Commenting: The Solypsisyphisticate #5

Let’s Talk About Sex, Part I: Hey, Ladies!

In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election to the Presidency of These United States, we’ve heard from everyone from Jesse Jackson to Andy Rooney about the great progress our country has made by electing a black man as President. This congratulatory back-patting has become almost a national obsession, but it wasn’t that long ago that people were arguing about whether he was too black or not black enough. Commentators from every greasy tentacle of the many-headed hydra that is the news media opined over whether America was ready to elect a black President, often leaving the question hanging, prompting the viewer to fill in the implied, resounding “No.” All of that is forgotten now that we’ve reached the mountaintop.

Of course, the question of race is infinitely more complicated than this, and we’ve still got a long way to go. In the midst of all this, we’ve also lost sight of another factor that was just as, if not more complicated and important during this long campaign: the question of gender. Remember the brouhaha over Hillary supporters migrating en masse to the Republican side? The news media beat that dead horse for months. When Sarah Palin entered the race, it seemed for a brief (very brief) moment that maybe the rumored betrayal would actually take place. In an election that seemed at times to be all about women, why couldn’t one win a spot in the White House?

The answer is pretty straightforward: just as black people are as varied in their personalities and characters as any other ethnic group, so are women as different from each other as men are. I almost feel stupid for having to say this, but it would appear that some people find it less than obvious. The McCain campaign, for example, when it assumed that Palin and Clinton were more or less interchangeable, or the Bush administration when it thought the same about Sandra Day O’Connor and Harriet Myers. The numbers agree with this bit of common sense. As important as “identity politics” was supposed to have been in this election, a greater percentage of both whites and women (who tend to turn out in larger numbers than men) voted for Obama than did for John Kerry in 2004.

Rather than thinking strictly about gender identity, let’s look at this in terms of masculinity and femininity.* First of all, we can throw femininity out the window as far as winning votes is concerned. Showing your feminine side (especially for a female candidate) is a disaster. Consider Hillary’s fake crying during the primaries, or Palin’s catty winks during the vice-presidential debate. Indeed, both of the prominent female candidates were presented as clearly masculine. Hillary has for a long time been seen as less than ladylike, and she went out of her way to prove it in the infamous shot-and-a-beer incident. Sarah Palin not only shoots wild animals from helicopters, she barely took a day off when she just happened to pop out a baby. While this sort of thing is impressive, it’s also a little off-putting, I think, for the general populace.

The other prominent woman who came out on the losing end of the 2008 election is Cindy McCain, who tried to pass herself off as the consummate loving-wife-and-mother, but came off as a pill-popping, trust-fund ice queen. The whole debacle was summed up pretty well in her turn as spokesmodel in SNL’s McCain-Palin QVC spoof. The comparison between Cindy and our future First Lady is staggering. Watching Michelle Obama’s convention speech, I felt that she was a little too tame, but in retrospect, she displayed there exactly the qualities that made her such a valuable asset to the Democratic ticket (after a fairly shaky start). She deftly negotiates the area between ambitious second-wave feminist and smartly dressed caregiver. Probably more than Barack was a “post-race” candidate, Michelle is a “post-feminist” figure. By this I mean that she confounds the old notions of the successful woman, of which Hillary is a prime example. Clinton will never be free of a widespread public perception that she is a frigid and vengeful shrew, that she is hardly a woman, or even human. This is perhaps unfair given the necessity of a forceful ambition for a woman of her generation to succeed. However, just as Barack Obama has eclipsed the traditional black power structure, it will take a new generation of women to actually break open that cracked glass ceiling.

While conflating racial and sexual politics is always a tenuous proposition, a renewed movement toward gender equality might look something like Obama’s vision of a national conversation on race, as outlined in his famous speech in Philadelphia. As a man, my experience of the trials and tribulations of simply being a woman in America is necessarily limited. I have been guilty, as I think most men often are, of being unresponsive to or dismissive of women’s concerns, even of those very close to me. But I think it’s also fair to say that women can be incredulous that there even are any difficulties inherent in the male experience. Where can we find common ground? What follows may be a bit crude, but in order to have an honest conversation, we need to stop taking ourselves so seriously. There’s a better than 99% chance that, if you’re alive and reading this, your parents fucked at least once. Just about everybody does at one time or another. Some people are black, some people are white, some people are straight, some people are gay, some people are women, some people are men, but everybody fucks. And I’m not talking strictly about coitus (penis in vagina), but the entire range of practices that could imaginably fall under the heading of “sex.” Honestly, most of the problems that arise between men and women ultimately have to do with sex. Since the ‘60s, just as race relations have become increasingly contentious but simultaneously less overtly so, gender relations have supposedly suffered from their desexualization while in reality tensions about sex are higher than ever. Somewhere between that episode of “Blossom” about condoms and the Lewinsky affair, shit got really weird. When we talk about sex nowadays, be it in private discussions or media analysis, the neurosis and immaturity of the American psyche is on full display. Rather than bragging to your boys about some drunk girl you banged** in an alley or complaining to your girlfriends about how your man has no idea what he’s doing down there, why don’t we talk to each other about what we actually do in the bedroom (or wherever) and what we could do better? You know who can help you with this? Your gay friends. Isn’t that ironic? You do have some, don’t you?

I imagine some of you might be taken aback to find yourselves reading about sex when I started off talking about female politicians. Listen, if men and women are able to have frank and open discussions about sex, perhaps we’ll be able to enjoy and respect our bodies for a change. If sex is in the open and no longer stigmatized, that has real benefits in terms of perceptions of women’s rights to sexual self-determination and reproductive freedom, and it might just lift some of the mystique of female sexuality that puts such psychological pressure on people of both sexes. Maybe then we can move beyond attitudes of victimization and resentment in favor of an attempt at mutual understanding. To this end, we should be willing to speak frankly and openly in a conversation that requires the engagement of men as much as women.

(To be continued . . .)

* Loosely conceived as those attributes generally perceived to be more common in males than females, or vice versa, though not necessarily exclusive to them. The elephant in the room is, of course, queer people. In my own experience, everyone is queer in one way or another. However, I think it’s fair for the purposes of this particular conversation to limit the examination of gender to ostensibly straight people.

** Can we please stop using this term? “Nailed,” too, thank you.