The stereotype of the sex object is only one of the stereotypes used to mask the realities of female humanity. Even this type is not free from abuse. A certain kind of male imagines that women are all the time flaunting themselves to inflame his senses and deny him, in order to build up their deficient egos. He imagines that women get away with outrageous exploitation of male susceptibility. The following extracts appeared in a book of sex instruction republished recently in England, called Sane and Sensual Sex.
Man does not (as woman may well think) always like to see her stark naked. He is not necessarily mad keen to see her in scanties or panties or bra. He does not lose his head when her skirt blows up in a high wind, showing all she’s got on. He does not enjoy the generous breasts spilling from the top of her dress or forcing their way through her tight sweater. He does not revel in the sight of her bottom swaying, hinged to her hips or inside her skirt that flares all around her, revealing a multitude of frothy petticoats.
Yet—the average girl and young woman thinks this is mass hypnosis to the average man. She runs away with the idea she is sex personified, lusted after by every male in sight. Indispensable to his peace of mind and body. The law of most lands pets and pampers the female from the age of thirteen to the point she is protected from every leer and lascivious look, every bottom-pinch or thigh-tweak that is undesired or unasked for.
Consequently, the female grows up with a Virgin-Mary-Complex, convinced she is untouchable—until she gives the word ‘go’.11
One is not surprised to find the author of this extraordinary mixture of yearning and loathing spending a disproportionate amount of time praising frilly underwear, and chafing against the imagined dominance of women in sexual matters.
Woman will always have the upper hand because she gives whereas the man takes.
So she will always spurn the exhibitionist, pretend no interest in the man’s sexual charms, disclaim his right to dress well and attractively, on top and underneath.
For she thinks that sex-appeal and charm, mysticism and glamour are the prerogative of her sex alone.
His parting shot is meant to be a killer. ‘But a man’s body wears better than a woman’s if he takes care of it. And he is virile and effective long after she has given up the sexual ghost.’12
Most men fall in love with a pretty face but find themselves bound for life to a hateful stranger, alternating endlessly between a workshop and a witch’s kitchen.
Schopenhauer
Pretty women are never unaware that they are aging, even if the process has hardly begun: a decayed beauty is possibly more tormented than any other female stereotype, but even for women who never made any claims on male admiration there are abusive stereotypes which take over her claim to individuality. The studious, plain girl is characterized as a characterless, sexless swot: the housewife is depicted by a head full of curlers and nothing else, aproned, fussing, nagging, unreliable in the kitchen, with the budget, in her choice of clothes and with the family car. As she gets older the imagery becomes more repellent; she becomes obese, her breasts grow huge and sagging, the curlers are never out of her hair, her voice is louder and more insistent; finally she is transmuted into the most hated female image of all, the wife’s mother, the ubiquitous mother-in-law. Eventually even a child—wife must grow up, and stop murmuring and snivelling about, and male mockery dates from the moment in which she abandons her filial, adoring station and begins to run her household. ‘The pretty girl then blindfolded her man so he would not see that she was turning from a butterfly into a caterpillar.’13
Philip Wylie lashed himself into a rhetorical frenzy which so accurately caught the frequency of woman-hatred in America that the absurdity of his actual argument did not prevent a spurious phenomenon, ‘Momism’, from coming into being. Many an intelligent man abandoned his understanding in order to join, like Jimmy Porter, in the luxury of unbridled vilification of women. For example, Wylie actually states that female suffrage is responsible for political corruption in America.
Mom’s first gracious presence at the ballot-box was roughly concomitant with the start towards a new all-time low in political scurviness, hoodlumism, gangsterism, labour strife, monopolistic thuggery, moral degeneration, civic corruption, smuggling, bribery, theft, murder, homosexuality, drunkenness, financial depression, chaos and war. Note that.14
Of course, he can’t be serious. True enough. Such things can only be said in jest, but they are serious none the less. The most telling playground for feelings of rejection about women is the joke department:
A strange sight greeted the young wife as she came home. There was her mother standing on a chair with her feet in a bucket of water. She had one finger plugged into the light socket, and two wires connected to each side of her head. Hubby was poised by the electricity meter with his hand on the switch.
‘Ah, you’re just in time to see Henry cure my rheumatism!’ cried the happy mother.15
The fact that there are no such storehouses of jokes against father is not because women have no sense of humour, although it might most commonly be explained that way. How they could survive the endless gibing at their expense without a sense of humour is difficult to explain. Another kind of humorous insult that women take in good part is the drag artists’ grotesque guying of female foibles. Some of the transvestite acts are loving celebrations of the sexless trappings of femininity, and should be chiefly of value in pointing out how little femininity has to do with actual sex and how much with fakery and glamour-binding. Many more of them are maliciously conceived caricatures of female types ogling and apeing women’s blandishments and hypocrisy while vying with feminine charms. Women are spectators at both kinds of entertainment, laughing and applauding whenever required.
Any woman can continue this investigation of the abuse of womenfolk for herself, but there would not be much point in exciting female paranoia if there were no alternatives. As an essential condition of the diminution of the common practice of belittling women, women themselves must stop panhandling. In their clothes and mannerisms women caricature themselves, putting themselves across with silly names and deliberate flightiness, exaggerating their indecisiveness and helplessness, faking all kinds of pretty tricks that they will one day have to give up. They ought to take advantage of the genuine praise of women which is appearing, though fitfully, in contemporary culture. When the Troggs sang their praises of their Wild Thing, or Family celebrated their Second Generation Woman:
Last thing you gotta do
Is talk her into loving you
No need to
She knows when the time is right
Comes to you without a fight
She wants to16
they opened up new possibilites in the imagery of womanhood, not now circumscribed by hearts and flowers or jewels. Long Tall Sally and Motorcycle Irene are individuals, not stereotypes, and although they are still outnumbered by Girls from the North Country and other impersonal female deities at least they have arrived. It is time we went to meet them.
Misery
Anguish is easier to bear than misery. The woman who is married to a brute, a drunk or a pervert has the world’s sympathy as well as masochistic satisfaction. The self-publicizing misery of the abandoned woman justifying her dependence on drugs, drink or sex with strangers by the crime which society has committed against her is not so deeply pitiable as the day-to-day blank misery borne by women who have nothing to complain about. The evidence of this dreary suffering can be found on any aging female face: the wrinkles which disfigure women are lines of strain and repression, lines of worry, not concern. Relaxed, their drawn features are easy to read, but as soon as they realize that they are being observed they guiltily clear their eyes, raise their chins and affect a serenity they do not feel. The prejudice against revolt or complaint by married women is very strong: public airing of boredom or discontent is deep disloyalty, ingratitude and immorality. It is admitted that marriage is a hard job requiring constant adjustment, ‘
give and take’, but it is not so often admitted that the husband—provider is the constant and the woman the variable.
‘Daytimes are all right: I’m busy. But the evenings from eight till midnight, along with my knitting or TV, make me feel like a prisoner.
‘Because my husband works at the local, if I go out it’s with my sister or to evening classes. Surely one hour of a man’s company at night is not enough? I feel like a modern Cinderella, and can’t stand another twelve years of it. There’s a shortage of baby sitters and it’s hard to organize a service here because there are very few mothers in my situation close by.’
Let’s face one fact: your husband isn’t going to change after twelve years. He can’t see any harm in his behaviour, and the more you complain, the more ready will he be to run away from your reproaches to the peace of his bar.
You can, though, change yourself. First consider your man’s many virtues: then make sure the time spent with him is so delightful he’s loath to leave.
Finally, reorganize your social life. If you had friends in to cards or a simple meal twice weekly, they wouldn’t be your husband, but they’d take your mind off him. And remember—if he were, say, a sailor, he’d be away for years. Come to terms with an absentee husband: and if he begins to realize you are not noticing his absence so much he may be more ready to stay at home.1
A wife’s only worthwhile achievement is to make her husband happy—it is understood that he may have other more important things to do than make her happy. When her discontent begins to incommode him, he realizes that perhaps he ought to talk to her more, take her out more often, buy her roses and chocolates, or pay her the occasional compliment. It doesn’t take much after all. If she has already lapsed into the apathy and irritability of the housewives’ syndrome she is not really capable of a conversation, too tired to go out, feels bribed and mocked by flowers.
I am admired because I do things well. I cook, sew, knit, talk, work and make love very well. So I am a valuable item. Without me he would suffer. With him I am alone. I am as solitary as eternity and sometimes as stupid as clotted cream. Ha ha ha! Don’t think! Act as if all the bills are paid.
Christine Billson, ‘You Can Touch Me’, 1961, p. 9
Nagging, overweight and premature aging are the outward signs of misery, and they are so diffuse among women in our society that they do not excite remark. Women feel guilty about all of them: they are the capital sins of ‘letting yourself go’. They invent excuses for them explaining irritability and tiredness by illnesses, claiming pains that do not exist until they make them exist; the insidious headache, backache, loss of appetite, rheumatism. The housewives who suffer from the actual housewives’ blight, the ‘great, bleeding blisters that break out on their hands and arms’ which Betty Friedan noticed are fewer in number than the women who have no such welcome outward sign of their malaise.2 The statistics about the numbers of women who have surgery for abdominal complaints without organic causes are horrifying. We could guess at some real statistics if we had the market research findings for firms who market ‘zest’, ‘zip’, ‘energy’, ‘vitality’, ‘fitness’, ‘happiness’, ‘inner glow’, which will ‘help you to enjoy life’, ‘buck you up no end’, make you ‘relaxed, confident—eager to get on with things’, ‘help you to become your real self again’. The products that can advertise in this way are free from habit-forming drugs for the most part, although the subtle way in which painkillers are presented to women as form of psychotherapy, combating depression and irritability as well as pain, is full of hazards. There are no statistics for aspirin and codeine addiction in this country because they are both sold over the counter. There is no public campaign to warn women of the danger of salicylates.3 Occasionally a typical housewives’ syndrome appears in the professional advice sections of women’s papers: Evelyn Home was called upon to deal with this:
Maybe mine’s more a problem for you, Dr Meredith, but I’m always bone-tired and therefore bone-idle. And with five children (three at school) you’ll guess there’s plenty for me to do.
I feel so tired when I wake, I can’t think how to cope, let alone start work. I do the minimum of housework, sometimes I don’t even get the youngest dressed until just before my husband gets home in the evenings, and only then because he blows his top.
He calls me tired-itis.
How I envy the women who can get up at six and do everything and feel on top of the world. I wish I could do half that they do; now I’m really down and don’t feel like trying at all. Recently my thoughts have frightened me; all that stopped me from carrying them out was the thought of the children, whom, though I don’t show it, I do love.
It’s all there; the guilt, because women’s literature is full of the trumpeting of female Stakhanovists crying ‘Look how well I do the impossible: everybody love me!’, the feeling of incompetence which is turning into illness and debility as she formulates it, the odd relationship with her husband who is her critic, and her uncertain feelings about the children, which are not dispelled by a policy statement which ought to read ‘I do love them (but I don’t feel it).’
Evelyn Home’s response is typical, and no GP would thank her for making it, even though it is difficult to think of any workable alternative.
You’re quite right; it’s a doctor’s case, I’m sure of it. Get down to your doctor, explain everything, the weariness, depression, lassitude; he can help.
And cheer up. Many women with far less to cope with than five children and a quick-tongued husband feel worse than you and do less. You’re all right, except that you’re ill (!). Tackle your health first and the other troubles will all fall into place.4
Well, it all rather depends on the doctor. Suppose she is as strong as an ox, no iron deficiency? Suppose he does treat her with tonics and vitamins? Suppose he tells her to stop moaning and get on with it, a feat of which GPs are not altogether incapable? Suppose he suggests a holiday which they cannot afford, or which turns into a fiasco with even harder and more unwilling work than before? No miracles will happen. Perhaps she can try a glass or two of tonic wine? More likely her GP will, if badgered sufficiently, prescribe a happiness pill, an amphetamine, an anti-depressant, a stimulant. English papers periodically boom with vague reports of increasing addiction to stimulants and barbiturates among housewives.
A recent TV programme estimated that over a million women in Britain today are addicted to tranquillizers. To those who have never taken them it sounds alarming, but those of us who are actually hooked on them know just how awful it really is. For over a year, I have been on a brand of pill, described as an anti-depressant and relaxant.
I started with tranquillizers at the time I went to my family doctor to ask his advice about a problem concerning my marriage.
This letter appeared in Forum as a caution to other women who might follow the primrose path of symptomatic treatment for an intolerable situation. Mrs J. S. used up two supplies of pills in all innocence, and then discovered that she had withdrawal symptoms:
When the new supply ran out I thought I’d try to do without them. On the first day I felt a bit jumpy, but after a couple of drinks in the evening my nerves quietened down. The following day it was worse. I was terribly irritable with my husband and the children. I had palpitations and the palms of my hands were sweaty. As the days passed, there was no question but that I had become addicted to tranquillizers. I just had to have more pills.
She went to another doctor to be cured of the addiction, but he gave her more pills. At least the addiction supplied a more pressing and uncomplicated problem than her intolerable situation. Her story has no end:
I had to continue taking my tranquillizers to stop worrying about my new worries. Today, I can’t imagine life without my pills any more than an alcoholic can without a drink. I was talking with a friend last week who is attending a psychiatrist. Anyway, she was telling me what a marvellous thing analysis is and how her doctor has helped her. I was with her a few hours and I noti
ced that during that time she twice went to her handbag and took a little pill. I could have sworn that they are the same as mine. She thinks they are little miracle workers. I didn’t even bother to explain to her their futility.5
Mr Michael Ryman, a psychiatric worker with the drug-addiction unit at All-Saints Hospital, Birmingham, reported that he had watched for eleven years while increasing numbers of housewives (he did not supply figures) trailed into the clinic to be weaned off high dosages of barbiturates, tranquillizers and stimulants. He admitted that their success rate with these cases was particularly small. His attitude was moralistic, as the professional attitude always is, eventually. He spoke of women using sleeping pills ‘because they cannot sleep or face the sexual advances of a too-ardent husband’ (the double-think in the latter idea is masterful), who ‘live on tranquillizers to counteract the slightest domestic crisis’, who ‘swallow anti-depressant capsules to help them through their dull and dreary day’. ‘Tranquillizer addicts have, for example been known to rush to the pill bottle after such minor upsets as boiling potatoes dry, finding a light bulb smashed and getting behind with the weekly wash’.
Then Miss Simmons, who is married to the Hollywood producer—director, Richard Brooks, explained: ‘I was terribly lonely when Richard was away on his movies. It was like you see on the screen. I was hooked on TV and booze.