It is often said that women tend to be more preoccupied with these questions and concepts then men, but men are, after all, still human. In a study-abroad program predominantly populated by young women (90% female, to 10% male participants), I was amused and interested to see that my Renaissance Theory of Love class has four men in it, a tremendously large and concentrated number for our small classes (they make up a third of that particular class). It makes me wonder—to what extent are men preoccupied with these questions?
The mere fact that so many signed up and showed up for a class such as this points to the fact that we are quick, as the female population, to assume that men aren’t as interested in these ideas as we are, when in fact, we know jack shit about how they really feel. I would feel safe in hypothesizing that although women are the ones doing the actual talking and external and internal agonizing and gossiping about it, men are just as invested in the subject as we are. After all, it takes two to make a pair, doesn’t it? And if we go back to that central idea what “everyone wants it,” that “everyone” includes men, too.
I need to start thinking and investigating how men approach the concepts of love. I’m exceedingly excited to see where in this class the similarities and differences in thinking lie.
In Plato’s “Symposium,” he discusses, through dialogue (a clever trick to contrast conflicting or agreeing arguments), how three philosophers of his time approached the idea of Love. Phaedrus, apparently an eternal optimist, points out that Love tends to bring out the best in people. He argues (in more words) that if someone is close to their lover or the object of their love and affection, they tend to feel as if they must act to a higher standard because of the proximity of someone whom they want to impress.
I think we can all agree this tends to true. Acting deplorably is usually the quickest way to turn someone off and drive them away, whereas we try to be as charming and winning and generally lovable as we can be, at least in the beginning stages of any relationship, platonic or otherwise. However, when distance is introduced between two people, static between who we really are and who we are trying to be often occurs. There are two popular contrasting phrases about this—“Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” and “Out of sight; out of mind.”
I am hesitant to jump onboard of either of these. Thousands of miles away from everything and everyone I know, I am fearful of the change that one of these phrases suggests, and skeptical of the other, seemingly too romantic, one. If the idea that being near to someone means that you try your hardest to inspire to someone else’s expectations and desires while still remaining true to yourself, but as soon as distance or other blocks are introduced, you return to your base instincts and engage in all sorts of less desirable and different behavior, what does this mean for the hopes or desires of both parties? What does it mean, in essence, for your relationship with the other person?
I have seen and lived this idea in action, both on the offended and offending sides. It’s not pretty, but it’s human. People are people. We are not infallible; we all make mistakes. We all give in to temptation and what is easy and settle for something at one point or another. I realize this. It’s natural. It’s millions of years of evolution and survival of the fittest. It’s something we should have figured out by now and reached some sort of conclusion on.
This being said, I still struggle with the idea. Having been there, I can only tell you this for logic—though I may not have followed through in physical action every time does not make me any less guilty. In my mind, I had already committed the crime. In my weakness and loneliness and sheer boredom, I was willing to do the same in that same situation. Is it the same? Is that how you justified it? Can you justify it? Can we ever justify what we do by who we are, or who we are by what we do, or is there someone, like a companion or lover or friend, we have to hold ourselves accountable to? Do we need someone to strive for, or should we be able to do it on our own, for ourselves and for the idea of being someone better? Though I am supposedly in Italy to figure out who I really am in the first place and how to relate myself and my desires and emotions to others, I shy at this idea of having to justify myself to anyone else. I remember, clearly, vividly, going back to that specific moment, considering carefully my two options, wondering if I would have to explain myself. Wondering if I would have to confess; if I could be able to confess. In a world where we are so used to only thinking about ourselves, I realized my shortcomings at this moment in which I realized that I wanted to be accountable only to myself, the gentlest audience, and not anyone else who I might want to be better for. From this, I realized I am weaker than you may be. I realized that where I was willing to sweep my indisgressions under the carpet and ignore them and pretend they did not exist, that I was as normal and flawed as I really am, it is the bigger person who acknowledges these causalities and faces them and explains them.
As we explored this idea in class, I realized that though I should only be worrying about me right now, in this strange city full of strange strangers, grappling with the strangeness that is getting to know the me inside of me, instead, I am worried about other people.
Normally confident, Italy has already chipped away at one hastily-plastered over façade of mine, and I find myself facing the first challenge to grapple with: I am not as sure of anything as I think I am.
In the same dialogue, Plato introduces through Aristophanes an old myth—once, there were three genders: male, female, and man-woman. These creatures were made of two distinct people, joined together at the back—four arms, four legs upon which they walked upright, one head on one neck with two symmetrical faces, separate sex organs, but all similar characteristics. These creatures were, as people tend to be, rather power-hungry, and because of their extreme strength and joint cunning, the gods grew worried that they would try to overthrow them, as the giants and Titans did. So after much consideration, Zeus came up with what seemed to him to be a reasonable solution: to cleave them in two, down the middle, severing their strength and capabilities by half. If they were still too much to handle after this, he was prepared to again sever them, rendering them to hopping beings with one leg and one arm.
The gods were shocked to find that after the cleaving, the formerly joined pairs clung together, and refused to eat or sleep or do anything of use, so grieved they were to be separated from each other, until one of them or both of them eventually died. If one of a pair died, the other would then go wandering, searching for a like half—if the creature had been originally man/man, they searched for another man. Women/women halves searched for another woman, and man/woman survivors searched for their other opposite gender half until they found that lost half that they then joined with, as closely as they could without being one entity anymore—two people, retaining their autonomy and independence, while still being part of a fully-functional couple. The ideal relationship.
Not only does this myth quite neatly sum up the idea that no matter what shape or form it comes in (heterosexual or homosexual or anything in between), Love is the same idea, it also brings us another popular phrase, explained. Your “other half.” The idea that someone, somewhere, will fit you as surely as if you were split down the middle from the same original form and sent on your separate ways until you find one another. That, I believe, is what Love really is. As a friend of mine once said, it is finding someone “who fills a part of you you never knew was empty before.”
“What’s it like to find someone who you can be comfortable with?” another friend of mine once asked.
“It’s using their same toothpaste and smoking their cigarettes,” I told her before even stopping to think about formulating an answer that actually makes sense. “It’s how one person can say to you, ‘We need to do this,’ and when you ask why, they give you 15 different answers, and not a single one makes sense, but when the right person says ‘We need to do this,’ and you ask them why, they give you one answer, and that’s the answer that makes sense to you, too. It’s finding someone who says out-loud to you what that little voice in your head is always telling you, but you don’t actually believe until you hear them say it.”
And that, also, it what makes us human, and makes up for out inherent weaknesses—the idea that we can, and would want to, somehow actually change and become a more solid person, for someone other than ourself.
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I’m finding my Pairing Food and Wine class to be an allegory for life: To be good at tasting, you have to have to have done lots of other eating and drinking and smelling and exploring. It’s important to have lived a full and diverse life before you try to put any of it to practical use. You must be wildly impractical and experimental and daring before you can start to build any sort of solid foundation that you would stake any sort of basis on. You must, through trial and error, find what works, and what does not. You must have someone first show you clearly what you are looking for or working to find, and then you must go after it with nearly suicidal tenacity until you find that you can realize it for yourself, by yourself. As my professor in this class, Giancarlo Russo, said, “Drinking is to do without thinking. To truly taste, you need to concentrate fully for at least one or two minutes on nothing else.”
This is what I am doing in Italy. I am eating and drinking and smelling and exploring, and concentrating fully on myself for three months. Like the wine we drink in that class, I am aging. I am tasting, and learning to trust my instincts and speak my mind, even if I am afraid that I am confusing the smell of white berries for that of pineapple, like I am finding the subtle nuances that I never knew existed within myself in the hopes that by the time I return to what it is I do know, I will know more about myself and where and how I fit in, or how I want or need to fit.
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The lines between reality and fiction are easily blended, especially for a writer. The fine point between the two was raised in my first Women in 20th Century Fiction class, and how we define “reality.”
It’s a tricky little question. One is tempted to say that reality is the action and experiences that one goes through in daily life; the world we live in. However, reality is different for every single person. You may share the same experience with someone, but the reality of the situation is interpreted differently by all involved. The interpretation tends to become the reality for someone, itself, which, I can tell you, is a Gemini’s curse. To a greater or lesser extent, we all tend to believe what we want out of a situation, and rely heavily on that belief to guide our thoughts or actions in regards to it. Reality, then, becomes the extents of what we think is possible.
Without the concept of “reality” like a rigid framework or cage around us, so much more would be possible—you would not have the previous concept or opinion that something is not “feasible”—that it is up to you to bend and stretch the frame of reality for yourself and see what you can actually accomplish if you don’t worry about where other people have failed before and staked the signpost of “impossible—it can’t or shouldn’t be done.” No one is an exception or a rule—we are all blissfully individual and unique, with different strengths, talents, fortes, and ambitions. Someone with less perseverance may have not been able to accomplish something, but if you have more fortitude, tenacity, cunning craftiness, or just sheer bull-headed stubbornness, you may blow away all previous expectations. As my professor said, “Words change the meaning of the world.” Your own definition of reality may shatter someone else’s.
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“Sex” and the “College Girl”:
Interesting:
Oxford Dictionary’s definition of “sex”: “Condition of being male or female; gender. // Sexual intercourse.”
As you may have noted by now, the title of this blog is “Sex and the College Girl.” Not only is this a titillating marketing mechanism, as I’m sure some of you characters who stumbled your way here typing like-minded words into a search engine in aims of finding something quite different, but it also is almost stupidly apparent in its meaning of what the purpose of this blog is. On one hand, yes, I am a college girl, and yes, I do occasionally discuss sex and similar themes. But the other point to this blog is that I am exploring topics from the point of view of a specific gender—the condition of being a female college student and how my gender and station in life affects the situations I find myself in or explore. It’s an interesting little double-edged sword—cerebral one minute, smutty the next. I love the duality of it.
XOXO
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