Posts Tagged by Girly

From The Scarlet Letter*

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep a woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she still has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought.

Historical note: The Scarlet Letter was published two years after the Seneca Falls Convention.

*And yes, I read this in junior high but never understood the complexities of the novel. There is SO MUCH THERE. It’s way better the second time around.**

**Also, The Custom House Sketch, a kind of intro to The Scarlet Letter, is amazing for Hawthorne’s description of his own writer’s block. AMAZING. Who knew I was a Hawthorne fan?

— verb (used with object)
1. to demonstrate male privilege right egregiously, to interrupt the woman speaking and dispense your “wisdom”

The inimitable Jessica Hopper used this term in a recent blog post about a man in her gardening class who kept trying to finish the (female) master botanist’s sentences with incorrect information. Constantly.

…never raising his hand, dragging the class down with his exercise of his male right to be a non-stop and vocal authority without being an authority at all.

See also: male answer syndrome. To her credit, Hopper somewhat excuses the guy, since he is, after all, a product of environmental conditioning, but good god, I don’t know where she found the inner strength to do so.

I got so mad, even though he was totally a grandpa and sometimes that is just how grandpas are and there is no amount of coughing or annoyed looks that could possibly stop him. The first 49 years of his life his everyday just enforced that he was the boss of the gals. Any and all gals.

So glad she wrote that last part because it gave me a new perspective of the misogynistic cantankerous British expats who loitered nightly at the Foreigner’s Club in Korea, sailors have lived their whole lives surrounded by other brutish men and living in countries (like Korea) where women are still expected to make perfect, subservient silent wives. Then I come along, with my opinions and other unladylike traits, and you can imagine what happened.

Hopper’s post came right after I read Jessica Valenti’s blog about her recent WaPo post, “For women in America, equality is still an illusion.” Valenti’s received hundred of comments from angry, angry men:

furiously denying that sexism exists by…well, being sexist.

The comments are not for the faint of heart. Every last one of them is Kanye-d to the extreme.

I just remembered, though, being on a historical tour of Communist Prague, me and CLH with a young-ish tour guide (maybe 35?) and three old Swedish men. One of the Swedish men was SO ADAMANT about finishing the guide’s stories, proving his wealth of historical knowledge, interrupting to ask innane questions and one upping the guide at every chance. So maybe it has as much to do with agism as sexism. Or maybe that old man was just an entitled ass.