From: Patricia Schwartz <margaret@glas.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Date: 12 Oct 92 02:50 MDT
Subject: death and feminism
Nf-ID: #N:glas:84600011:000:6295
Nf-From: glas.UUCP!margaret    Oct 12 02:50:00 1992


I have noticed in my various communications with Russian
friends over the last few years that they seem rather puzzled
by American feminism, especially what look like totalitarian
aspects and extremism and an "anti-sex" attitude.
 
I think I understand the root of these attitudes and also why
they haven't been present in Russian culture, and probably won't
arise even when post-Marxist "feminism" (in some form) 
becomes popular in Russia
(as it soon will, because the economic crisis is hitting women 
harder than men, as usual in most societies because women
almost always get custody of children after divorce, and hence
in a society with any significant divorce rate, women need
more money but actually earn less due to discrimination. So in times
of economic distress, divorced or single women with children
really get hit much harder than men, and also come to realize this
very quickly.)
 
Anyways, I want to point out a certain deep aspect of Western
literature and culture that I have not yet observed in Russian
culture. This is the Culture of the Dead Woman.
 
The central idea to this is that any woman who enjoys sex
with a man must die in shame. 
 
Some major works of this genre are: La Dame aux Camilles by Dumas,
Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Faust by Goethe, the ballet Giselle,
I could go on and on......the list is quite stupefying.
 
In all of these works, some woman discovers her inner sensuality,
tries to act on it and maybe even become independent in her choice
of lover, and then dies a pitiful death of mental illness or
consumption or outright suicide. In Faust, Gretchen's punishment
for having a sexuality is to die of shame in a prison dungeon.
She is only lifted to heaven after she denounces herself to God. In
Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary is a very sensual woman married to a
bourgeois fool. Instead of leaving him and finding a good horny
man to love, Flaubert has his heroine take poison out of the shame
of having her beautiful sensual nature exposed to public knowledge.
 
And what about modern American culture? How many famous police thrillers
begin with the body of a dead woman? And look at this new movie
with Clint Eastwood, "The Unforgiven." The entire premise for
the plot is the mutilation of prostitutes, good women who were trying
to survive in the rough world of frontier America and provide a
very necessary feminine influence in places that were often too
unsettled for most women to inhabit.
 
The message in Western European and American culture in particular
is: women who have sex or want to have sex MUST DIE. Then of
course the male hero of the story reaches some state of grace
in grieving for the dead woman.
 
One might ask, "Why should people be so affected by mere works
of literature?" I can't answer, but there is very horrifying proof
in the works of serial killers like Ted Bundy and the Green River
killer, who mutilate the genitals of their female victims as if they
are destroying some source of evil. The proof is not that they
did it after reading "Madame Bovary" or Faust, but that the
same cultural ideal that sent Emma Bovary to suicide seems to
drive some men to brutalize sexual women.
 
I see as yet no parallels to the death-wish for sexual women in Russian
culture. Tolstoy wrote "Anna Karenina," which is certainly close
to this genre, but later denounced it and wrote "Resurrection,"
where the prostitute was a good woman who DID NOT REPENT her
sexuality and LIVED! How fantastically revolutionary this was
for an American girl to read - a woman who fucks and doesn't die.
And she tells the rich man who wants to marry her and "save" her from
shame and prison that she really couldn't care less what he wants.
She wants what SHE wants. His pity does not impress her.
 
Is it obvious now why in American feminism there is the common
attitude that sex with men is equivalent to slavery?
This is part of why we are so obsessed with sexual matters in the
struggle for economic equality. Not just job discrimination,
but everything to do with sex. Even mere sexual language or
imagery can be upsetting for some feminists, whether it results
in real discrimination or not. Still, somehow it threatens us with
the Dead Woman Culture.
 
And this is why even conservative American women many times 
develop strong friendships with homosexual men. It was well-known in
Washington and New York that despite the official Reagan policy of 
supporting anti-homosexual laws, Nancy Reagan's very best friend was
a very openly gay man. They can be our friends without
killing us! If you get too close to a straight man, then you'll
wind up expressing your natural sexuality and die like Emma Bovary
or Margarethe or Gretchen or Giselle or Allie Mc Graw in "Love
Story" or any woman who has sex in a slasher movie or sleeps
with the policeman or the cowboy or the hero...
 
The most astonishing piece of literature I have evr read is
"Master and Margaret." THIS WOMAN FLIES NAKED OVER MOSCOW AND
IS NOT ASHAMED. SHE COMMITS ADULTERY AND DOES NOT DIE A GRUESOME
DEATH. SHE HAS RESPECT AND LOVE AND SPIRITUAL POWER. 
 
And she has the power to stop the torment of Frida.
 
And SHE saves the man in her life.
 
This book was the Epiphany of my literary life. It made me realize how
I had been Puritanized by this Western Cult of the Dead Woman.
I am eternally amazed that it was written by a man, because it
would be almost radical feminism in the West. 
 
Of course, don't say that to many American feminists, because after all,
Margarita spends a large fraction of her time in the book naked
or almost naked. In some sectors of feminism, this is by definition
sexist and degrading and bad. Of course, one root of this judgment
lies in this Dead Woman ideal itself. Sometimes we imitate those
against whom we rebel!
 
To me, her nakedness is power and liberation. She does not die.
She is not humiliated or mutilated or put in prison to rot. She
does not swallow arsenic or contract a fatal disease.
 
I hope I helped foster some understanding here about how this
"Dead Woman" culture influences the direction of American feminism.
It seems to be very different from the Russian image of female
sexuality. But I am still a novice in this area. I really am
extremely interested in learning more about this subject.

margaret, unashamed