on The Book of the City of Ladies and how mass media is made with men in mind
(apologies in advance for my lack of capital letters and probably punctuation)
i'm reading the book of the city of ladies by christine de pizan which for context is a book basically defending women from the literary attacks men had been launching. it was written sometime around the early 15th century i forget exactly when. the premise is that three virtues in the form of celestial women appear to christine in her study and instruct her to build an allegorical city for the ladies
first lady reason tells her about women from the far away past, brave and noble warriors and monarchs, which builds the foundations of the city, and then women talented in sciences and arts who invented things like weaving and the latin alphabet
next, lady rectitude tells her of more contemporary important women, nobles and things (this is as far as i've got rn)
finally, lady justice builds the roofs of the city with the stories of saints and heavenly women
i've only just read the first part, all stories of the amazons who lived without men and ruled for many years and conquered land and were so feared noone dared invade them, and widowed queens who rode into battle with babies in their arms and all this and its made me kind of sad in a way because it feels like an alternate world where i was told these stories when i was a child instead of the princess and the pea and cinderella and all these fairy stories that always manage to stereotype, demonise and pit women against each other which christine de pizan never does (even when the women killed hundreds of people and probably should be)
recently as well i read a book of fairy stories that i had when i was a child. it was the barefoot book of father and daughter fairy tales that my uncle got for me, it had a cd audiobook and i used to listen to it most nights for a while, even though i don't remember liking the stories much.
on this revisiting i found the following:
only one story (out of 10) did not involve marriage being the resolution of the story
there were some pretty dreadful messages to be telling young girls i thought (e.g. in this book theres a version of the frog prince, and in it the princess makes a deal with the frog to be its friend if itll get her golden ball from the well and then the frog stalks her, knocks down her door, persists even when its clear she wants nothing to do with the frog and then the father lets the frog in and tells his daughter she must accommodate the frog even though she's uncomfortable and afraid of it and the frog eats from her plate and sleeps on her bed and then turns into a prince and claims her as his bride)
most stories included some 'evil woman' usually a stepmother, often with a jealous lazy stepsister, where there was no real equivalent for men, even when they objectively sucked, the men were not really the villains. i think this is cos the stories are meant to teach girls how to perform femininity correctly so theres a virtuous young girl who is rewarded, a sinful young girl who is punished, and a sinful older woman as a threat
no matter how much the father in the story fucks up, the girl must always forgive him at the end and invite him to her wedding
so reading part one of the book of the city of ladies and its just all these great stories of strong women (definitely with moral justifications of the 15th century but even so) i feel sad for my younger self that i didnt have this type of thing. i had the urge to read the stories to children which is very odd for me im not really that sort. i think its a shame that this book is relatively unknown and where it is known its in academic spaces where proto feminist literature or whatever is studied
and before this too i've been thinking about how a lot of media just doesn't feel like its aimed at me, cos im a lesbian + i feel like a lot of stuff is made with straight men and after that straight women in mind. i found it hard to put my finger on for a while. i'm still not really interested in explaining to people who dont know what im talking about. like reading straight romance novels. it feels alienating in ways i cant describe.
i feel the same about lots of art history books that are written by men, about men, clearly with male readers in mind
like the shock of the new by robert hughes.
its just so obvious in his writing that he's never thinking about women's perspective or experiences.
but what i find confusing is that plenty of women read the shock of the new and think nothing of it
i dont know how they can do it
i also have a voice in my head that tells my its unreasonable to not be interested in male artists or writers, or straight love stories or straight tv or anything
but most of me knows that this is not unreasonable at all and this is why:
it is impossible for me to avoid the male perspective and straight perspective. because its the vast majority and its what ive been force fed since could hear stories and see pictures.
i think women and queers and probably any minority aswell see things from the dominant perspective and understand it like separately to their own (ik this is so inarticulate this is a newish thought of mine)
and this is not the case for straight men - its very possible for men to avoid anything made by women or centering women or straight people to avoid queer media - most do.
its changing a little bit of course - theres more women writers and artists and queer media and all that in the mainstream but its still very possible for a man to avoid ever listening to the art of women
its 4:48am i've run out of steam i think im going in circles but i'll come back to this thought one day
turnnoffyourmind
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