One of the most significant cultural developments of recent decades has been the normalization of sexual love between women. This is but one of many cultural revolutions since the 1960s, but it’s an especially profound one. Divorce, promiscuity and male homosexuality were much less common, but they were still familiar. The phenomenon of “lesbianism” was virtually unknown 100 years ago. Women might have intense romantic friendships, but the idea of females making love, shacking up together and forming a permanent lifelong bond had almost no public circulation.
What were once secretive and shameful relationships have been transformed with astounding rapidity into an entire subculture with its own travel agencies, vacation resorts, neighborhoods and popular artists. This subculture has established roots seemingly overnight. It is the direct and inevitable outgrowth of a world view that conceives of male and female as purely anatomical realities and denies spiritual complementarity between the sexes. It reflects the devolution of courtship and married love between men and women. It stems also from something vitally healthy and normal: the craving for intimacy amid the dehumanizing anonymity of modern life.
But, is this subculture as unshakable as it now appears? It is not. The normalization of lesbianism cannot proceed, and indeed could collapse altogether, without one thing: marriage. Women want families. It is lesbians most of all who are behind the push for same-sex marriage. Yesterday’s passage of a referendum that repeals Maine’s same-sex marriage law is a significant development. The losses have mounted. In all 31 states that have put this issue before the voters, same-sex marriage has been rejected. I’m not suggesting that homosexual activists are about to give up, but the odor of defeat is in the air.
No one can deny that homosexual activists have had their say. The electorate has listened to their side of the story. It has listened patiently and acted with especial kindness and tolerance toward lesbians. As they have moved into neighborhoods and set up their unconventional households, they have not experienced widespread hostility, evictions, or ostracism. They represent a revolution that puzzles many people, but the average person would just as soon not think about it. They don’t seem to be hurting anyone so why object?
But the public has its limits. It does not want lesbians to marry.
[Many comments have been added to this entry. See below.]
CONSIDERING yesterday’s defeat of same-sex marriage in Maine, and the overwhelming tide of resistance by voters in states across the nation, could it be that this insidious campaign, this most quixotic of all domestic revolutions, has lost its momentum? Is it possible defenders of marriage have new reason to be buoyant and hopeful?
Rose, a lesbian who is politically conservative, says the fight has only begun:
I wish I was as optimistic as you are, but unfortunately, I have to say, “No.” Many on the losing side are comforting each other with the fact that it was nearly a fifty-fifty split, something that would have been impossible ten years ago. Things are rapidly changing and traditionalists will pass away as more children who read Hello Sailor in elementary school reach voting age. Hollywood and the elite on their side.
A 400-year-old Connecticut oak, birches in Vermont, a lost pear tree of childhood, and the ancient sentinels of the South American tropics. Readers eloquently describe their favorite trees here. The Granby Oak
VOTERS in Maine yesterday overturned a new law legalizing same-sex marriage, making Maine the 31st state to reject homosexual marriage by popular vote. In every state in which same-sex marriage has been put to a vote of the people, it has lost.
Because of Maine’s proximity to Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut, where same-sex marriage has been approved through court rulings and legislation, this was an important victory for supporters of traditional marriage. Child custody will become a divisive issue between contiguous states that do not have equivalent marriage laws.
Ultimately, the marriage issue must be settled uniformly across the nation. Since the Supreme Court is unlikely to rule against same-sex marriage, a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman is the only hope for protecting the most fundamental of all political institutions.
I spent some time the other day calling voters in Maine, urging them to get out and vote to repeal the same-sex mariage law adopted by the state legislature last spring. Most of the people on the list I was given by a marriage organization here in Pennsylvania were elderly residents of a small town. It occurred to me how strange it must be for them. After all, Maine is hardly San Francisco.
“Someone just called me 20 minutes ago,” one man complained.
I apologized. “Oh, that’s okay,” he said. “It’s a good cause.”
ANNIE writes in response to the postThe Cheapest Babysitter in Town:
Do you think that any TV at all is bad for a two-year-old? I am really wondering what your personal opinion is. I was in agony when my little boy started watching TV around the time he turned one! I wanted to fight my husband on this to the bitter end. He was raised watching LOTS of TV which I believe is what caused his habitual drug use as a teenager. He thought I was crazy until we did a little experiment; no TV for the baby for a whole week. And what results! He went from being an aggressive, mean, crying baby to a happy, sweet, easily contented baby, like the one I knew before the TV watching began.
A TREE is movement that never quite moves. Its roots protruding from the ground, an oak seems as if it is just about to take a step. Its limbs bare of leaves, the tulip poplar reaches and points and gesticulates. A row of old Japanese maples near where I live is effeminate and expressive. It is as if a choreographer had once come by and said, "Okay, girls. Arms up! That's right. Now wave. Wave as if you were billowing sails!" When the choreographer left, the trees held their billowing sails in place, awaiting his return. A tree is movement frozen in place, even when its limbs sway in the wind. But that is not all. A tree is wisdom. I was raised by human beings, but I was also raised by trees: oak mothers and fathers; poplar siblings; maple aunts and hemlock uncles; pine and spruce cousins, plus a host of extended arboreal relatives whom I cannot classify. I consider them family because they have that essential feature of all relatives. There is always the mysterious feeling that they know me. I was tree-taught and tree-tutored. I have gone to tree school, leaning against the windowsill on winter nights when there was a full moon and the ancient oaks beyond by window were clarified by the light; walking through their blazing hallways as they dropped their leaves on my head in fall; and resting on spring days against their rough and tender bark. They taught me their alphabet. They taught me tree arithmetic and tree geography, tree philosophy and…
Children between the ages of 2 and 5 spend more than four hours a day watching TV and playing video games, according to a New York Times article on the latest surveys by Nielsen. This is the highest figure ever. Electronic entertainment is the cheapest and easiest way to entertain young children. As neighborhod life declines, families grow smaller, and adults grow busier, the electronic babysitter seems a virtual necessity. What's wrong with that? The mind of the child is the father of the future. Visual entertainment stunts the imagination. It weakens the will and creates hostility to word and thought.
Lydia Sherman continues to explore traditionalist clothing and home decorating at her blog, Home Living. She writes on these subjects within the larger context of the spiritual mission of home. Unlike Martha Stewart, who recommends that women meditate and eat chickpeas to attain enlightenment, Lydia hearkens to the Bible and the traditions of the West. This painting by Charles Edouard Boutibonne of 19th century women mountaineers in comely, modest attire is one of many she has posted. Women, as Lydia often states, can do physically challenging tasks and look feminine at the same time. But, we've come a long way since then. Fashion has been revolutionized and we've been liberated. Now we can look like this:
Grief is like a garden made of rocks and sand. We enter its lonely recesses upon the death of someone we love. We go there day after day to weed and to dig, to pick through the same rocks, to pray for a few drops of rain. The soil is poor and the climate is worse. It seems nothing will grow. In a world in which there are few rituals for the dead, no sacred fires burning and few public commemorations, this garden is the only place where our memories can be sustained. After a time, things do grow, but not always to our satisfaction. The dead are always with us. From the lifeless earth, out of rock and regrets, our love for them brings forth new life.
You could have gone to college and become a human resources director. You could have gotten an MBA too. You could have refused to sweep or toss the cinders. You could have tried on another shoe. O Cinderella, what were you thinking? As a role model, you just won't do. .
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Housewives and plumbers are natural comrades in arms. They have something very basic in common and that is, they are always and everywhere needed. They address the most fundamental and routine needs of human existence. Civilization cannot function well without them, and yet so rarely acknowledges its dependence upon them. There is something shameful about both the housewife and the plumber because of this dependence. They point to the most trivial of human weaknesses. No day proceeds without clean dishes, swept floors, cooked meals, laundered clothes and unclogged plumbing.
I have a friend who is a plumber. He never goes to social events and limits all casual interaction with anyone but his customers. He lives in perpetual anxiety that harmless interactions with neighbor or friend will lead to requests for his services. I once invited him to our home for dinner and the event was ruined by his suspicion that at any moment we were going to ask for his professional expertise in pipes, drains or septic systems.
So it is with the housewife. People are often eager to create an informal tie with her. She cooks. She cleans. She takes care of young and old. Compared to the average adult today, she seems to possess an eternity of time. She has absolutely nothing to do.
The truth is she has far too much to do. The world is overflowing with need of her services and for the order, tranquility and health these services provide. A neighborhood boy used to show up at our door everyday at 7 a.m. His mother never asked if he could come over before school started. She just assumed because there was a mother at home, her services were there for the taking. The housewife is often veiwed as a de facto employee of the public school and it continually invents the most petty of projects to indenture her.
Of course, the housewife is glad to aid the world. The very best thing about her vocation is that she can meet the spontaneous needs of friend and relative as these needs arise. She can help others without the burdensome scheduling and impersonal interaction that characterizes the commercial world. She is glad to help. The spirit of charity runs thick in her veins. But, the need for the plumber is about as infinite as any basic need in this finite world. So it is with the need for the housewife. She must exercise some discretion. I believe many women have fled to the relative predictability of offices because they could not manage this demand for their time. It’s so much easier to say, “I have to go to work,” than, “No, I can’t do that today.” This demand would be less pressing if the housewife weren’t such a rarity and if more organizations respected her privacy. As it is, she must be like the plumber. She is entitled to her privacy and some leisure. If she’s not cautious, she may be draining pipes night and day.
The eroticism of this photograph of Finnish soprano Karita Mattila in the title role of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Puccini's Tosca, one of the most beloved of Italian operas, gives you some idea of what it's like when one of today's hip nihilists takes over a traditional art form. This production was booed by Met fans on its opening night in September and after seeing it in a movie theater last night, I understood why. The sets are dark, sterile and chilling. The characters depart from the text and the whole thing is perversely sexual. It sneers at the famous romance of Tosca with pornographic embellishments. In Act I, Cavadorossi, the painter played here by Marcelo Álvarez, works on a towering canvas of Mary Magdalene that sits on scaffolding and dominates the church scene. In contrast to the previous production's historically faithful rendering of the sanctuary of an ornate Roman cathedral, the interior here resembles a bleak Soho warehouse, perhaps awaiting a few abstract paintings for decor. One of Mary Magdalene's breasts is fully bared. As the painter and his lover Tosca perform their sumptuous arias, an enormous looming nipple is visible in the background. Tosca, who takes a knife at one point to the canvas, seems mentally unhinged and sexually coarse (for a moment, she grips her lover between her legs). There is another blatant swipe at Christianity when the evil Scarpia takes a statue of the Virgin Mary in his hands and lewdly embraces it. Three whores are featured in Act II, characters who never appear in the libretto. One has…
Natalie writes in response to the previous post on interior design:
I was interested in your thoughts on current interior design trends and the rise in minimalism. First, minimalism is a very masculine style, and one could say that the more androgynous the feminine ideal becomes (the ideal female figure and personality becoming increasingly boyish) the more our homes reflect the change. Also, like extreme thinness, minimalism is a class-based aspiration, the more people have the less they want to show, any kind of opulence is seen as bad taste. Why is this so? Perhaps there is a strong bias against femininity in design circles: a bias against the opulence of the traditional female form and against the female home. [Laura: That had never occurred to me! Fascinating.]
Secondly, I think there is a link between increased consumerism over the past decade and the rise of minimalism. There is a strange dissonance between the “patriotism” of buying more stuff and our minimalistic homes – we buy and then we chuck it out to make room and space. I also think it is important to note that the rise of minimalism coincided with the rise in esoteric spirituality in the West – many disciples of minimalism believe themselves to be cleansing their spirits in some unfathomable way. [Again, this is an excellent observation.]
Thirdly, minimalism is not a style conducive to successful family life, no matter how it has been sold to us. It is not comfortable; it requires extreme effort to maintain; you cannot close doors on mess if your house is on an open plan; and most importantly it is not child-friendly. [Amen!] It is a style which celebrates the rise of the consuming individual, an individualistic style and not one which can function at a family level. We have lost the sense that our homes are places of comfort, hospitality and nurture; they are simply reflections of individual taste and our monetary worth, homes are assets.
However, it is my belief that minimalism is on the wane, particularly in Europe. The UK has seen the rise of the new domestic style, and a concurrent rise of many articles on “high flying” women choosing the domestic sphere over commerce. However, the new domestic style is very much sold to us a kind of vintage make-believe, a style which plunders a more domestic past for its inspiration, and as someone interested in design (it’s in my blood – a family business) I find this to be a little cowardly, and too tongue in cheek to be taken seriously. [Yes, this trend toward retro-chic is unserious and cynical.] The only way forward is to bravely ignore trends and follow William Morris’ advice and buy only things which we consider to be either beautiful or useful.
Modern design and fashion are characterized by a love of uniformity, monotone colors, and visual barrenness. In clothes, this means grays and browns for women with few embellishments or frills. In interior design, this translates into an absence of pattern, vibrancy, texture and warmth. It’s egalitarian chic and deliberately plays down luxury. Only the trained eye can see the expense.
Kidist Paulos Asrat, of the blog Camera Lucida, recently traveled to the New York Design Center’s trade showrooms in Manhattan and commented on this phenomenon. Designers, she notes, are more caught up in self-expression than the creation of beautiful and liveable homes. She writes:
“So, if artist/designers don’t really care about their public and the real world, and they are much more interested in experimentation and self-expression, what happens to the products? As I’ve discovered, they suffer a great deal.”
In the following exchange, Kidist, an artist and textile designer, shares more of her thoughts on the subject.
It is a standard rhetorical device of feminists to always and unfailingly make token nods to the domestic woman, as if to say, "I'm not against domesticity. I only want women to have the freedom to choose." This is a lie. They do not want freedom, but the transformation of female nature. A perfect example of this is Joanne Lipman's recent editorial in the New York Times. Lipman, former deputy managing muckety-muck at the Wall Street Journal, expresses outrage that women's progress has stalled because women overall are not making as much money as men; boasts at length of her career triumphs; and states that the authentic woman is one who demands a raise or a promotion. She argues that women "need to take risks" and, in what is suppposedly an essay on the general position of women in society, only mentions motherhood or marriage when bragging about her ability to fit them in around a high-powered schedule. There is not a single positive reference to them. But, Lipman then remembers the obligatory gesture. She remembers that she must not appear to be saying what she is in fact saying: that the highest goods a woman can achieve are power and money for herself. And, so she makes the standard acknowledgement. She says, "Women define success differently; for some it may be a career, for others the ability to stay home with children." When feminists say they want "balance" for women or they want the freedom for all to define themselves as they choose, they are…
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There are two kinds of women in this world: women who divorce and those who stand by and passively watch. The first kind of women wreck the lives of their children and husbands. The second kind say, “We cannot judge.”
I am sorry to be grim. I have witnessed many divorces. Sometimes I feel as if my family lives amid the rubble of a ruined village. As I walk through this town, I see the place where the post office used to stand and the old bank and that church with the white steeple. All gone. They were decent structures. Each could have lasted for many years. With a few exceptions, they were destroyed by women, capricious women for whom divorce is the most romantic project of their lives.
It’s not true that men are the principal losers. So many women ruin their own happiness and the happiness of invisible communities formed by couples. I cannot help but come to this inescapable conclusion: Women cannot handle freedom.
For more reflections on why women divorce, see my recent post, The Unfaithful Wife.
