Some people just don't realize how fortunate they are until they are in danger of losing it.
Posted on 12/07/2009 7:24:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Many fans of the television series Sex and the City are shocked and disappointed when they read the Candace Bushnell book that inspired it. In the print version of the tale, there is no supportive sisterhood of single friends, no light-hearted banter, no suggestion that anyone actually finds fulfillment in cocktails, casual sex, and Manolo Blahniks — only a cast of cynical, lonely, and alienated men and women jaded by the predatory New York dating scene. A recent collection of “True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts” paints an equally harsh picture of the modern battle of the sexes, summed up succinctly in its title: Love is a Four-Letter Word.
Like most autobiographical writing, the collection is revealing — just not in the way it’s intended to be. In his introduction, Neal Pollack, former sex columnist and author of the parenting memoir Alternadad, asserts that the pieces do “what good relationship writing should do: illuminate larger truths about the human condition, about our foibles, fears, weaknesses, insecurities, and passions.” What the collection actually does is illuminate smaller truths about some particularly postmodern predicaments. Pollack more accurately describes the anthology as “the blossoming of a generational point of view.” This generation — men and women now in their mid-to-late 30s — is the first to fully reap the unintended consequences of the sexual revolution. They came of age in the morning after the Boomers’ carefree romp. And, in the words that one contributor uses to describe a one-night stand, “morning brought hangovers and unpleasant truths.”
One of these unpleasant truths is that feminism hasn’t quite delivered on its promises — at least in the realm of romantic relationships. Michelle Greene begins her essay with the frank admission that “by the time I turned thirty, my life in New York had taken on a desperate edge.” A tale of a toxic relationship follows, which she rationalizes this way: “What I wanted were street skills: some sort of power that would allow me to engage in sexual drama without getting burned.” This path to female empowerment eludes her as it does others — such as self-identified feminist Maud Newton, who theorizes, “maybe I didn’t need to fall for every guy whose bed I woke up in,” only to fall very hard for the next guy whose bed she wakes up in. In story after story, drugs and alcohol prove necessary armor in the battle to divorce sex from emotion: “rivers of Stoli and heaps of cocaine” are consumed, “brain cells” are “annihilated.” But no matter how “drug-addled” and “s***-faced” the encounter, none of the protagonists successfully ward off vulnerability and heartbreak.
Perhaps part of the reason these women fail to find commitment-free sex liberating is that they continue to harbor desires for monogamous love, marriage, and children. D. E. Rasso relates how, after weeks of repairing to the room of an older college classmate for sex that left her “bruised, scratched, and — one time — bleeding,” she finally mustered the courage to inquire of him if they were “going out.” His reply was, “No. Of course we aren’t. . . . I’m at a point in my life where monogamy isn’t my style.” She was crushed.
Michelle Greene suddenly realized that her cheating, womanizing boyfriend of years “wasn’t the guy I wanted to marry” — but only after a pregnancy scare on a hike in the Himalayas, to which he responded, “Oh man. Look at where we are. What do you want me to do?” Said Sayrafiezadeh tells the story of a 34-year-old girlfriend who wanted his baby — though not necessarily marriage — and gave him a year to comply. He dumped her at the end of it.
The looming backdrop to the majority of these stories is divorce. If families are mentioned at all, they’re broken. Kate Christensen’s openness as a teenager to an attempted seduction by her 36-year-old high-school teacher is not unrelated to the fact that her mother had recently jettisoned the stepfather she called Dad. She acknowledges that as a “fatherless girl” she was “vulnerable prey.” In the middle of telling the tale of a relationship that she remembers mostly for its “mutual callousness that bordered on violence,” Maud Newton lets drop the fact that her stepfather “did nauseating things” to her. Her boyfriend happened to have an unmarried mother with a penchant for pornography. It’s hardly surprising, then, that this pair formed a dysfunctional match.
The stories aren’t written exclusively by women — the male heterosexual, homosexual, and transsexual perspectives are all pointedly included — but even the male-authored pieces tend to highlight the ways in which women are disadvantaged by the supposedly leveled modern playing field. For one thing, they must wait patiently while men their age leisurely drift along through a prolonged adolescence.
In Dan Kennedy’s case, this process of self-discovery took “a decade and some change.” In the meantime he dated someone who “was completely cool to be around when she had been drinking.” George Singleton can’t bring himself to blame the live-in girlfriend who broke it off when she realized that “it was hopeless to wait around” for him to “quit drinking” and “be kinder” to those close to him. Still, in retaliation he got drunk and urinated in her cat’s litter box. Said Sayrafiezadeh met the woman who would demand a baby of him “at a moment of desperation in my life,” and eventually became disillusioned with their relationship — and with her “disappointingly small breasts.”
Despite the real pain and suffering catalogued in these stories, there’s a striking lack of passion for a collection purportedly about the agonies of heartbreak. The essays are sprinkled with statements like “soon after we merged households, we stopped having sex altogether,” “the sex gets boring for you both . . . you stop having sex entirely,” and “we had sex, mostly because there was nothing else to do.” This sterility encompasses everything from casual hookups to ambiguous serial sleepovers to lengthy if half-hearted cohabiting relationships. It seems that treating sex as meaningless and people as objects leads ultimately to boredom.
The flipside of this boredom is unrelenting narcissism. Excessive self-regard is the essence of this type of confessional writing, in which significant others figure only as supporting actors in the authors’ personal drama — as stepping stones on the road to their self-actualization. The problem is it amounts to navel-gazing for its own sake; readers are left feeling involuntarily voyeuristic and dissatisfied. Yet the distaste that Love is a Four-Letter Word evokes is actually to its credit — this unappealing and honest account is much needed after the glamorous and implausibly happy endings of Sarah Jessica Parker and company’s Sex and the City.
— Katherine Connell is assistant to the editor of National Review.
Ann Coulter wrote a while back that as soon as she saw the series she knew it was written by homosexual men. And apparently it was.
She said she could tell because no women would really talk or behave like that. The promiscuity was more reminiscnet of gays.
Did Ann Coulter write that? Because I’ve always thought the same thing. The only woman that would act like Samantha is a tranny.
...I thought this was going to be another Tiger Woods thread.
Many hollywood writers are gay men. Over 120 episodes of Sex and the City was written by gay male writers. The actress Laura Hutton slammed the show for its over the top sexual content and criticized the writers of being self indulgent. The openly gay male creator of Desperate Housewives did the same thing with his series. Essentially, they repackage society based on their view of how things are or should be and crank out a series where attractive women replace the gay men as far as characters. For some reason, women love these series and it seems the writers end up with huge hits by doing this.
Ditto!
Yes indeed it is written by gay men and it reflects their sexual immorality. I’ve always felt it was an attempt by bitter gay men to demoralize and mock heterosexuality and traditional relationships. If you notice the language is always directed negatively at the man in the relationship, never analyzing the boorish behavior of the women. I know many single women who claim Sex and The City to be their “Bible.” How sad.
Yeah.
See comment 5 on this thread too...
“...perhaps part of the reason these women fail to find commitment-free sex liberating is that they continue to harbor desires for monogamous love, marriage, and children.”
That is not part of the reason; it is THE reason and it applies to men just as much. Promiscuity is not biologically optimal for men, women — and least of all for the children they produce.
Nature screams against it. Those who behave as if they are primarily pleasure organs rather than reproductive organs cannot escape the emotional and physical penalties.
The rest of society pays the price also.
Tiger must be bored out of his mind!
“...could we count POLYGAMY as promiscuity ? If say, a Muslim has 5 wives, all of whom he is committed to, would this be considered commitment-free, or a commitment to 5 women ? Just wondering...”
Having harems is not promiscuity because there is sexual exclusivity. That is fine for animals that don’t have a forehead, but for sentient beings, in order for harems to work, the females must be kept uneducated and disenfranchised.
No empowered woman is going to voluntarily choose to become part of a harem. That is why so many of the female breeding chattel start out their careers as minor children.
The harem system is not functional; there is a direct correlation of a nation’s economic health and the empowerment of women. The greater the gap in education and influence, the poorer the country is.
Women who took “Sex and the City” as their model were only following the unfulfilling path blazed by Gay America, as the writers of that tawdry serial were gay men writing of the gay-lifestyle, only substituting women for the characters, to make it saleable to the public.
I wonder what percentage of the relevant age-range participates in the sort of lives the book describes. I often find books or see articles by 30-ish to 40-ish people who have suddenly realized they’re well on in middle age without much to show for years of promiscuity, but I don’t meet these people in real life
I remember the melody, but I don’t think I ever paid any attention to what the song was about!
Coming from the coulter woman that doesn't surprise me.
I've known MANY promiscuous women and they've gone about their adventures in many different ways. Straight people are promiscuous as well- it's not just a gay thing. I was extremely promiscuous in my 20s. And found many women who were like minded. I tried to keep alcohol out of it for the most part. I liked knowing what I was doing and with whom and I liked for them to know as well.
LOL. Not true. I've met many who would and did choose that. Just because you haven't met any doesn't mean there aren't any out there.
You would be absolutely shocked, I imagine, to see some of the things I've seen in this life. People have no limits.
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