I was renting movies at Blockbuster yester eve when the employee said something funny, annoying, sweet, and heartbreaking to me: he said, "these are really good movie choices--you know if I wasn't married..." and then he gave a friendly smile/giggle combination. I made small talk and wished him well, but inside I kind of wanted to punch him the face. The reason for this is that this comment, like so many others I've heard over the years, falls into the category of "You're so cool I bet you make someone a fantastic girlfriend/wife someday, but it won't be me because I'm not actually attracted to you at all." Obviously this particular instance was different as he was married, but it was precisely the sort of throw away comment that reminds me time and time again how attractive and awesome I am in theory to most every guy I meet, just not in actuality.

The best metaphor I could conceive to explain my feelings about this is a bit unorthodox: I feel like the dude in the wheelchair at the marathon to whom the runners say "I really respect your spirit and courage to keep going." That sort of theoretical you're so awesome mentality which is undercut by a fervent desire to never be me.

I don't know exactly why I bring this up except that it's been on my mind a lot lately. I've known men that I've wished all the happiness and love in the world, but would never ever date myself. But I don't think I've ever told them they will make someone a great boyfriend/husband some day. There is something about that statement that reeks of "I'm so proud of you"--a statement I never respond well to unless I've just saved a baby or stayed true to my morals in the face of absolute evil.

I hate it when married guys tell me how awesome I am because there are two meanings to it and neither of them is acceptable. The first meaning is that I have a great personality and because they are happily married with all of their sexual needs met they look at no one with particular sexual approval or disapproval and so comment on my awesomeness as they would a well trained dog that belongs to someone else. The second meaning is that they are unhappily married and so whatever part of me seems to fill the void created by their lack of happiness becomes exceptionally appealing and they are seriously contemplating cheating--that skeezes me out to no end. Nothing turns me off quicker than a man looking to make me his mistress.

As a brilliant friend of mine said most men are constantly trying to make women less--less physically and less metaphysically. I'm not offering this as a stereotype or judgment, but only as a statement of experience I and other women have had. It isn't that they are trying to hurt us; they only want to contain us, take care of us, handle us. They've been raised since they were born to take care of women, as we were raised to find a man who could take care of us.

Some would say that's biology, but I don't buy it. In nature no other species is so bifurcated by gender; the females aren't housed, domesticated, and protected because they are smaller and weaker. They are expected to hunt, protect, and birth. Each species deals with reproduction differently, but the notion that women have evolved as the protected by men is bunk, I think. I think consciousness of sexual politics, consciousness itself changes everything about gender relations as it does all other aspects of our life.

I'm not denying biology here, but I think I am floating the argument that whatever biological urges we have are so overwrought with societal messages and expectations that it is nearly impossible to tell the two apart. We have chemistry with particular people which seems to speak towards biology, but we have such complicated and ingrained social expectations of behavior from the opposite sex that if someone acts in a particular way they become unattractive despite physical appeal. This is countered by objectification, appreciation and value decided purely by physicality, but objectification seems to arise chiefly in an attempt to assert control. Men don't want to find a beautiful woman unattractive because of her personality so she is taught not to talk; as women take on these less positive aspects of society in modern attempts at equality they begin objectifying men in the same ways for the same reasons. Sex, therefore, becomes an end instead of a means and the body the only viable decider in sexuality. We then begin manipulating the body for it to be the most attractive object it can be--waxing, crash dieting, weight lifting for appearance as opposed to strength. Like beautiful dolls that talk we also limit our personalities, try to make ourselves less, so that the object--our body--is as untainted by excessive complications as possible.

In the end our bodies aren't objects, they house people, and those who thought they were in love and understood the other person become miserable because neither one is capable of dealing with themselves let alone someone else. The scary thing is (there are many scary things, but this is one) that women's lib struggled so long to change this pattern and as women rebelled against feminist ideals they began to perpetuate it themselves. We objectify because we can, but never stop to think if we should.

I don't know where I'm going with any of this, other than general dissatisfaction with the state of the world and gender politics today. There's nothing particularly revolutionary or brilliant about what I've stated above, it just is. And it did make me feel good to have the Blockbuster man appreciate my movie choices--it's always fun to fascinate someone.

Maybe I'm just fed up with having to hear, over and over again, if I were different, and you were different, and things were different, they would be different. It's also entirely possible I should stop studying gender politics of the early modern period; perhaps all that talk of women as the progenitors of sin and inherently evil makes me a tad angry at the world, yes? Quite right.