Feb 17 2009
English Majors Suck
I’ve started a few english courses for the semester, and one of my darling professors started us off with a book that many critics feel has little or no real literary merit, but is just controversial. Or was, for its time in the 1920s, with depictions of what today would be termed any number of things – trans-sexuality, homosexuality, gender confusion, etc. The completely unguided discussion about this long-ass boring novel is really eye-opening – not about the novel but about just how little people understand.
Yes, we have the resident people who think if the character had been brought up differently, she wouldn’t have wanted to be a man, wouldn’t have been sexually attracted to women. Despite the fact there is absolutely no supporting evidence in the reading for this opinion (and I’ve been asking classmates to support it with textual citations, because I’m a damn bitch).
But here’s what gets me most of all – those goddamned english majors who are just so sweet, they want to relate to everyone by effectively stripping every work of any bias or power it has and declaring it as just being about people.
No. This book is about a woman who is physically attracted to other women, a woman depressed by the defined role of women, a woman who longs to be a man. And people who say that sexuality has little or nothing to do with her struggles make me laugh because her sexuality is the only reason she struggles. That’s the whole point of the damned book.
Do these people sit down and read Toni Morrison, Beloved, and say that novel has little to do with race despite it being about slavery in America? Of course it has meaning beyond all that, but that novel would not exist without the constant awareness and pressure of race.
I think what pisses me off more than it being a cop-out (which it absolutely is because every single piece of art created by man is inherently about the state of man, why don’t you try thinking a little harder about what you just read?) is that it’s demeaning. Ask a lesbian how it would feel to plan her wedding to her partner today, see if it is anything like the idiots I hear going on and on about circular versus rectangular tables, about doilies or whatever the shit women do when they’re planning weddings. I respect that those women can plan their weddings, but if they think that the struggle for civil unions is in any way related to their stupid centerpiece planning ideas, they’re dead wrong.
In conclusion, we demean each other when we distill all of life down to “oh, we’re all the same”. We’re not, fuck you. A book written about a woman’s struggles against society due to her sexuality is not just about the struggles of all women.
Good god, I can’t wait ’til we are done with this book. My “peers” have been writing about how they’re not “homophobic but lesbian sex makes [them] uncomfortable.” It makes me uncomfortable, too in one of those hot and bothered ways. I am seriously considering trolling my classmates, posting a link to some pornography or similar such mischief, except I kinda need to stay in school. *sigh*
bwah. i love you.
Ugh. But hang in there! Just remember to be compassionate and cogent. Who knows, you might bring them around.