All images: Amelia by Stanley Patzoid (website)

Land of Lost Libidos

Disappointment, confusion, disagreement and lack of sensual arousal was the prevailing response by six eager listeners, initially jazzed by the idea of hearing feminist icon and erotic writer Erica Jong at Philadelphia’s Free Library last Thursday evening.

Four of us — Susana, Charlotte, Beverly and myself — are Erica’s younger, female contemporaries, with married couple Dvora and Paul aging a generation younger.

Totally bummed by the evening, Susana and I wandered the streets of Philadelphia late into the night, asking ourselves what has gone wrong — not with social conservatives and the Republican right-wing that wants to bring women down in America.

What’s up with the daughters of America’s second wave feminists, that they sound like Phyllis Schlafly and Sarah Palin? We’re not judgmental about their lives; why the need to condemn ours? And why is sex still a bad, bad thing in America?

Wanting to generate discussion about this critical topic, we publish our third piece on Erica Jong and her daughter Molly — and now her daughter’s circle of friends and literary colleagues.

I invited each person I met last Thursday night at the Philadelphia Free Library (an interesting metaphor) to speak on our reactions to one of America’s greatest feminist icons — a woman several of us are loathe to criticize in any way.

Icons Are Human

It’s like turning on our own mother or big sister; the gesture represents a real source of discomfort and for me — anguish. These days I feel as if standing on quicksand when the subject is the future rights for our young women in America and around the world.

The sexual revolution gets such a bad rap, as if all it stood for was the right to sleep around. The main sexual argument for many of us — that loving sex can be a very strong bond between people who care for each other and is a key component in keeping love alive — is passé.

The goals of the sexual revolution need rebalancing — the favorite word of these women — when America has yet to achieve a healthy relationship with sexuality.

Many of us believe that sexuality is a life force, central to our vitality and wellbeing. For this panel, sexuality equals disgust and inappropriate behavior. We’re a danger to young children and the future of humanity.

The response from Dvora and Paul is especially beneficial because they are contemporaries — but very different sensual thinkers — from Jong’s two younger panelists Julie Klam — introduced as a close friend of Erica Jong’s daughter Molly Jong-Fast — and Philadelphia-native Karen Abbott.

The three women writers were promoting Erica Jong’s latest anthology ‘Sugar in My Bowl’, at the event billed as new contributions to a four-decades old conversation of ‘real women talking about real sex’.

Hear No Evil | See No Evil

Forget sex. Both Klam and Abbott opened the evening making the critical point of saying they don’t enjoy talking or writing about sex, and definitely not in any way that relates to their own lives.

What was their mission then in speaking to us? Was this some new method of sexual abstinence education, cloaked as an evening to celebrate one of the feminist greats? If their comments were a substantative expression of honest communication about an important topic, on which women differ, I would not have minded.

In reality, the dialogue was as mindless, i-Village rehash, the sexless woman’s response to Cosmo’s endless “How To Make Him Happy in Bed”. Both are empty vessels.

Four decades after the 1971 publication of ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’, mom Julie Klam opened her comments to the audience saying that she can’t bear to utter the word vagina but finally came to grips with telling her five-year-old daughter Violet that her “front” has another name. It’s not Peony (my word).

In summary, the night became one that would make Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann proud of the changes ahead for American women.

Feminism Heads Up

If you think that Julie Klam, Karen Abbott or Molly Jong-Fast and their friends will fight against the erosion of women’s rights in America — or campaign for women in underdeveloped or theocratic countries that repress women around the world — it’s probably best to change your premise.

As Molly Jong-Fast says when asked about the state of feminism in the world — not only America — in a Feministing.com interview with her mother Erica Jong:

MJF: I would say the greatest danger is climate change. We’re going to be screwed. We’re going to have such bigger problems than women being oppressed when we’re living on a bubble on Mars with no water. We’re going to have much bigger problems than feminism. The entire world is going to be obliterated, so that worries me a little more. We won’t have time to worry about who’s being oppressed. That kind of thing is really a luxury problem.

EJ: But why is it that feminism is always considered a luxury problem?

MJF: I mean, I think we’ve gotten far enough. We’re not that oppressed.

I admit going to hear Erica Jong with a heavy heart, fearing the worse and feeling now that I experienced it. Others share their thoughts:

Charlotte

I do not want to be critical as, for me and countless others, Erica Jong is a pioneer in the realm of writing about sex and sexuality. Yet, for someone of her caliber as a writer,a poet and a feminist with her decades long, worldwide academic and literary acclaim, I felt the talk was not concise enough on topical issues and not well orchestrated with her panel of two.

Coming to the event, I respected Erica Jong as an author who, IMHO (in my humble opinion) has a healthy and realistic view of men, their relationships with women and vice versa.

Like Erica, I am also a romantic so I do share her desire to revive romanticism in male and female relationships. I do not agree with her that technology has curtailed the art of romance.

Used tastefully and responsibly, technology can only enhance a love affair.

Her comments about everything to do with sex and intimacy being out in the open and no longer discreet and private are true. I also would like it to become more ‘mysterious’ again to heighten the eroticism in our lives.

Erica offered us no thoughts on how to create this intimacy that we seek and consummate it at the same time.

I also know that truly private love affairs often involve a necessary degree of mystery because those involved insist on discretion, so as not to hurt or shock others. This aspect of ‘mystery’ wasn’t discussed by Erica.

The prudish, reactionary elements in US society are not helping this situation, and I know we all agree with Erica that a new form of feminist movement is needed.

All in all, I think she could have made more of the discussion and read more excerpts from her latest book to promote further discussion. Her piece on the ‘Kiss’ was frankly not visceral enough for me and too sweepingly metaphorical.

I also found it strange that she could not find a female writer to write about lesbian sex, as she seemingly had intended to have a piece on it in this latest book.

I appreciate Erica emphasizing that she does not want to ever push writers to write about what they do not want to, but surely she could have found someone to write on lesbian sex? (Clarification to readers: Jong explained that she has 3-4 public lesbian writers in ‘Sugar in My Bowl’ but they all wrote about another aspect of sexuality than love between women.)

Finally, all said and done, I do admire her a lot!

Charlotte: member of Philadelphia public & fan of Susana Mayer.

Dvora & Paul

When I came out to see the three women authors talk about writing about sex, I was hoping to hear some luscious tidbits read by the authors themselves. There was one delicious bit… I had never thought of a kiss mitochondrially or as a tree cycle in the forest. And the other was a sweet story of love between two older people (though told rather satirically, as if the idea is absurd).

The rest of the talk was a great disappointment.

When the conversation turned to the future of sex, I was dismayed to hear that it seems so bleak.

Apparently men are Y and women are X. They each have a unique approach to love and sex; with nothing in between. No room for thinking about how the two might learn from each other, and balance each other out.

Apparently there is a “muchness” of sex in our culture. And it’s all bad. There is no space to embrace it in a positive way. No thought to teaching our children not to be ashamed of their bodies, or to assume that just because scantily clad photos of women used to sell cars, this may not be the definition of “woman” or “sex.”

If Erica’s younger daughter Molly takes on the idea that “my mother talked about sex, so I don’t have to,” where does that leave her children? How is her daughter supposed to learn what is good about sex and relationships? (Molly’s essay for the book is published at Nerve.com.)

Was it really only the responsibility of the women from the late 50’s and 60’s to stand up and say “I am woman?” Is the new generation of women supposed to remain silent and let society ‘dictate’ what’s good and healthy, and what isn’t?

Paul and I can’t accept that the “good old days” are the way it should be again; and we heard a lot of nostalgia Thursday night — from an Erica Jong panel!!

I was a child when The Fear of Flying came out. And in some regards, my parents were early feminists. My mother worked outside the home and my father made it clear that I could grow up to become anything I wanted to—even though I was a girl.

I took it to heart, and as the mother of two boys, I’ve made it clear that they, too, can be anything they want to be. I have also how taught them to behave like decent human being to others.

In trying to discuss where sex might be going in the future, it seemed that the youngster two panelists were at a loss. Julie didn’t want to talk about sex to begin with. The fact that she did not use proper names for body parts to teach her daughter was laughed off, but is actually rather sad.

Someone in the audience said that we need to teach people what about “quality sex” and what a healthy relationship is about. We need, as a nation, to step back from the fear of sex, the fear of loving someone as “defined” by the American Right.

If things were so hunky dory today, why do we have to have slut walks? Why do we have to remind leaders in other countries that women are also humans?

I was disappointed in the evening’s outcome. No one from the panel offered any positive ideas about how to positively teach sexuality. There seemed to be no possibility that it could even be a positive subject – other than the fact that we have to stand up to the part of our society that is trying to repress expressions of sexuality, as Erica reminded us.

The challenge isn’t just one of rallying the troops to revisit feminism. America still needs to embrace the ‘feminist’ ideal, while making it apply to all of us. It seems we’ve made no progress at all on the subject of positive sexuality in America.

Dvora | member of Philadelphia public

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