Are you a Man or a Blouse?
Friday, 24 October 2003
For some matrix of reasons, I'm on an updating jag this week. This evening I am busy packing for Geneva, whither we fly at an ungodly hour tomorrow to visit Suzanne, but I feel like updating, so here we are.
Before I start, though, on the subject of yesterday's entry, Paradise tells me that it may have come across as science-bashing - or at least as a statement that, to paraphrase Pope, the proper study of humans is humankind. Let me say categorically that nothing could be further from my intention: what I was trying to get across (among other things) is that people who perceive value in one realm of existence sometimes dismiss other realms as irrelevant, or cast aspersions on the validity of the methods used to engage with them. I find myself in the humanities camp by inclination, and I am oddly fascinated by the type of mind that ends up in the sciences camp. I accept no hierarchy of value between the two, and it frustrates me when people imply that there is one. I don't imagine any of you were losing sleep over this, but there's no harm in clarifying!
You'll be relieved to know that the dizzying selection of Rigid Frameworks your Radzer uses to interpret the world are informed not only by frivolous binary oppositions such as that between the sciences and the humanities, but also by categorisations of much more weight and substance.
I refer, in this instance, to the eternal divide [oh, all right, it was concocted last year, in a stroke of genius, by Paradise and Melusina] between, on the one hand, the Real Man, and on the other, the Big Girl's Blouse.
This indispensible dichotomy can be used to interpret the actions and attitudes of any given individual. The attributes of each type can be inferred from its name. The Big Girl's Blouse tends to focus on the aesthetic, maintains social relations with grace and ease, would rather not meddle with the mechanics of things. The Real Man is calm in a crisis, privileges function over form, enjoys knowing how things work.
Despite the nomenclature, the categories are not gender-specific. I, for example, am a Real Man. So is Paradise. Melusina is a Big Girl's Blouse. Neither label is bad or good - any more than "blue" or "red" is bad or good: they are simply reflections of the way things are. (Derrida, I am reliably informed, would argue that every binary implies a hierarchy, but what would he know?)
And indeed, this is not a binary after all. Following much debate in the highest quarters (I refer, of course, to our kitchen), it was recognised that a third category exists: that of Goddess. The typical Goddess tends to be detached from areas of experience that are not of direct interest - will display attributes of either the Real Man or the Big Girl's Blouse as the situation warrants. Our dear friend Fearful Symmetry, despite his protests to the contrary, has been firmly identified by a panel of experts as a Goddess.
Thus, I, as a typical Real Man, will cheerfully unblock the drains, clean out the washing-machine filter and read DIY manuals in bed, but can't keep my living space tidy. Meanwhile, Melusina burns scented candles, listens to music while she studies and thinks nothing of walking to town in four-inch heels, but will do almost anything rather than put an Argos flat-pack together. The distinction is about function versus style, and to some extent about having nerves of steel versus jelly - but it's also about reserve versus abandon, methodical plodding versus vivid inspiration.
By now I am certain you are asking yourself, How have I survived until now in ignorance of these timeless truths? To help you formulate a more sophisticated understanding of the matter, I humbly offer this brief exegesis, which I penned in correspondence with Autumnsong some time ago.
De Blousibus Realis
Certainly, it requires no particular expertise in abstruse scholarship to recognise the superficial cultural distinctions implied by the two terms - the mere employment of the lexemes "man" and "girl" instantly sets up an opposition that it would be otiose to elucidate here. Add to this that the binary comprises one human and one sartorial element, and - given the blithely humanonormative discourse that underpins so many of our commonest social assumptions - the hierarchical implications are difficult to evade.
One may unpack further, perhaps beginning with a consideration of the semantic disjuncture between "real" (absolute, dependable, verifiable) and "big" (relative, unstable, and - importantly - undesirable, at least in the context of contemporary mainstream Western culture, in conjunction with "girl"). A similar opposition may be observed between "man" (a semantically unmarked category in that same culture, and therefore a strong, unquestionable concept) and "girl's blouse" (a category loaded with connotations of youth, femaleness, flimsiness, frivolity, and concomitant weakness).
A syntactical approach sheds additional light. The phrase "real man" is simply a noun qualified by an adjective. In contrast, "big girl's blouse" is innately ambiguous - the adjective is applicable to either noun, yielding a subtle difference in meaning. In traditional symbolic terms, the "real man" represents the male principle: bounded, conscious, definite, and discrete; while the "big girl's blouse" represents the female, whose boundaries are more questionable and who is associated with the unconscious, the ambiguous, the permeable; the adjective split between the two nouns may be read as reflecting the inherent "twoness" of womanhood in its progenitive aspect. Whereas the male is firmly and obviously present in the phrase "real man", the female in "big girl's blouse" is at one remove - veiled, as it were, by the blouse.
Turning to consider the indiscriminate application of each term to persons of both sexes, it would be tantamount to gross intellectual negligence to overlook the divergent cultural connotations of referring to a man in feminine terms and referring to a woman in masculine terms. The former is clearly less favourable in most relevant cultural contexts (as evidenced, for instance, by the anecdotal reportage of the use of "woman" as an insult among adolescent males). The implications of the latter, in which a label associated with the culturally normative category is applied to an individual who does not inhabit the space associated with that category, are apt to be less grave.
In fact, of course, this is where the hierarchy begins to break down (we may fancifully characterise it as the opening through which the deconstruction workers may enter to begin dismantling). The appropriation of pejorative referents by oppressed classes has long been a strategy for empowerment, and we may all turn the epicene usage of these phrases to our advantage. The introduction of a binary that masquerades as being consistent with the existing "male>female" axis, but is in fact orthogonal to it, serves to create new solidarities and, by the same token, new rifts. Thus, the facade begins to crumble, allowing in a breath of fresh air.
Neither must we forget, of course, that the binary is problematised, and indeed, one might argue - were one so inclined (as one might well be) - destabilised, by the addition of the third category, "goddess". The exegesis of the multi-layered implications of this term, both for the "male>female" binary and for a consideration of the dominant religious schemas that pertain in contemporary mainstream Western culture, is left as an exercise for the reader.
A note for the bewildered and/or outraged: I am, in fact, taking the piss. Really!
Copyright © 2003 by Radegund
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