Thanks to @kingduncan42's suggestion, listening to @willarbery's interview re: #HeroesoftheFourthTurning on @KnowYrEnemyPod

For a variety of other reasons (aka Desperate For Anything Besides My Own Thoughts Pandemic Brain) I've consumed more Men Talk About Things shows lately 1/

And there's something, some connection, niggling at the back of my brain that makes me vaguely uncomfortable, but for which I don't quite have proper language. Happily, as no one looks at my Twitter feed, I'll hammer it out with #RichardII in jail here. 2/

When I wrote my master's thesis, my prof sternly told me to keep it under 100 pgs. My first draft, the first THIRD of my proposed paper, was over 100 pgs. I was also approaching the thesis, based on case studies, in a narrative rather than categorical/statistical sense 3/

My prof (a very kindly and woke man) told me that there were feminist studies at present on patriarchal vs. non-patriarchal approaches to scholasticism. Generally, that the facts and figures method was patriarchal; while narrative was still seen as "feminine" or marginalized 4/

He then apologized that, for the sake of the number of theses he was the primary reader for, he was going to ask me to write in the #patriarchy rather than narrative/ #feminist method, JUST to keep the pagination down (FWIW: the paper still came out to ~120 pgs w/ appendices) 5/

We talk about this in the popular narratives about what sort of erotica"men vs. women" like: i.e., a shorthand for "do we get to the sex right away, or do we need to know the people?" (A dichotomy I reject on a gender binary. Plenty of times I'm like: Just cut to the smut) 6/

But something about #HeroesoftheFourthTurning, and the podcast, and Men Talking About Ideas To One Another And Being Generally Clever And Saying This Is How All People Are, And I'm Putting The Most Egregious Stuff In Female Character's Mouths b/c I Come From A Matriarchy... 7/

Something...some element of NARRATIVE...feels OFF to me.

I'm not thrilled that I'm gender binary-ing this, EXCEPT that part of what Catholic women (well, ALL Catholics) have to deal with IS the deeeeeep ingrained knee-jerk salute to the Binary, treated holier than the Trinity 8/

I'm still not quite getting to what I'm trying to get to. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to get to. Alright, lemme try again... 9/

RIGHT! So, the thing IS: at @FranciscanU (my undergrad; @EmersonCollege for grad & master's thesis), but at college #1, I had a little indoctrination into the so-called #GreatBooks program, which other Catholic colleges will make their entire four years course of study 10/

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad to have read the major books that make up Western Culture. I'm grateful that I at least skimmed Aristotle to Camus (I had a lot of reading, and a double major: I skimmed). BUT(!)

11/

I was also of that generation that held the idea of "men" as the Universal as an idea not even worth questioning. As #UrsulaKLeGuin pointed out in her brilliant essay, "Introducing Myself"

https://www.scholarsonline.org/~godsflunky/LeGuin_Intr_myself.pdf 12/

And the THING about being taught the "Great Books," as other, better scholars than I have pointed out, is that THEY'RE ALL FUCKING WHITE MEN ASKING FUCKING WHITE MEN QUESTIONS, AND ASKING US TO THINK LIKE THAT SAME FUCKING UNBROKEN LINE OF FUCKING WHITE MEN FEELINGS

Ugh 13/

And, I'm sorry, but #HeroesoftheFourthTurning is STILL in that vein. And all the conversation around it, is STILL in that vein. And I...just HATE hate hate hate that vein.

And here's where we get to the particular cages of Catholicism and claiming femininity 14/

So, like LeGuin, when I was in undergrad, and for most of my life, I've been a sort of man. I excelled with my professors & w/ my colleagues & w/ bosses, etc. by "being like a man"

Doing nothing but TALKING, being clever; being more clever than you; that smug male snigger 15/

Oh GOD, women and NBs (and hell, cis men)...do you not HEAR that smug male snigger? That gamer snigger? That boys club snigger?

S6 of #BuffyTheVampireSlayer nailed that...ugh..skin crawliness of performed masculinity in the Trio SO WELL 16/

And the thing is, and perhaps I just take issue with the character of Emily in #HeroesoftheFourthTurning b/c the playwright has the audacity to take my name in vain (j/k, j/k, we're all good; but Emily IS a sacred name, and we Emilies get very Thing about who gets to be one) 17/

Anywhoozle, so I'm glad to see that the playwright's "Emily" is the most empathetic of all of them, but what he MISSED with his female characters is that FUCKING INTENSE STRUGGLE to BE A GOD-DAMN WOMAN

In his play, his women are still performing masculinity and the male gaze 18/

What do I mean? Well:

Theresa and her mentor, the professor, are both performing masculinity by playing the mental Great Books game. The professor then, on top of that, plays the masculine gaze - earns "Feminine points" by painful and multiple pregnancies 19/

However, regardless, the playwright codes the female professor as masculine: she's the boss, the mentor, now university president; her children are in her past; AND she doesn't wrestle with femininity or feminism, not really. She doesn't deal with clothes, bras, CHILDREN 20/

Instead, she's made - as so many of LeGuin's "bad" or "imposter men" - as so many Catholic older women, and patriarchal older women - are made sexless. Just to survive.

And no, we don't talk about it in co-ed spaces. So, how would the playwright know the agony? 21/

The playwright puts in some gestures towards this: the way that women will - LIKE A MAN - debate abortion, pregnancy, sex, motherhood, etc.

They don't ever see us LIVE IT (not debate it...LIVE IT) like a woman.

22/

And...I wanted life. Not debate. Debate has been used by patriarchy (I'll say patriarchy, and not "men" because again, fuck the binary), but it's been used exactly to get away from empathy...AND experience

But...I got ideas. Not experience. In the play. 23/

And the discourse I've seen AFTER the play, by people of all genders, many of whom are or were Catholic, STAYS in that patriarchal debate space

Let us examine, like it's a Great Books course, what this or that symbol meant

24/

I get squicked out by this. It almost feels like a trauma response (which, I get, was the POINT - I GET that's the *point,* that's the bloody milieu; I GET it; the playwright did what he set out to do; bravo; well done; don't @ me)

BUT

25/

...it's still according to the patriarchal rules it's criticizing

It's still an invitation, in the play, in the discourse, in this podcast, to that (ugh) sniggering male intellectual gamer patriarchial BULLSHIT that can TALK about empathy but doesn't do a FUCKING THING ABOUT IT

And the patriarchy all sits around and pats each other on the back for seeing through their own bullshit...while STILL USING THE LENS OF THAT BULLSHIT.

I'm still being too broad. I don't care for my own conclusions, or my own argument.

But... (20-something)

I feel like I'm being told to like the play Because Of Important Rules That Are Predicated On Tastes I'm Told By Patriarchy To Have, And If I'm Rejecting Something Fundamentally, I'm Missing The Point, And Just Let Us Mansplain Why You're Wrong... (30-ish?)

To be clear: I don't blame the playwright. Or anyone who like the play. Like what you like. Whatever moves you to being a better person is always a good thing. My tastes don't have to be your tastes.

(Ad infinitum)

But even writing that, I feel like a "good patriarchal girl" who's supposed to like the We All Agreed Upon Man Debate Thing, & You're Just Being Hysterical

But. Yeah. No. I didn't like it

You want to talk about fetishizing birth and motherhood? I don't think this was the means

I wanted NARRATIVE.

I, this woman, who's struggled hard to be a woman within this patriarchy that would reward me so much more if I would just shut up and be a man, didn't like it

I didn't want to get to the intellectual smut; I wanted context; I wanted story (Who knows #)

Soooooooooooooooooo...this is a long ramble.

And the upshot, of course, whenever one starts to say: "The play SHOULD have been this" it to write my own damn play, because no one gets to dictate to someone else what their art SHOULD be. That way lies madness.

(MCMXVIII prolly)

But part of my rage against the machine is that the mechanisms that helped to catapult this play & other plays like it (Mamet springs violently to mind) is the patriarchy

It just is, folks. It just is. The "good plays" are very like those "good men" as LeGuin writes (joke here)

I'm tired. I've fought so hard against the culty parts of both culture & Catholicism to be a woman; to not write in the patriarchal sniggering on a podcast, aren't we clever intellectual way...which, yeah, I can write a thesis with the best of them...but to be genuine. Feminine.

And...I'm disheartened.

I feel like I'm back in every professor's classroom, being gently told - or not so gently told - that the only way to get through this is to be a better man. Tell stories like a man. Debate like a man. Play and snigger and think like a man.

I want to be fucking soft. I want stories about god-damn unicorns, dammit. I want to break your heart, but with rainbows. I want to follow a butterfly around for several hours before beholding the exquisite glittering truth that rends you into your rawest humanity.

I am so. so. so. so. so. SO despondent

I've studied the unbroken line of white male Western thinkers

But I TREASURED the myths & fairy tales & the stories by an unbroken line of anonymous, wrinkled old women, who quilted bits of tales together and taught you how to add to them

I want to be soft & witchy & ancient & new & wrinkled & smooth & sexy & vampiric & comical & not in a straight line but in a thousand random loops and...

Anyway. So. I don't think I'll finish the podcast.

I can't take another bunch of men sniggering; listening in silence. FIN/