Roskyline

Let’s talk about a literary genre…feminist expository writing.

First of all, I recommend that you read this

I think this article illustrates a great point about women.

First of all you need to understand that none of things in that article are true…total fiction, all made up, probably doesn’t even loosely resemble real events. Now knowing that you need to know something else-that doesn’t matter. Truth as men understand it does not matter to women. You can say, “no no what REALLY happened?” again and again till you are blue in the face, that doesn’t matter to a woman. It will not compute. She physically cant understand what you mean. The fantasy story and the feelings it conjures are actually more real to women than events that actually took place.

The feminist expository narrative has a lot of universal tropes. Typically they are victim narratives (either rape, sexual assault, racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever). The universal sisterhood of victimhood has visceral appeal to women. If you look at my blog I did an entry a while back on fear being the default female emotion…that is true. Women have known they are weaker than men and that they are at their mercy since the dawn of time. Generation upon generation of that feeling has compounded to the point that women pretty much feel threatened by all men at all times. They are good at hiding it of course but believe me it is there. A lot of “game” is based around building enough attraction to make that feeling of threat sexy. Threat + no attraction = creepy, threat + attraction = sexy. Of course there are men these days that are genuinely non threatening but that is an aberration of history. Either way the important thing to understand that bonding through shared fear is a universal experience for women.

Also there is usually a literary conceit or recurring motif (in this case the moon). These stories are word pictures about a snapshot of time (that never happened). Women will tend to say that their mind noticed and focused on an ordinary object during a stressful moment. This is part of the empathic focus, “put your mind where my mind is and see what I see”. The whole point of the writing style is to confer feelings and not facts. This is how women communicate.

Try to ignore the outrageous comical bits (praying to white Jesus to restore her virginity) and look at the deeper facts. That story is a mirror to the mind of women everywhere.

But of course the comical bits also make a good point. First of all they make a sociological point…the insane things that people can say with a straight face now point to modern standards. Secondly extreme exaggeration or outright lies are not just a characteristic of this story, they are characteristic of the genre. In a way these are polemics. The crazier the claims the more stark the emotive picture and thus the more engaging the story. I cant say this enough…women do not evaluate stories for truth, they evaluate them for “authenticity” if you understand my meaning. Rather than asking “Did this happen?” they ask “Does this speak to me?”. It is cor ad cor loquitor, heart speaking to heart. Women think with their emotions (if you can call it thinking). It is all very visceral and primitive. Sometimes it is more instructive to think of women as wild animals rather than people. If you accept that premise they become more predictable believe it or not.