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lkh_lashouts2009-01-09 06:58 pm
The Love of a Good Woman (or not)
I love this community; it’s such an outlet for frustration with yaabis and hypocrisy. We’re all aware that homosexuality is clearly an uncomfortable subject for LKH, and for Anita, her proxy. This is evidenced throughout the text of many different books. What I’m not sure has been properly explored, however, besides the unpleasant themes of sexual exploitation, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, is the hypocrisy of sexual expression in Anita’s own worldview. There is a jarring contrast between what she says she believes in, or what she’s uncomfortable with, and what she actually does.
First, let us take Anita’s discomfort with pure homosexuality. It is clear that there are no entirely gay characters, whatever LKH actually writes. For example, the British vampire stripper Byron was said to be gay when he first turned up, professing he wanted to sleep with Jean-Claude but had been turned down; and then he slept with Anita. I believe this is another incidence of casual rape in LKH’s novels. She gives no feasible explanation for Byron actually consenting to sleep with Anita – what matters is that she needs to feed off him, he’s available, and Jean-Claude does not stick up for his right not to consent. Afterwards, it is lamely suggested that he doesn’t mind terribly and that it was somehow a fantastic experience for him. In "Cerulean Sins", it is said that Belle-Morte and Musette do not believe that it is rape if the rapist has previously had consensual sex with their victim before, or if the victim has had an orgasm. This is very similar to a fundamentalist worldview in some Muslim countries that if a woman had an orgasm while she was being raped, she consented, and that it was adultery or extramarital sex. I think this seems to be LKH’s abhorrent viewpoint: Byron physically enjoyed himself, so he must have liked it.
Asher isn’t allowed to be just gay either. It is expressed in a contradicting manner in the text that he sought out Julianna because Jean-Claude wouldn’t love him just for himself, which would suggest he is gay and was compromising for his bisexual partner ("Danse Macabre") but in the same book, and in "Cerulean Sins", it is made to look more like bisexuality. Anita cannot simply be a compromise for Asher like Julianna was, LKH makes it so that he desires her for herself as well – in "Burnt Offerings", rather than having an actual fight with Jean-Claude or thrashing out their mutual issues and grief, Anita is injected to magically kiss it better and somehow that dissipates his anger towards Jean-Claude. In turn, Jean-Claude stays by Anita’s side the whole time. With the history between them, it would have been expected for Jean-Claude to actually leave Anita briefly to try and sort things out with Asher alone. In the rest of the books, they sleep chastely next to each other when they die for the day, but otherwise they are never alone, and Jean-Claude is clearly too afraid of Anita to just have sex with him when she’s absent. (Either that, or he cannot get it up without a woman being there. Either way, there is no gay sex happening in an Anita Blake novel without Anita being present.)
Anita clearly has a jealousy problem, but is intolerant of other people’s possessiveness in a monogamous society. It’s one of the issues that is never truly addressed. She admits to it, but not like it is a fault to be rectified – it is just a fact, the status quo, a law to be abided by. The same thing happened in "Cerulean Sins" after she was scared shitless by Asher rolling her and got all uppity about vampire powers. Despite being confronted by the knowledge that she was two-faced, she was a liar and a hypocrite, she was cutting Asher and Jean-Claude off from each other and from the pleasures that could only be experienced by them because of their vampire heritage – was she moved? No, she sat stubbornly where she was and went into a black and white denial of these unpleasant home-truths. It was wrong, she said, for Asher to have used vampire powers on her even though she asked him to and he should have read her mind and known that. (How, it is not explained.)
Anita’s homophobia doesn’t prevent her, however, from participating in a threesome with Jean-Claude and Augustine (I refuse to say Auggie, as it is not an appropriate derivative of the name and detracts from the character; if she wanted him to seem like a Master of the City rather than some cartoonish fop with a silly name, she shouldn’t have done that or used it so consistently.) She watches him and Jean-Claude kiss and even have sex, and admits that it "flat out does it" for her with her usual stilted phrase, yet this seeming change in viewpoint mysteriously never gets around to letting Asher and Jean-Claude have hot gay sex, with or without her. There was also that threesome with Jean-Claude and Richard that had definite weird homoerotic undertones, but Richard reverted to type (Anita type) immediately afterwards.
Anita is also freaked out by lesbianism, or sex between women, yet she has lesbian smooches with Thea in "Danse Macabre" and metaphysical sex with Belle-Morte. When Sylvie is the only wolf in the room who could help swallow her beast, she conveniently forgets that she is gay and wanders off, when before in "The Lunatic Café" I think it was, Sylvie hinted she found Anita attractive. In "Danse Macabre", I also found an intriguing passage (page 188 in my copy):
"In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object."
This is a strikingly masculine belief – guys are always mocking each other about being gay, and pick on men that are, because they are afraid of being sex objects to other men. Every gay man must want to have sex with them; every gay man in the changing room is a predator who is surreptitiously sizing up their equipment and their asses. It might explain a little of Anita’s conflict. On the one hand, she has a flash of the same red-blooded women who read yaoi because two sexy guys getting it on is really exciting for them. Anita is attracted to homoerotic undertones between pretty men, but on the other hand she is repulsed by it as she does think kind of like a man – that it’s wrong and dirty, and in the same way that some straight men believe lesbians can be cured by experiencing their penis, Anita believes that no man would ever be gay if they had been with the right woman (or her).
Anita would be an incredible poster-child for the ex-gay movement. "Sign up and bonk Anita, and those pesky feelings will just go right away!" (warning: the church takes no responsibility for death or injury caused by proximity to the doom-crotch).
But if being seen as a sex object freaks her out so much (and clearly it does, she threw a fit when Graham wanted to get into her pants and when guards started wearing red shirts despite her agreement with the policy) why does she continue to have public sex with multiple partners? Why did she participate with Augustine in a threesome in the middle of the room where the Masters had been meeting? Why did she have sex in the car with Graham in it – and getting a taste of her addictive sex mojo – if his presence bothered her, or if public sex bothered her?
Another hypocrisy – how does Anita choose her sex partners? Clearly she didn’t have sex with Graham as she didn’t find him attractive, but she didn’t want to bed Requiem even though she did find him hot?
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There's also an element of some of her sex partners (e.g. London, Byron, Requiem) being picked for emergency sex or otherwise because up until that point they didn't see her as a sex object. Graham, who has looked at her that way all along, is. It's immensely confusing.
LKH claims to be a Wiccan. The Pagan community is a large percentage GLBT, and polyamory etc are well enough known to be discussed happily on Pagan hubs like Witchvox. Wicca preaches tolerance & acceptance of all lifestyles. As a Pagan myself, LKH's squicking baffles me. Why even write about it?
I LOATHE the idea that a man cannot be raped. It is even enshrined in law; that it's only rape if penetration of a woman occurs. Even if the man has an erection, he can refuse to consent, he can be raped. He can't control having an erection or not. His body might say yes, but if his mind says no, that is rape, and the mind (and voice) saying no is what law distinguishes as nonconsensual.
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I could understand her not sleeping with Graham, actually, as I've met men who make it clear they're interested in sleeping with you, but with whom you are distinctly uncomfortable. I think it might be because they've already made it clear you are nothing but a body to them, and you know how LKH is about 'twoo wuv'. He doesn't love Anita, he just covets her body, and she wants to be loved.
Some of the most prudish people I know claim to be Wiccan. Go figure :/
In the UK, rape is defined as penetration of a body, and there are prosecutions - but only for men raping men. I understand there is a move to change this, but I won't be holding my breath - legal changes in the UK can take 30 years!
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You can identify these people pretty easily, the women always wear goddess jewelry and the men are all about decorating with antlers.
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It is SO true. Oh I could burn your ears with tales, truly I could...especially about what these types start getting up to after they're a few honey meads to the wind...
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Aren't you gonna tell us a story? Pweez? :D
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I nearly threw up on my laptop screen, especially when she talked about how she thought "women should keep their nose out of politics". I'm an atheist, and used to think that being a bigoted and intolerant asshat because of religion was limited to Christianity...I have come to find that it is rampant among atheists, Wiccans, whatever. The moral is, I guess, people are people, and jerks get into everything. As if the sexism wasn't bad enough, she and several of the other members at the board (which was mostly Pagan of various flavors) were really disgustingly anti-Christian to the point where even I wanted to chuck something at them all. Tolerant my ass. We had this one poor Christian guy who pretty much had to apologize every two seconds for nothing, and this same woman got away with comparing his religion to "a box of dead kittens" despite the rules saying that criticizing another's religion wasn't cool. I guess that only counts if you're criticizing Pagan faiths there, though, because those in charge joined in, and I even got some crap for my atheism once they realized that rejecting ALL religion means I also reject theirs.
No, I'm not trying to stereotype all Pagans as being this way, I'm just pointing out my own experiences with the bad apples of the bunch. I am grateful, though, because like I said, it helped me realize that you can't bank on a person being open-minded and such just because of their faith.
And yeah, share a story! C'mon, I told ya mine! =D Albeit totally without being asked...
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http://the-goddess.org/blog/2006/08/check-out-this-witchvox-article.html
It will make you choke with laughter or weep for what people like this have corrupted feminism into. There are indeed bad apples amongst Pagans, and they usually have a mask of righteousness.
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i sometimes think that LKH is only Wiccan because she thinks it is "edgy"
argh!sorry, done ranting.
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(Even though the woman had a pretty damn good and nation-saving reason for what she was doing -- it's complicated -- at least in her own mind, the author did not let it stand as "oh well he must have liked it deep down" and did not allow her narrative to suggest it.)
(For the record, he got away.)
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Of course, in Carey's Terre d'Ange, sex is a religious act, which makes rape the ultimate heretical crime against both the victim and the D'Angeline deity whose commandment is "Love as thou wilt". I haven't read anything by LKH since Danse Macabre, but it seems to me that she treats her harem as...almost batteries, sources of power that she and the ardeur can drain and recharge whenever she needs them. She's fond of some of them, but there's no love in their interactions, no more than when I recharge my iPod.
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she treats her harem as...almost batteries
I might go so far as to remove the "almost"!
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