The Power of Woman

Gorgeous readers, I don't know who you are or where you are or how you may stumble across my page, however, welcome....pull up a chair, pour yourself a wee whiskey and let your mind meander through my words, my world, for a moment or two.

Today sees your divine hostess Claudia pondering the incredible power of WOMAN and women's sexuality when it is free to express itself as it can and should. But what does this freedom involve and is it any different from the freedom of women to express ourselves in general, as we see fit? I remember reading a while back several passages in my Virginie Despente's book King Kong Theory about how she struggled to reconcile the false teachings of what is was/is to be a woman with her own real experience of it. For Virginie, fitting in with any ideal of femininity was early on dispensed with as a pointless exercise likely to lead only to bitterness and disappointment. She knew that she did not conform, did not look like any average girl and was neither classicly beautiful nor moderate and demure in demeanor and this caused problems for her.

For many women, those of us who do not conform to societies 'normal' values for 'ladies' or other people's idea of what it is to be feminine, we become typecast very quickly; we are 'ballbreakers' 'bitches' and 'sluts' and 'whores' (god forbid that we actually choose to be those last two things and enjoy it!!). We find that as women comfortable expressing the more yang side of our natures, it is as threatening as it is for men who desire to express their more yin side too. For years I have known the currency of the feminine ideal. I've known what it is like to sell myself, to give myself away 'freely' (the cost has often been higher than when I've traded honestly in what men have wanted from me), and to have that taken from me in one way or another without my conscious consent. Now I find that the only freedom lies in being true to oneself, in being "impeccable with ones word"*, yet it would seem that this all too often monumental task is tantamount to the holy grail of most relationships and we're generally not very good at getting there

Since the earliest days possible, women's sexual power has been known to be vast, extensive and when left to itself, unbounded....and then came religion where women began to be subjugated beyond belief, culminating in one of the biggest violations to womanhood known in our time, the burning of witches. Women who were sexual, who were midwives and healers, women who had esoteric knowledge, women who painted, danced and sang, who loved their nakedness and their wildness, were accused; a single look could turn a man's penis to dust. Women, it seems, fornicated with devils. Women were not God/Man-fearing enough and so we paid.

Interestingly, Lilith, who was seen as Adam's first wife, was reputed to have refused to have subjugated herself to Adam, instead choosing to fly off and fornicate with demons (aka have fun). In many biblical images, the serpent is represented as Lilith, which I actually quite like as at least it portrays one sister speaking to another in offering up the hand of 'temptation' (freedom?). In order to heal from the fundamental gender imbalance, and in every wrong done to woman a wrong is automatically done to man, we must refuse to compromise our true wild woman nature. We must become the witch, the healer, the crone, the whore, the virgin, the slut, the Goddess and more. We must embrace our vast and animal natures and be honest about who we are. We must relinquish the grip that shame, guilt and false idols hold over us and be true to our instinctive selves. Whether our lovers are men, women or both, we must find our integrity and stand with it. It may be a bumpy ride but jailers can only hold the keys as long as we believe in the bars.

*The Four Agreements ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

What happened to our Balls?

I've been watching one of my fave programmes on TV at the moment on catch up today, The Crimson Petal and The White, a drama series set in Victorian London based on the 2002 book by Michael Faber. The programme caught my eye as its main character 'Sugar' is a prostitute working out of a well known East End brothel and is quite frankly, totally hypnotic to watch.

For those who don't know or have access to this programme, the series outline is as follows (quote verbatim from BBC website):

"Sugar is a sexually adept prostitute whose reputation for sensuality precedes her; alluring and highly sought after she ‘never disappoints’. Her intelligence and wit sets her apart - self-educated and ambitious, she’s able to engage in heated discussion whilst satisfying her clients.

Having spent years at the mercy of men, Sugar yearns for a better life and craves the freedom to make a living using her brain rather than her body. When not at work Sugar pens a dark, gothic novel in which a prostitute enacts revenge on all the men who have wronged her - a theme that has threatened to seep into reality.
Mourning the recent death of her friend Elizabeth, beaten by two punters, Sugar is determined to flee the hell that is St. Giles. With the arrival of William Rackham, this escape becomes a tangible prospect - and one that Sugar is keen to exploit."

The programme also features actors of the calibre of Richard E Grant, Gillian Anderson and many more and is incredibly well cast in my view. Mrs Emmeline Fox, played by Shirley Henderson has a mission in life to 'rescue fallen women' - and my word don't sexworkers know that there are many still keen to do this even today. In doing so, and in ignoring the reasons perhaps more evident in Victorian times (poverty and lack of opportunity for the working classes etc), they then choose to ignore the personal advocacy of sexworkers, when most of us it's fair to say are more than able to speak for ourselves.

Now what intrigues me about this programme is its timeless topical focus on what makes a woman lose her mind, her virtues, or most sadly for me, her very essence, intelligence and strength. The woman playing Rackham's (the man who takes Sugar from the brothel by paying for exclusive 'rights' to her) wife is portrayed as slowly losing her mind in a way that is utterly comprehensible I'm certain to most women watching. Exploited and patronised by both her husband and her (extremely repellent) doctor who is systematically abusing her in private, separated from her child as being an 'unsuitable' influence, denied her feelings and her 'uncooperative' points of view (i.e one step up from a placid doormat) she begins an extremely well acted  descent into a living hell.  Sugar, originally cast as a spirited, alluring and intelligent prostitute is seen slowly losing her 'fire' as she becomes further and further enmeshed into the 'normal' lifestyle of her patron. It's almost agonising to watch; a bird of prey tethered and controlled until the role of the wife and the prostitute begin to become indistinguishable.

As stated above though, it's not only men who separate us into the Freudian categories of virgin/whore, oh no...as women we have become most adept ourselves. We make women responsible over and over again for the destructive consequences of the male gaze, in fact, so good have we become at labelling ourselves I fear, that the cost is undoubtedly very high in the loss of our fire, our chutzpah, our very balls! 

Virginie Despentes writes a whole book on the subject in her title King Kong Theory, lamenting the loss of female 'masculinity' and the corresponding loss of the male expression of femininity, both so apparently threatening even in today's society that people are beaten so severely they are left traumatised for daring to express those parts of themselves in public: see Maryland attack of this week in Macdonalds store where staff and public not only ignored this vicious beating but saw fit to film it instead!! (WARNING: This video is very ugly and could trigger - please be aware and accept no less than a public outcry - already the 'victim' is being reported a 'prostitute with previous criminal damage convictions' and what a disgusting and thinly disguised attempt at justification that is....).

I can almost not bear to watch the inevitable decline of Sugar in the Crimson Petal, it leaves me feeling so sad to bear witness to this all too familiar 'taming of the shrew', ironically the woman playing Ms Fox in this series, the 'saviour' of the 'fallen women' is also playing the role of Kate in the current theatrical version of the Taming of The Shrew!

My call - Ladies of Ill Repute, guard against the loss of your 'ill reputations' for fear that you become some hideous version of the Stepford Wife, our ambitions are surely far loftier than that!