"Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard."

Saturday, cigarette #2
Back at Axis Orange, front porch, 7:15pm
MUSIC: "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!," the X-Ray Spex

Speaking of “girls like violence,” my own go-to guy for that is Heinrich von Kleist. From Penthesilea (it's a love story about Achilles and Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, in which they spend half of the play fighting and the other half whispering sweet nothings, and not always in that order):

Alas! Son of the Nereid! To me
That gentler art of women was not granted.
Not at the games, like daughters of your country,
When in great streams the pride and glory of youth,
Come from afar to vie in joyful contest,
May I seek out the one I love among them. [...]
On bloody battlegrounds I have to seek him,
The youth my heart has chosen for its own,
And this soft breast may not receive him sooner
Than I have captured him with arms of bronze.

When I want to start an argument with one of the campus feminists (as opposed to just harrass them, which is also fun), I’ll usually start by saying, “I’m a feminist. I think that the feminine perspective has been criminally neglected by the rich white men who’ve been in charge of the West since forever. But I also think that the ‘feminine perspective’ has a lot to do with submission and humiliation.”

Most of the time, I end up having to answer the question of why I'm out having intellectually aggressive arguments like some kind of anti-feminist attack dog instead of home baking cookies for my nine children. It's a fair point, but not an unanswerable one. The heart and soul of my anti-feminism is the conviction that power relationships are okay. Traditional gender roles put women at the mercy of men, but then again so does love. If you don’t believe that, either you’ve never been in love or you’ve never listened to a deep soul song. (See “Have a Little Mercy,” or anything ever put out on Stax between 1959 and 1968.) One of the ways to keep a power relationship from becoming oppressive is to keep the power dynamic front and center, which is why it's okay for such a demure Southern girl to pick so many fights. In other words, feminists want the relationship between a man and a woman to look less like a battle; I’d prefer it to look more like one.

So why is it that the feminists and I both like the Amazons so much? Because not all women who become warriors do it for the same reasons, or in the same way. Penthesilea is an Amazon queen, but she’s as comfortable being under a man’s control as she is to be controlling him. (“True, with this arm here I was glad to strike you,/But when I saw you sinking down, my breast/Was envious of the dust that would receive you.”) The Amazonian high priestess, on the other hand, is an Amazon because she is uncomfortable with any relationship where she isn’t the one with the power.

Unfortunately, she gets the best speech in the play:

[To Penthesilea:]
Well then, my Queen, this diatribe of yours
Does set a worthy cap, I must confess,
Upon the deeds of this unfortunate day.
No only that, in disregard of custom,
You seek out your opponent in the field;
Not only that, failing to cast him down,
You’re thrown by him instead; not only that you
Garland him with roses in return:
But you revile your loyal followers
Who broke your chains, you turn away from us,
And call the conqueror to come back to you!
Very well, then, noble daughter of Tanais.
Free, in our people’s name, I now pronounce you,
And you may wend your feet wherever you please,
May run with fluttering garments after him
Who clapped you in irons, and bring back to him
The bonds we broke, for mending.

To which Penthesilea responds (very loosely translated), “Yeah, I’ll take my irons back to him for mending! It’s called love, dingbat."