The Way We're Not Anymore

Back when I was a young whippersnapper in high school and still dreamed of digging in the Mideast, I got to have lunch with a prominent woman archaeologist. We had an amazing conversation. She talked about the places she'd been to dig, and I got to ask a gazillion questions. Then she asked me what I was planning for a speciality. Being the idiotic teenager I was, I told her: ancient semitic written language. Oh, she thought that was great, until I told her I wanted tomb walls and buried spaces. She tsk-tsked at me, sighed, and said, "you are ill-equipped for digging in the places you would need to dig."

I was stunned at her response. "Why?"

Her answer was perfectly blunt....and correct for 1968. She said, "You lack a penis." She explained there were other women with that speciality, but they were primarily attached to labs, libraries, and existing sites. None of them were actually digging because they were unable to get local permits. She said she hoped this would change, but probably not soon enough for me to do what I wanted to do.

As luck would have it, I left the world of archaeology in my sophomore year of university to pursue theater. My mother once told me she and dad got whiplash from the switch. Yeah, it was sudden. I decided to leave Oakland University in Michigan (for a variety of reasons) and applied to 6 schools: 5 archaeology programs and one theater program. I got into all of them and chose Skidmore College, still pretty much a girls' school at that time, where I studied directing, playwriting, and swearing-like-a-sailor.

You can't see me, but I'm there

Junior year, I had the unique opportunity to "intern" for a couple of weeks on a major motion picture. (6 nominations, 2 Oscars) and had a grand time doing it. Everyone was so nice and dragged me from meeting to meeting so I could get a real taste for film. Everyone except one actor, an ugly, pimply pig, who hit on and tried to grope me one too many times. The executive producer dealt with him on my behalf. The pimply actor still has acne scars and is a right-wing asshole with a MAGA hat. (Use your imagination; it's not hard.)

I chose the University of Minnesota for grad school because their directing program was supposed to be top notch: brand new theater building (lovingly called Rarig High) and ties to the Guthrie Theater. During my first week at the U, I was asked by three different people who I was going to sleep with for a fellowship. Turned out all the girls were asked the same question by the same three guys in basically the same fashion. A friend from Skidmore was a year ahead of me and I asked her if she had been asked. She said yes, but to ignore the assholes that asked me. Then she added that if I liked any of the assholes who had sway in any of the programs in which I was interested, fucking them would, indeed, help to speed any application. 

While there still may be place in the Mideast where owning a penis is a requirement for heading a dig, the other stuff is gradually fading away....or so we would like to think. 

Donavan's Reef (1963)

Rejecting sexual harassment is a pretty recent phenomenon. Women have been treated as chattel, objectified, abused, threatened, brutalized, and humiliated simply for being women. Women attempting to get ahead these days may not be as readily abused, threatened, or humiliated in the workplace AS MUCH, but it happens and tolerating that class of behavior is becoming increasingly unacceptable. This is a good thing. Depicting that kind of behavior in art is not as easy as it once was. How do you tell the story now? Do you wipe away film and plays which show women being treated as they once were? Anything with a rape scene is forbidden? I'm not sure what you do with the past, much less how to tell a story in the future. 

Do hugging, air kissing, and shoulder squeezes constitute sexual contact and harassment? I suppose if you are uncomfortable with close physical contact from huggers, then yeah, it does. If you're okay with a hug greeting, probably not. But where is the line? If you're an exuberant hugger, you probably wanna start asking permission to hug. Or is that weird?

But that's not really the question I have in mind tonight as I listen to interviews with Andrew Cuomo's accusers. If some of this stuff happened 30, 40 years ago, I would have to say the climate has changed; what was "acceptable" misbehavior is no longer tolerated and is now deemed criminal. Should Andrew Cuomo be held accountable for his inappropriate actions? Hell, yes! He portrayed himself as a champion of women while his hands were doing exactly what his mouth said should not be done. There is a contradiction here that must be reconciled by not just the citizens of New York State, but by the court of public opinion in this nation.

[UPDATE: Governor Cuomo has resigned.]

Everyone knows at least one hugger and probably at least one squish-hugger. You know what I mean. And there are some people you really don't want to hug for a variety of reasons, and you shouldn't have to apologize, explain, or feel weird about stating as much. You learn to deflect and avoid. Everyone should have that skill...even little kids. If they don't want to be on either the giving or receiving end of a hug, they shouldn't be. That's their right as a sentient human being. 

But what do we do with the portrayals? GONE WITH THE WIND has huge problems, but in 1939, civil rights had not moved into the forefront of our national collective conscience. Is it still a good movie? Do we reevaluate it from our perspective? What about THE BIRTH OF A NATION, with its black-face performances and treatment of the Klan? Does that these were even produced and were popular in their day require reevaluations? Yes, but not to ban them. 

If you've never seen the 1939 version of THE WOMEN, you should find it and watch it. For women of the 21st century, it's 2 hours and 20 minutes of non-stop mixed messages. Norma Shearer is a joy to watch, you want to kill Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russell is bonkers. It's a total period piece and the ending sets me off every time, although it's supposed to be a comforting, happily-ever-after kinda thing. But what's important about this film is that it captures rather succinctly the condition of upper middle class women of the period quite well. You get a glimpse into a different kind of life with expectation. Hardly modern for us, but at the time? It was a total leap forward. How do we judge those characters? By their standards...or by ours?

There is a certain amount of necessity in watching old movies to see how the relationships between men and women unfold according to the period. There are going to be scenes that are intolerable today, but do we discard the images, or just note that the portrayal is not reflecting modern values? I keep thinking about Debbie Reynolds popping out of the cake in SINGING IN THE RAIN. The subsequent scene with the cake is really funny in context, but scantily clad women popping out of cakes is objectification, is it not? Just because we don't pop outta cakes these days, does that mean we have to give up the Good Morning dance scene?

Which brings me to the last station on this railroad. Is there a cutoff for prosecution? Is there a point before which we just have to accept much of that questionable behavior as normative? I'm not talking about rape, violence, or sexual slavery; I'm talking about the casting couch, the "friendly" groping, and involuntary squish-hugging. I'm not suggesting they were okay at any level, but at the time they took place, was an action normative as opposed to aberrant? 

I cannot see me marching into Minneapolis City Hall with a complaint about being propositioned 40 years ago. Yes, it was as despicable then as it is now, but the difference is back then, it was SOP: Standard Operation Proposition. Did I complain about it back then? I was warned off of that scenario. On the flip side, when my MFA degree application was declined because I was "another Jew in the department" I did take action, and yes, I have an MFA. While similar in harassment and verbal abuse, the antisemitism thing was actionable. The sexual innuendo was not. At least not at that time.

In coming to grips with today's expectations and environment, one has to come to grips with the past, recent and long term, as well as the present before a future for behavior can be standardized. This may sound simple, but it's not. I believe there needs to be demarcation in the timeline for culpability. 

At the same time, I believe if we are going to move forward as a culture, a community, and as human beings, we need to set our sights on current positioning and future behavior. Teach the kids, accept nothing less than fairness and equitable behavior from our leadership, and most of all, stand up to walk the walk. Talking isn't good enough anymore. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you have a 23 years old furnace and air conditioner,

have them checked routinely for safety.

Being proactive saves time, money, and lives.