Court case, reporters, public
honors, all the traps and trappings of public life. What matters more back in the
recesses of Henry’s unimpressed head? The memory of the curve of a woman’s
knee. Pretty simple. Women these days are rightly demanding to not be so endlessly,
overtly sexualized. Not when it interferes with taking their intelligence,
training and talents seriously. Of course, and this is as it must be. Should
have happened long ago, and we haven’t reached the end point of equality yet by
a long shot. But there’s sex too, and simple aesthetic beauty in the human
form, which is so compelling. Henry here lets it slip out: Reporters clamoring,
lawyers in sharp suits, glowing introductions from the podium, and it’s her
knee that he’s thinking of. Much more
pleasant, a woman’s pretty knee, than all this other business.
There’s plenty to be said about
this. Henry, even in the damp recesses of his fevered memory, objectified this woman. There’s nothing new about that. He
would probably admit it too, but The
Dream Songs are all about giving linguistic form to the thoughts and
prejudices, the fears and shames, the lusts and memories, the desires, the
inappropriate waftings of hot psychological updrafts, and screw what anybody
thinks of that. Disparage me publicly if you feel you have to, he’s saying, but
you damn well know you do it too: Hypocrite
lecteur, — mon semblable — mon frรจre!
(From Baudelaire: hypocrite reader, — my look-alike — my brother!) And further:
In objectifying her, he doesn’t even go to the whole woman, the “goddess”. Just
her knee. An isolated body part, which further underscores her objectification:
She’s not a whole person, she’s an isolated piece or collection of pieces. Advertising
patriarchal capitalists are big on this approach to sexualizing women. Even Henry
calling her a goddess subtly disparages her: No woman is a goddess, so being
put on the goddess pedestal reminds her of her shortcomings and imperfections.
Her resultant insecurity makes her more vulnerable, which is ultimately the
point.
These degrading tropes spin off
of the attraction of sexuality. Women want to be attractive to men. Who doesn’t
want to be wanted by a man she loves? But it has to be grounded in relationship—know
me for who I am, and this beautiful body comes with the whole package. Ignore me, and lust for my body only because of
however you think it pleases you? That’s how we define the word “jerk.”
Men, even the ones trying hard,
are probably mainly secret jerks. Maybe we’re wired for it, or maybe just
socialized. Or maybe that’s not an either/or proposition: biology and culture
reinforce each other, set up feedback loops. Men get jerkified from both
angles. The smart ones learn to keep it to themselves, and then they can make
choices not only in how they behave, but in how their physical brains operate,
in how they think. This can set up reinforcing feedbacks as well, where things
really can and do evolve. For Henry’s part, he doesn’t give a hoot. This is
art, not politics. Is there a value in his frankness? Admitting what’s
happening is the first step toward addressing it. Whether he’s aware of the
utility of admitting one is a secret jerk in order to address being a secret
jerk, or if he’s just a plain old jerk—that doesn’t even matter. The reader is
the one to decide. The ‘60s pushed this discussion further open that it had ever
been, and there was pushback. One suspects B. was probably at bottom a pushback
jerk, plain and simple, driven to it by his psychological complications. But he doesn’t matter. The work, like any
art, is continuously reinterpreted if it is to live, and from 2015, we can begin
to use it as an aid to understanding and subsequently reconstructing our public
sexual identities, so that it’s not just a camouflaging pose to claim that a
woman is more than her legs, etc. This will really matter too. Bill Cosby is caught
in a harsh public glare right now because he drugged and raped multiple women
back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. He claims he didn’t rape them, merely discerned
their subtle signals (because he was such an expert at it) and did what he knew
they wanted anyway. That little detail about the drugs and unconsciousness was
a technicality, brought on by PC values run amok. The key point is that he’s
probably not lying: He doesn’t think he raped them. Not by his definition of “rape.”
But we see him now as a jerk—well, actually a criminal—because the notion of sex
as more than taking pleasure with a female body and asserting power over it are
taking hold in our social awareness. The fact that these women were unconscious
was the real turn-on. He didn’t have to deal with them as functioning human
entities. It’s sick, and it’s criminal, and shame on us, on all of patriarchy,
for taking so long to realize it.
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