OMG Whores! A term paper inspired rant.

A couple of weeks ago I was telling two friends of mine about the incredulous comments a young gentleman made when I told him about my interest in gender history ("So what's your paper about?" "The role of women in Macedonian society." "You're gonna be glad once it's over and done with, right?" "Um, actually I think it's a cool topic." "... seriously?"). One of them then explained to me that was only a natural reaction since a man couldn't possibly be interested in those womanly things.

......... sure. All this dish-washing and knitting and sewing business can't compare to healthy virile activities like hunting and war-making and, I don't know, burping.

I considered briefly to take it as a sarcastic comment. Mais non, ma chère, as Hercule Poirot would say. Judging from tone and facial expression, it only was your normal case of internalized misogyny. E. hit the nail on the head when she said, "It's sort of sad when people hate themselves so much", after talking about the vitriol and contempt women so often display for their own sex. I'm not even going to argue why the above statement is bullshit. No. Wait. Actually, I am. This statement is bullshit because:

a) following that logic, I'm not supposed able to be interested in the, oh, about 98% of history that is male-dominated because I'm a woman. Well, that would explain the habit of mansplaining battles to me. (Oh sure, do go on, it's such an enlightening experience since my lady parts render me incapable of comprehending all this manly military business. Idiot.)

b) see, a military reform is not interesting per se. What do I care if some dude ordered his soldiers to use another kind of spear more than two thousand years ago? Not much, I can tell you. I do care, however, if that new equipment (and some other changes) transformed an until then weak and ineffective army into a military force to be reckoned with, thereby stabilizing the king's internal position, consolidating unstable borders, and laying the basis for expansionist visions his predecessors would have never dreamed to achieve. For in that case, my friends, that military reform tells us something about the structure and functioning of the society in question.

So where do the women come in here, you ask? Clearly, women are not military reforms, nor are the two of them comparable. (No, seriously. It's mostly because women are human beings, you know.) But here's the deal with history: if a woman comes into power, there's something terribly, terribly wrong. It's a sure sign of crisis, crisis meaning that oh noes! nobody with a penis is available or suitable to rule. And when we ask ourselves: Why was there a crisis? Why did the system break down? What happened that a woman was considered the lesser of two evils? What did her contemporaries think? How much did their approval and disapproval depend on the behaviour of said woman? They are revealing, these questions, in that they show how a society worked and when it failed, which norms existed and what happened when they were disregarded, in short: the structure and functioning of the society in question.

And that is why gender history is as real and important as any goddamn fucking battle.

c) Olympias. That woman was fierce. Your arguments are invalid.

Now that we've established that, we can talk about what woman history is: Sad. Sad and depressing in its repetitive ugliness. I've, so far, covered West European history from about 1400 BC to 1500 AD (summarized in a nutshell), and it's so much the same it has become some sort of bitter injoke between E. and me in lectures. Oh, there was this woman! And then she was raped! Married off to some ugly old dude! Raped again! Raped some more! Died in child birth/was brutally murdered! But (say the contemporaries) it's all her fault because of her seductive womanly guiles! Take, for instance, Herodotus. Herodotus, wildly entertaining, Herodotus, the Father of History. Let's see what he has to tell us about the origin of the Persian Wars. Apparently it was because the Phoenicians kidnapped Io! And then the Greeks kidnapped Europe and Medea and then Alexander "made prize of Helen"! Yes, let's hear the insights of Herodotus:

Now as for the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a rogue: but to make a stir about such as are carried off, argues a man a fool. Men of sense care nothing for such women, since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troubled themselves about the matter; but the Greeks, for the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of Priam. (Hdt. Hist. I)

Yeah, why even bother about these whores. They secretly wanted it all along!

As a (baby) historian I'm supposed to keep my distance, but I'm sick of it. Sick and tired and no, I can't keep my distance, because it's disgusting and revolting and everytime I hear or read something along these lines, I puke a little in my mouth. Even when, or precisely when, you look at women who held (temporarily) some power, it's always the same slut-shaming and victim-blaming and general bashing pattern going on for about three thousand years of human history. Three thousand years. And holy shit, that makes me so angry and sad and angry I'd spout an incoherent string of colourful expletives if asked about my feelings on this.

See, this is not a black and white revisionist tale about women being the better rulers because women are good and men are evil. Most women who had access to power were proud and strong-willed, cunning, ruthless and often cruel - they had to be in order to survive in a patriarchial world. But, and that is the essential point, their cruelty didn't differ from that of their men, and yet it's always portrayed as something outrageous and shocking. Women aren't supposed to thrive for power, they're supposed to be docile and nice. (Anything else would be just dangerous, wouldn't it?) If they're not, it's because of their feelings as well. So, say, if Alexander the Great has a Macedonian general killed because his influence and power pose a threat to his accession to the throne, it's strategy; if his mother Olympias does the same with the seventh wife of her husband because her influence and power pose a threat to Alexander's accession to the throne and subsequently her own position at the court, it's obviously sexual jealousy:

[...] as Olympias had felt no less resentment at her divorce, and the preferment of Cleopatra to herself [...] Next she forced Cleopatra, for whose sake she had been divorced from Philip, to hang herself, having first killed her daughter in her lap, and enjoyed the sight of her suffering this vengeance, to which she had hastened by procuring the death of her husband. (Just. IX.7)

Ancient historians really hated Olympias due to their bewilderment at the comparatively influential position of women in Northern Greece kingdoms in general. (Which is kind of easily explained: A king needs heirs to the throne, that's why he needs babies, that's why he needs women to make babies with, that's why they couldn't dismiss women as easily as in democratic Athens for instance.) Anyway, they got extra creative with her; my personal favourite is the story where she drags the other wife over a burning brazier.

With other women, it's mostly just that they're whores: From Roman to medieval empresses, they're portrayed as promiscuous adultresses, lead by salaciousness and extravagance. Didn't you know, ladies? A life of debauchery is only a sign of power and royal legitimation if a man leads it. It doesn't matter if you really cheated on your husband or had an affair with your smoking hot bishop or gave blowjobs to half a Roman legion. Perhaps you did, perhaps you didn't. These stories don't care about the truth - they exist to belittle and demonize you, to diminish and distort your role in history. They fit into this narrative we have that a woman can either be a docile wallflower or a power-crazed harpy, exactly because they're easy on the mind in that catchy, colourful way.

The really sad thing is, however: these are current narratives. A man is a ladies' man, a woman a slut. Some woman enjoy to be groped. What did she expect wearing that skirt, anyway? If you wear that shirt you don't need to be surprised if people stare at your boobs. Don't be so emotional. You're really oversensitive, aren't you? Let me explain that to you, little girl. Women don't do these kinds of things because they're nicer than men. She's such a bitch, only a woman can be so mean. I can go on and on and on. We've all bought into these narratives at one point in our life, we've all adopted them without further thinking. If you take one step back, for a day or two, and just observe what happens around you; how you react to women, how men react to women, how women react to women; how men are portrayed in media, how women are portrayed in media - you're going to notice them. They're still here. And that's a shame.

Short stories!

I don't know about you, but I love short stories. I think their most endearing characteristic is that they're so short! (Duh.) And yet, if well-done, so effective! And intense! Take for instance this six word flash fiction allegedly written by Ernest Hemingway:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.

Genius, right? It gets me every time I read it. I mean, why'd somebody have baby shoes that have never been used? And then you tell yourself that story and he doesn't even have to spell it out! So, short stories: amazing! Here are my favourites, as non-spoiler-y as possible:

The October Game - Ray Bradbury

By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the year. October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax.

This is a mean story if there ever was one (the last line; the fucking last line), in that it never clearly states what's going on, but at some point you're like "waaaaaaaaaaaait" and watch the story unfold in a horrified and yet slightly amused and then again cringing state. (Okay, I did. I don't know about you. But it's just so mean I can't help but love it.)

The Lady of the House of Love - Angela Carter

Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and maiden.

Angela Carter is pure language love. Her prose, her imagery, is nothing short of beautiful, sensual, luscious, it makes you want to wear it and feel its dark, smooth, elegant velvet every second of your life and never take it off again. Yes. It's that beautiful.

The Hammer of God - G. K. Chesterton

Immediately beneath and about them the lines of the Gothic building plunged outwards into the void with a sickening swiftness akin to suicide. There is that element of Titan energy in the architecture of the Middle Ages that, from whatever aspect it be seen, it always seems to be rushing away, like the strong back of some maddened horse. (...) For these two men on the tower were left alone with the most terrible aspect of Gothic; the monstrous foreshortening and disproportion, the dizzy perspectives, the glimpses of great things small and small things great; a topsy-turvydom of stone in the mid-air. (...) The whole atmosphere was dizzy and dangerous, as if men were upheld in air amid the gyrating wings of colossal genii; and the whole of that old church, as tall and rich as a cathedral, seemed to sit upon the sunlit country like a cloudburst.

I think I may be the only person in the world with a soft spot for Chesterton. It's probably even less cool than having a soft spot for Miss Marple (which I also have). But ... Pater Brown. ♥

The End of the Party - Graham Greene

But they couldn't make him go; hesitating on the doorstep while the nurse's feet crunched across the frost-covered grass to the gate, he knew that. He would answer: "You can say I'm ill. I won't go. I'm afraid of the dark." And his mother: "Don't be silly. You know there's nothing to be afraid of in the dark." But he knew the falsity of that reasoning; he knew how they taught also that there was nothing to fear in death, and how fearfully they avoided the idea of it. But they couldn't make him go to the party. "I'll scream. I'll scream."

After reading this story it stayed with me for weeks. Its intense effect on me might've been partly due to the place I had read it - outside, in the middle of the night, in a little Filipino village open to the jungle bordering close to it that felt so wild and unknown and dangerous. But it's been there ever since, a remembrance of a punch in the gut, of a last line so horrible and threatening exactly because it was vague and open to all sorts of interpretation.

Give it up! - Franz Kafka

It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the railroad station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me feel uncertain of the way, I was not very well acquainted with the town yet, fortunately there was a policeman nearby, I ran to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: 'From me you want to learn the way?' 'Yes,' I said, 'since I cannot find it myself.' 'Give it up, give it up,' said he, and turned away with a great sweep, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.

I believe that one stands on its own. (Okay, it's not really a short story, but let's not be nitpicky here.)

The Picture in the House - H. P. Lovecraft

As I surveyed this quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared or loathed, I could by no means define; but something in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should be forgotten. (...) The first object of my curiosity was a book of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an antediluvian aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum or library. It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent state of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter in an abode so lowly.

I find Lovecraft wildely ridiculous, mostly because he doesn't bother describing his Unspeakable Horrors From Outer Space, which is probably because of their Unspeakably Unspeakable Unspeakableness. At the same time, it makes them less horrible. In The Picture in the House he abandons his betentacled creatures of doom and tells a story of entirely human, tentacle-less horror, and it's awesome (still a bit wordy, though).

Miss Harriet - Guy de Maupassant

Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

... which is not a horror story. Yay! What a novelty! I picked up two copies of Maupassant short stories years ago. Mostly they're hit and miss, but I fell in love with the fragility, sadness and bitterness of Miss Harriet and have been ever since. It might also be a severe case of "Konstanze identifies too much with fictional characters", but hey, rejection is somewhat of a theme of my life, so let me tear up over a silly little story in peace, yes? ;)

The Pit and the Pendulum - E. A. Poe

And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated -- fables I had always deemed them -- but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.

I had a hard time choosing the right Poe story since they are so many amazing ones: The eerie Masque of the Red Death! The obscenely beautiful Gothic tale The Fall of the House of Usher! The Black Cat which gave me the chills back when I first read it! But The Pit and the Pendulum is just so nightmarish and claustrophobic and GAH I LOVE IT IT'S SO INTENSE.

The Selfish Giant - Oscar Wilde

"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself." So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

He was a very selfish Giant.

This one has a special place in my heart. My Grandma used to read it to me when I was a child. It was in one of her Christian story books. (OSCAR WILDE. CHRISTIAN STORY BOOK. I KNOW RIGHT.) Whenever I hear the title, I go 'awww'. I love all of Wilde's fairy tales to tiny bits and pieces, but this one, this one is the happy part of my childhood, despite the sadness of the story itself. (It's a fairy tale, but we agreed not to be nitpicky, remember?)

---

I kind of adore Neil Gaiman's Lovecraft/Arthur Conan Doyle crossover A Study in Emerald, if only for the Victorian periodical look of the online version, and his rather bloody Snow White retelling Snow, Glass, Apples; The Yellow Face by Arthur Conan Doyle; and, of course, much love for Boccaccio's Masetto da Lamporecchio and the nuns and the changing beds one. :D

Deutsche Kurzgeschichten: Schischyphusch von Wolfgang Borchert und Janine feiert Weihnachten von Werner Wollenberger.

Your turn! What are your favourite short stories?

The secrets need to go away.

I told E. about my mother. And my problems. (Which is of course the same.) This is something I've been tip-toeing around for some time now, because I haven't found a decent way to phrase this (and doubt there is one, anyway). Like, "hey there, friend! So my mum is sometimes, more often than not, a crazy person! Which kind of sucks! She also seems hellbent on ruining my life! Which is why I kind of hate her! And myself, too! So, anyway, have a nice day, gotta go to therapy!". ... Yeah, I don't think so either.

But here's the thing: I want the help. I want the support. (Hell, even give me the pity if absolutely necessary.) And, most importantly, I want the secrets to go away. The secrets, they are evil little bastards. They are part of the problem.

Sometimes I want to go to a really crowded place and scream it out loud, just force them all to listen and then pour it out, everything, every ugly, pathetic detail, so that the world knows, so that the world cannot turn the other way. Because this is me being that dysfunctional little creature so full of anger and hurt and desperation. And this is not my fault. This is something she did to me. A something that I'm still incapable to grasp or describe but is in everything, in what I am and what I do and what I feel.

Ever since I ventured into that little therapy spree of the past months, I'm disturbed by how much I was in denial over my own life. Over the things I forgot, the things I chose not to think about, the things I found fancy euphemisms for. (The classic? "My mother and I, we don't get along so well." Hah. I would think so too.) It's like I put all the monsters in a cardboard box and placed them in the attic to fade to dust. Only that monsters don't stay where you put them, they peek out at inconvenient times and say "boo" and the walls you built to escape them just crumble away.

The forgetting, it's a good thing, I realize that! It enabled me, always, to get by, to go on with my life. For about seventeen years, which I remember as a haze of apathy, that worked surprisingly well! Then everything came slowly crushing down and I found it increasingly difficult to keep lying to myself. But the first priority at that time was: survive, then it was putting back the pieces together so as to leave as little scars as possible, and then it was fighting back. (I'll be forever grateful for Swantje, bless her bossy Prussian ways, putting me through hell the first three months of my social year, because, boy, did I have something to fight there. And it helped, a lot! Because I learned that I wasn't helpless, that I wasn't always the victim.)

But now that I'm at a place that makes me feel happy and good, that I have people that appreciate and love and support me, I think it's time to stop the forgetting. So I went to see a therapist! Multiple therapists, actually, because the therapists, they are busier than the Pope himself! And I start to remember! Sometimes there's, say, this sentence I read or overhear somebody say, and then the memory is there and it's like a slap in the face, because why the fuck did I not realize this? Why the fuck did I not remember this, understand this?

I can't really sleep at night without sleeping pills. It's not pretty! An example: when I was little and my father was away on work, my mother would lock me up in the bathroom over night when I annoyed her. With the lights out! I was, of course, terribly afraid of the dark and too small to reach the light switch. She knew that. But then, she gave me a blanket to sleep in the bathtub, so all was well.

The day I remembered that one, I curled up in my bed and cried a bit, and then I stared at the wall angrily and asked the wall, why didn't anyone notice? Why not then, why not later? Why did it take nineteen years for someone to say, "someone must have fucked you up real bad, otherwise I can't explain that" (Swantje, bless her direct Prussian ways)? But this weekend I remembered something: Someone did. When I was twelve, I told my friend L. about my mother, in confidence, and she went to her mother, who went to my mother and confronted her about it. And my mother, she fumed and she yelled at me, because how dare I go around telling people lies about her and I should just keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I'd ruin everything and it'd be all my fault! (Her standard line.) And I? I kept my mouth shut from then on.

Yes, secrets are evil little bastards. I've never told anyone much about this, not even now that I actually start telling people about it (because I will not be silenced, I will not keep my mouth shut); it's only parts, painting pictures with a broad brush, because it's painful and I'll feel dizzy and weak the rest of the day. It's kind of worth it, though. Because you know what? For all my mother's efforts to make me feel worthless, for all my emotional unavailability, my self-harm problem and sudden outbursts of emeritism, I'm kind of awesome. And people come through. Because they like me, because they want to support me. I guess I win this round.