The Love of a Good Woman (or not)

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

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?

Comments

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

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?

I think this is the only part of your post with which I have issues. Not wanting to go to bed with someone, even if they're 'hot' really isn't hypocracy. It's a choice. There could be a number of reasons for it (which no doubt LKH fudges and muddles).

The rest of it is all stuff which bothers me. I know people who are polyamorous or 'swingers' and are open about it. They have none of the discomfort LKH writes into Anita. Yes, even the Catholics :) You can't even blame her it entirely on religious upbringing - I can assure you that one half of my family was strict Catholic, the other half strict Protestant, and between them there was nothing that they didn't consider sinful. I don't have any particular homophobia or anything.

My opinion is that LKH suffered for several books from a massive case of indecision. When she finally made the decision, she also had started writing faery porn and decided she quite liked it, so fit Anita into that same pornographic mould, so to speak. The old fans couldn't see Anita doing that, it wasn't true to the character, hence the ardeur. It's a terrible excuse. I could forgive LKH descending into porn if there was any indication that the characters actually enjoyed it. They have sex the way that anorexics eat - because they have to, with no enjoyment whatsoever.

I should probably point out that the reason people aren't having a problem with all the males forced into sex in the books is because of exactly the attitude to Byron you highlight - people think that if a man ejaculates, he enjoyed the sexual act which led to it, which isn't strictly true. It's usually not discussed that women can experience arousal during rape, or that they will 'willingly' offer up lesser sex acts to avoid rape (the whole first scene with Micah nearly made me ill, because that was almost a textbook observation of this exact behaviour, and I thought LKH was doing something truly edgy). But men can be, and are, raped, and not just by other men. It's almost as if sexual abuse of men by women is taboo - like "women would never do such a thing", to quote Queen Victoria.

If LKH had just written Anita becoming sexually dysfunctional following her rape by Micah, that would be edgy. But all of this 'ardeur' crap is just so much bollocks. It's like reading those awful romances where the heroine is blackmailed into 'unspeakable acts'. If I wanted to read that, there is a whole genre I would spend my cash on. If LKH wanted to write that, it's easy enough to get it published as such, rather than this pretence at paranormal detective stories she's continuing.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Oops, I didn't want to give the impression that not wanting to sleep with someone hot was a hypocrisy. I'm struggling to put into words how to explain it - Anita flashes between being picky and taking anyone in the vicinity. After she bonked Requiem and Byron just because they were there and apparently willing, and London even though he wasn't until she addicted him, it's odd to see her suddenly get choosy about who to sleep with. It seems to me that she picks certain sex partners (JC, Richard, Micah) because she likes them and wants to, some (Asher, Nathaniel) because they are a compromise or she has been badgered into doing it and some (Requiem, Byron, Rafael, London etc) because they were just there.

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.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I do agree that the books are somewhat garbled about her reasons for choosing her sexual partners.

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!

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

Uptight Wiccans hide behind "It's my religion!" to excuse homophobia. I mean, after all, it's a GOD and a GODDESS! You can't just go sticking two chalices together and have it MEAN something!

You can identify these people pretty easily, the women always wear goddess jewelry and the men are all about decorating with antlers.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

*snorfle* *gasps* *dies of laughing*

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...

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

I hate those kind of Wiccans. They're usually Dianics or label themselves as Goddess-worshippers; they usually believe that there really was an ancient Goddess religion and matriarchal societies before teh evil Menz came along and screwed everyone up. LKH is clearly one of this kind. I haven't seen enough evidence that she follows any recognisable path other than her own garbled bullshit to be able to tell for sure.

Aren't you gonna tell us a story? Pweez? :D

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I knew a Wiccan online who labeled herself as a (I think) "Dark Road Dianic" and her description of her religion was about the most sexist thing I had ever heard of. According to her, it was basically all about making your man happy and being a "feminine" woman and "not being a man". Apparently, the whole role of the Goddess is to serve and please the God.

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...

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

There's a horrendous trend towards excluding men in the Pagan community and acting like it's all about women, so I wrote an essay defending guys called "The Need for Masculinity" and posted it on Witchvox. Most of the emails I got were overwhelmingly positive, from men and women. I got two from raging, pissed off feminist/Dianic Wiccans about how I'd betrayed the sisterhood and my gender. And then, Googling the essay as people cross-posted it as there was a permission to redistribute (and I wanted to see the comments they put elsewhere) I came across this hilarious gem:

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.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Can I friend you? :D

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Okay! Definitely! Please do! I'm really flattered, actually. I, er, wanted to ask you the same thing because you seem super intelligent and I love your posts (I didn't post in the last topic because I didn't feel I had much to contribute, but I followed it all the way) and the discussions they've sprung, which I've learned alot from, but then I thought, well, I'm a 19 year old girl, my LJ is full of moaning, nobody wants to read that. But if you're up for enduring that, please do! And I can't wait to read that link. As a radical feminist myself, it really pisses me off when angry women corrupt it into an excuse to rage against men, which is distinctly anti-feminist since it's so sexist. It's wrong, and it gives the rest of us a bad name.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

for the record, the Wiccan rede "An ye harm none..." INCLUDES being gay r whatever (i am sure you know this, but it bears repeating) and the whole fucking POINT is tha Godess and God are kinda equal, and feminism and Wicca should be best friends. i hope i never EVER run across that woman. i am very very vanilla, but I DON'T CARE what other people do. i have two rules - 1) don't hurt anyone and 2) don't involve me. period. i wish EVERYONE would leave EVERYONE ELSE alone!
i sometimes think that LKH is only Wiccan because she thinks it is "edgy"

argh!sorry, done ranting.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be surprised.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, that's one scene Jacqueline Carey once wrote that I approved of very much -- where a man was (magically, but still) aroused by a woman, very much against his will, and actually cried out something like "I do not consent to this and every god I worship will punish you!" (I'm making the quote a little twee-er than it really was, I'm sure.)

(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.)

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

Kushiel's Justice--I remember that scene. Imriel forever! *grins*

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.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Yeeeees. ^___^ Darling Imriel. :-D I like him very much. He has a realistic view of his world. Mostly.

she treats her harem as...almost batteries

I might go so far as to remove the "almost"!

[morriganscrow.livejournal.com]

If only she could feed the ardeur from dildos and vibrators, we readers would be spared a humongous pile of emotional bullshit.

[amblinwiseass.livejournal.com]

...only to have it replaced by an equally humongous pile of utterly tedious descriptions of masturbation.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

I should probably point out that the reason people aren't having a problem with all the males forced into sex in the books is because of exactly the attitude to Byron you highlight - people think that if a man ejaculates, he enjoyed the sexual act which led to it, which isn't strictly true. It's usually not discussed that women can experience arousal during rape, or that they will 'willingly' offer up lesser sex acts to avoid rape (the whole first scene with Micah nearly made me ill, because that was almost a textbook observation of this exact behaviour, and I thought LKH was doing something truly edgy). But men can be, and are, raped, and not just by other men. It's almost as if sexual abuse of men by women is taboo - like "women would never do such a thing", to quote Queen Victoria.

LKH does seem to know that men can be raped (Stephen in The Killing Dance and Peter in Obsidian Butterfly), but she doesn't seem to believe that applies to Anita. It's actually common for sexual perpetrators to believe that acts of rape are consensual sex. There was a study done by Ms. magazine published in a book entitled I Never Called It Rape they gave questionnaires to men and women in college campuses. The first question was "Have you ever raped someone?". A large percentage of the men who answered "no" to that question and then answered subsequent questions about their sexual history answered "yes" to questions that defined the legal definition of rape. When the women were asked "Have you ever been raped?", a large percentage of those who answered "no" also answered "yes" to questions that fit the legal definition of rape when asked about their sexual histories. (I will have to dig out the book for any exact percentage.)

My personal beef is the way she treats survivors of sexual abuse. Her portrayal of Peter specifically. If Peter were given proper therapy and support from his family, it would be unlikely that his psyche would twist as badly as it has. Reasons for this would be his age at the time of the attack, he obviously didn't want it to occur and it was called exactly what it was by other people. Many survivors face trauma after the incident because of the psychological confusion that occurs because of the incident. "Was it rape?" "Did I ask for it?" Then the confusion leads to the survivor remaining quiet and not talking about it. With Peter it was clear what happened. Edward states that he was taken to therapy. The fact that Peter would have sexual issues is accurate, I just don't believe that Peter's issues would go where LKH decided they did.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Yes, Anita is apparently not a rapist even when she obviously is. I read Kippurbird's flog of "Danse Macabre" - when Anita raped London and readdicted him to the ardeur, like Kippurbird said, they just acted as if it was nothing. He slunk off to the bathroom in complete humiliation after being raped and the focus immediately leapt back to Anita and her issues and how terrible it was for her to lower herself to forcing emergency sex on him.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was the last straw for me. No-one seemed to care that London had been raped. In an earlier book, when Sylvie is raped, an outraged Anita kills her rapists (to hell with the consequences) and helps her get counselling. I felt it was a little trite, but LKH did try to write something realistic. With London, who is coming to avenge him? It really was awful, not only raping him, but making him an addict all over again.

There is so much misandry in LKH's writing now, I often wonder how far she's going to take it :/

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Can I friend you? :D I love your journal.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Of course, but I warn you I write about goth scene politics/ cats/ sewing far more than is necessary for a sane person :)

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna have to recommend you to my sister as well, then. She's a cat-loving Goth who loves to sew and make things ^^