The Spinster's Exploits

As a fifties-born feminist I really struggled with my desires and fantasies. I love the way young women and men now accept fantasy and play as just that and it’s all fine. There seem to be no issues between feminism, equality and one’s inner life for young feminists.

The confusion and battle were brought back to me when I read ‘Melted Down to Stars’ by Sian Michael in Laughing, Not Laughing: women’s writing on ‘My Experience of Sex’ edited by Catherine Merriman, and published by Honno

“I was fired up with the terrible righteousness of the young. I could see it all now – Craig was my oppressor, the bastard, telling me I wanted it, making me melt into submission, having me spend the whole weekend playing the part of his ‘pleasure slave’. Well, no more!

By the time I was thirty we had three children. Gravity and childbirth had taken their toll. Politically correct sex was such a bore, but it was all my re-formed mind could allow and, anyway, I may not be one of those evangelical die-hards who tell strangers in public places that they love Jesus, but by then I had joined the church.

A woman deacon and mother of three could hardly dress only in silk and gauze scarves and play the slave, agreeing to obey her husband’s every sexual whim. Well, could she?

A feminist theologian who knows all the tricks of patriarchy all the way back to Adam can hardly purr when her husband spanks her tll her backside stings and she promises to be good. Well, can she?”

Thankfully Sian had a rethink and I am hopeful that she and Craig recaptured the joy and she was once again ‘melted down to stars’ by him and their fabulous fun.

I too am a ‘feminist who knows all the tricks of patriarchy all the way back to Adam’. And while no theologian I am better versed than average on religion and its control on us from Lilith and Eve onwards.

Unlike Sian I never unleashed my inner spankee in my youth and had no Craig to rail against. As a well-read feminist I blamed myself and my internalised oppression for my inappropriate fantasies and desires. This is the sort of thing that informed my thinking:

“And Sister, if you can’t turn on to a man who won’t club you and drag you off by the hair, that’s your [hang up]. Keep your hang ups the hell out of this revolution” – “Lilith’s Manifesto” in Sisterhood is Powerful

Luckily I too got to rethink and accept my desires and fantasies bring me a lot of pleasure and do nothing to undermine my feminism and passion for equality. And the journey continues as I march into my eightieth decade having reached the age of seventy, still curious and exploring…