Glory Box

I was listening to a radio show about Mary Wollstencraft the other day; a sort of biography punctuated with analysis of her writing in regards to the rights of women.

One of the guests described the contradictions within Wollstencraft's work, in that Mary believed strongly in the rights of women to be educated (beyond the superficial realms of sewing, etiquette and so on) and therefore seemed to be what we would think of as a feminist, and yet she made huge sacrifices for the man she loved and went so far as to travel to Scandinavia in an attempt to rescue his financial affairs. The guest described Mary as believing that, gender-wise, a woman is a true equal within society and should benefit from the same privileges as man without question. BUT that She instinctively becomes a Woman when she is in love.

And this is what I wonder right now: perhaps we as human beings are truly equal regardless of gender, but when we are in love (or just plain lust if you believe that love is an emotional side-effect of a biological urge) we are distilled to the base instincts of our sex.

If one takes that proposition as a starting point, one can then see the structure of society as relating to those terms. Man penetrates, Woman receives. The creation of new life is due to the ejaculation of Man rather than Woman (how different would gender relations be if fertilisation was dependent on the orgasm of the female, or even both male AND female...?!)

So here I am, a love-sick feminist: a human being who genuinely believes in the equality of all creatures, who is so desperately in love that she cannot help but offer herself freely and unconditionally to the object of her affection.

Maybe this is a contradiction in the world of the critical feminist.

Or maybe it is a symptom of the human condition - that all logic, reason, analysis and theoretical musings fly out of the window...

...when we are in love...