a woman can birth in, it narrows her pelvis to the extreme, making it very hard for the baby to enter the birth canal, and make it three times harder for her to push the baby out. Women are put on their backs, so the OB can have an easier time seeing. Cutting a woman, to allow the baby’s head to emerge, is known to make it harder for a woman to heal after birth, as well as cause vaginal scaring. Tearing, as it will only happen where the skin is the thinnest, heals much faster and rarely causes serious scars. OB’s cut women, because its easier and faster for them to pull a baby out. We accept all of that…because we think, thats how safe birth is supposed to be. These are our doctors, we are important to them, we are safe. We are wrong, we are lied to.
So, what I am trying to say, in the bigger picture, if we can’t even get our birthing rights as a normal thing, how the hell can we push things any further? Mothering will not be respected and honored, while the treatment of pregnant women, is seen as a money making machine, rather than the freaking miracle, that is is. Women, will never be considered as actually equal in respect and value, until our full contribution to our culture is believed and not given lip service and used as political propaganda, by using our reproductive capabilities as the end all, be all, of who we are.
For more info on how this is directly related to feminism and women’s rights, a book that will stun you, read, “Born in the USA” by Dr. Marsden Wagner, former head of Women’s and Children’s Health at the World Health Organization. What the OB lobby in the US does, to women, is, under the rules and rights of medicine, actually criminal (the real reason their insurance rates are so high and why so many women win lawsuits against them). They knowing advocate the use of drugs and procedures, that are not only known to harm, but to kill. When the company that makes one of the drugs joined with the FDA and issued warnings to their use in labor and asking for outright bans on their usage in labor, the OB lobby fought and won, against the ban…yet, most women are not told about that, most mainstream pregnancy books, will not talk about it. Why? The OB lobby, thats why.
ps. Yeah, we need more kickass women in romance. Damn those who say that strong female characters just don’t “do it for them”. Aside from that, we need more sexy men, who are turned on by “uppity” women, and are annoyed by those who languish to be “saved”.
sorry I went on so long..its a bug bear of mine…