Now, I have done many a blog on Feminism, and I really can't be bothered reiterating what I've said a million times before about it just so that this blog makes more sense. If you really want to know my opinions on it then by all means scroll through the rest of my bullshit and you will find plenty of feminism eventually.
Anyway, today in our 11am lecture (to think I used to be able to handle 9am starts and now even this is too much!), we were learning about feminist approaches to literature, with regards to poetry and fairy tales and it was utter bollocks for want of a better term.
Our lecturer said that poetry initially came about as a way for a man to show his wife just how much he loved her and why. The sonnet, for example, frames a person and tells just what makes a person special. It puts them on a pedestal. However, she then went on to say how this isn't a good thing, as by objectifying women to the status of a beautiful statue, we leave them no room to have opinions or voices of their own. By making women seem like unattainable objects of lust or beauty, male writers do them a disservice and rather than flatter them, just write to "keep them in their place".
This is bullshit!
If a man was going to write a poem or song about me, I wouldn't be getting on my high horse about how objectified and offended I was. I'd be flattered that he'd chosen me or all people to show his admiration for, and pleased with myself for actually being worthy of someone's creativity and inspiring enough to provoke them into writing something about their feelings for me.
Love is something that dominates human consciousness. We are obsessed with it. We are always looking for it, whether we like to admit it or not. If somebody felt so strongly about me that they just had to express themselves in art then how it that ever a bad thing?
Perhaps feminists are too wrapped up in finding flaws within the male species to see the good in this, to see that maybe, just maybe, women are wonderful enough to inspire some great works of literature.
Besides, it isn't as if they are written about at their own expense. Perhaps in the past women writers were stifled but not anymore. Authors like J.K. Rowling are the modern canonical writers and we shouldn't forget that in our haste to fight about what poor and oppressed creatures we are.
Feminists are just bitter that nobody wants to write poetry about them.
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GRASS
We thought, as we left
the pliant grass,
would remain impressed
in fidelity;
our bodies traced
where we had lain.
As well, perhaps
for love’s tender pride
-that we did not look back.
To see the sun bid
that green phalanx
spring to attention
with unfeeling haste;
to lure anew
those aching whims.
Of anonymous lovers,
who’d naively rest-
cushioned,
-as once were we
in verdant deceit.
To accuse you, Grass
in your spite, of having spurned
my conceit
in yielding to others;
would invoke a rare sentience
to our peculiar feud
and dismiss a more prosaic truth:
revealed in Nature’s
remorseless instinct.
That wilts,
the daisychains of youth
And rains,
heedless of your best french dress.
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