May Revolution Pompous!

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OPINION

No place to be somebody

Wendy Bamberger

Perhaps second-semester-senior-year is a time for finally recording long dormant impressions. Perhaps it is simplt that it takes that long for such impressions to reach expression. Whatever the case, the time has come for me to say a few things which first occurred to me in some vague unformed fashion around April of my freshman year and which have sharpened and defined themselves in my mind ever since I have lived and worked at Webster College.

It all started with the realization that being two years older than most everyone around me made a difference. (At first, in the last fading days of "Woodstock unity," I would have scoffed at the notion. And did.) With this realization, I perceived, and felt, a distance between me and my peers-in-college. I looked around for people who were not tripping in the co-rec room, who were not wondering why they were in school, who were not playing their days away in beer parties on the lawn and (to me) equally frantic and unsatisfactory sexual parties in Maria Hall. I particularly watched the women. This was new to me.

But the men, or boys (after all, most of them were chronological peers of my "little brothers") were all so unutterably young. Or gay. It seemd it was the women who were involved in things that I was involved in, who were interested in things that I was interested in, who were willing to think and read and talk. It seemd a peculiar social fact at Webster that it was the women who were "moving." I will always remember the junior and senior women I saw at that time - how they impressed me as individuals, strong, independent, excited and exciting.

For quite a while I thought that my own sense of alienation from most male students was a function of my age (and experience, which also counts for something), that it was an issue unique to me and perhaps a few other "older" students. But I learned, in talking with many women over the past few years, that it was not so.

Whatever the problems faced by women at Webster College, and admittedly they are many and various, it is undoubtedly true that being a straight woman is one of them. It is at the very least odd. Most straight women who come here have had male companions and perhaps lovers, or at least brothers and fathers. They find themselves in a situation with very young, often inexperienced (in terms of dealing with women), often gay, males. The companions, brothers, and lovers so long taken for granted can no longer be. A simple unreflective fact of life becomes an issue.

As I have seen it, there are several things a woman can do - that women have done - in, with this situation. These are the prodominant general alternatives I have seen women move into (often choice plays no part in it) over the past few years.

  1. A woman can leave, if she wants easy rapport with men and the choice of attractive lovers. (The number of "Eligible Men" around here in the past has been at a notable minimum.
  2. She can continue, or relearn all those "feminine mystique" games that often by now she has been told are "cheap" or "dishonest" (to herself): being unobtrusively but conspicuously where He is, taking care of him (in my days in the dorms not so long ago an awful lot of laundry done on male floors was done by females), supporting him emotionally, being whatever "cute" means in the everchanging canons of feminine behavior. Along with this option goes a fairly dedicated (whether admitted or not) commitment to competition with one's female peers. There are, after all, so many more women than men here.
  3. She can become involved with faculty members, the only "older men" at Webster College. These involvements range from flirtations to fullblown affairs. Thos option, of course, carries with it its own complications. Most faculty members are married. Even aside from the conventional moral prohibitions (and since when did the stop anyone in if-it-feels-good-do-itland?), such a situation is bound to be unsatisfactory at least for the student if not for both parties. The very covertness required for this option mitigates the pleasure of something which, to be fully appreciated, must be relaxed, easy and open. I am not denying the ordinary and real rocks which proverbially strew the path of true love. The problem is that this means that women who never had to spend overmuch time and energy on obtaining male companionship have suddenly found that they do spend overmuch time and energy on it. At least thinking about it. If not "unhealthy," it's downright "unnatural," not to mention tiresome. But there is at least one other alternative which I have observed.
  4. A woman can, if she has the slightest inclination toward scholarship and involvement with her work, direct her energy toward that and thusly toward her own growth. The latter option often makes of Webster a convent, a place where much satisfactory work and learning goes on, but little else. All work and no play may not make Jill a dull woman (and does not, I think), but it can certainly make her life dull.

The rewards of this, when they occur, are in terms of a strong sense of self and a circle of close women friends. These are worthwhile, but for straight women the lack of easy - in the sense mentioned in (3) - male relationships rankles nonetheless. The alternative can cause a schism in a student's life: she works at Webster and plays (romantically) elsewhere, on vacations. Whether good or bad, this is odd and often no fun at all.

It's A Problem

Those women I was impressed with my freshman year, and many women I have met since, have opted for #4. It sharpens their individuality, it strengthens them as human beings, it makes them fascinating people for me to know and even to love at times. Perhaps the price they pay for this is necessary. I don't know. Most of them think they would be just as marvelous people if they had satisfactory social lives. I think that they would be too. Now.

Perhaps they needed to go through the unusual life at Webster to get where they are today. Again, I don't know. I remember an article I read once on Vassar in pre-coed days and how exciting and dynamic and "growth-conducive" it was to be at an all-women's school, where one could devote oneself to one's work and not be concerned with the delusive vagaries of the tiring business of attracting and impressing men.

However, being a woman at an all-women's school is one thing - being a woman at a co-ed school which nonetheless appears to turn out to be an all-women's school is something else altogether. The problem becomes less obvious (there are males around, after all, what's wrong with me?) and thereby more problematic.

But: much as we responsible self-directing people may hate to admit it, there do exist problems in the world that are social and not personal. I have outlined one of them. The situation need not determine one's existence. I want straight women to realize that it's not Unliberated to recognize their own need for relationships with the opposite sex, to realize their own discomfort if not downright suffering with the lack of fulfillment of these needs, and to realize that it's not all their fault. Only then can they themselves become the determining factor of their lives. Only then can they act on the coming-of-age realization that their lives can be led by choice, not chance.

Coming soon: (as soon as I type it!) The men answer back!
last edited November 27, 1999-pic