dedicate, feminine

I needed to write something....and since I have no current diatribes to speak of, we'll just see what comes up.

I think listening to an entire album, from intro to outro, melody to rhythm, pop masterpiece to transitioning instrumental, is like falling love.

Except I don't even know what falling in love is like at this stage of my life. So perhaps falling in love is like listening to an entire album from crescendo to decrescendo, chaos to cadence, lyric to growl.

I don't think I've been surrounded by women since I was a kid, living with my mom and three sisters. This past weekend, I attended a feminist burlesque show; a couple weeks ago, I watched a women's roller derby match; and if I had to count, most of the friends I have made in Columbia have been women. I can really only think of a couple men here who I hang out with on a regular basis. It's not such a unique situation to be friends with women. Many of my best friends check that category on the U.S. census (for lack of a more complicated definition of gender). But I don't know of a time in my life when my community was primarily ovarian.

Ovarian, hah. Are male groups "testicular"? Henceforth.

I've struggled with romantic relationships for a long time, that glaring absense conjured by my mind when I whitness couplings of any sort. October is the season of my lust, my misunderstanding of consummate love, and the painful reminder of mysogyny past. Where is that magical female companion who will resolve my despair? For all my feminist sensibilities, the influence of the very real women in my life evaporates.

I think there is something to learn from the intimacy I share with women, bereft of physical contact, sexual and otherwise. This is not a lesson particular to women themselves, but one that can only be gleaned from a feminized definition of companionship (and share with my male friends). This image is not drawn by physical appeal or carnal desires (which is not to deny the capacity for Just sexual pleasure or even the possibility that such acts intensify commitment and ease inadequecies of the body - all claims that I hold true). Rather, companionship is very much a sense of community without the a priori assumption of sexuality.

I don't have the intelligence to imagine this without a consideration for the women in my life who are not sexual objects. Of course, there is Sage and Katie, who I count among my very best friends, and Heidi, Emma, Katie F. There's Danielle and Kathleen from Lexington. And most recently, the likes of Lindy, Kathleen, Roslyn, Jenn (and Heather might fit, if only recently). When in the past, new women may have represented the potential for fetish, I am ashamedly suprised by my attitude toward these women as entirely human rather than gendered, by an ability to see them as sexual beings while not sexualized. The degree of abnormality is ironic and troubling for a practicing male feminist (perhaps pro-feminist is more appropriate), if not altogether hopeful.

It is with a great deal of effort that I recognize myself as a subject and agent of patriarchy. Even with my long time female friends, I worry that our relationship is assexual; that is, a desexualized biproduct of their partnerships with close male friends. To the extent that they are embodied and I italicize our distinct bond, I find the paradox of my own sexuality: an eros that comes alive with familiarity, but ought not always be present in the familiar.

In my greatest transgression of all, the one "long term intimate relationship" that I was fortunate enough to experience was ripe with a lewd, body-centered sexual coercion. Under the guise of love (a guise I believed, but nonetheless manipulated) and the force of expectations of sexual order, I imposed my newfound sexuality on the one person I loved. Against her desire for non-sexual physical intimacy, I turned my back (quite literally) and sculpted her insecurity. She cried in the bathroom until I "came to my senses." But pressure became the quality of our partnership beyond those moments, where I left her unsure if she could feel safe with me, a charge that I now associate with no smaller felony than rape.

I have a wonderful respect for you now because you stood against me, because you broke away despite any repressive forces telling you that I am a good guy. The very real pain of that relationship's end is an inadequate punishment. Perhaps my three years of guilt and relationship paralysis have been sufficient. I don't know if you will ever read this (and I hope if you do that you do not feel violated by my public penance), but as much as I have suffered from you removing yourself from my life, I am a well-warranted hypocrite. I hope you remember that it was I who did you wrong and not the other way around. Any time you offer to recoup our lost friendship is a precious and undeserved gift.

I hope the women in my life, both new and old, will tolerate and love me further as I stumble over my own unexamined privileges, their naive application and intolerable consequences. I don't expect all of you to understand the why's or how's of my plea. The most disheartening point of view suggests that I am one of the good ones. I fear for the future of feminism and social justice when the above statement is true, but I hope to remain critical of myself, perhaps at the expense of my own psychological health, but for the betterment of human companionship, private and beyond.

And then love might be more like I listen to music, because I do it all the time; it is a form of existence and not the occasional fancy.

-Mike