Category: Woman

  • The Oracle Wishes the Public a Happy New Year

    “Women resist this understanding [men’s commonplace sexual violence] because it directly threatens the commonly held goal of having a happy and healthy relationship. If you understand the extent to which men hate you, how will you ever find your dream guy?” Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse.

    I read 37 books this year. I went vegan, I’m sober, medicated, freshly 4B and have a one-way flight to Tokyo for June. Isn’t that crazy? tangtang Japan correspondent. I have taken on acupuncture and herbal remedies and have consumed perhaps six paracetamols just today. Damn you super-flu! My acupressure stickers can only do so much.

    My loyal readership, this was the year I cemented my life goals and the year I perfected peace (and got half my back tattooed, great heavens.) Most people do not wake up and decide to dedicate their lives to non-profit work for women in developing areas and war zones. Except I closed Intercourse by Dworkin and all my life’s gender studies consumed me in a big cocoon of rage and I emerged Winx-style Enchantix type shit with the fairy dust but for women’s rights. Quote for you: “It is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.” With Public Policy in my near future, I will be making it everyone’s problem to be fully conscious of the Horrors. Business as usual.

    As well as that, I’ve been further enlightened this year on dating, as half of the Brighton population under 25 may know I have never interested in dating per se, but I had even more enlightenment. As tangtang readers may be aware, the sex and relationships aspect of this zine has taken hold very strongly. This year, Hannah got into a loving committed relationship (with a man who I am fond of in a distant uncle in Tudor times whose wealth and status allows me to live as a Bride Of Christ sort of way. The sort of fondness one has for a family relative you saw once when you were 8 but sends you a birthday message every year), and I continued my exploits which I embark on to entertain my friends with like a court jester. My enlightenment was that I need to stop having sex because I’m bored and pick up a fourth language or something. I find relationships an astounding waste of time and should I ever hope for one (Lord please exempt me from this horror), I would like it to be a twice-a-week encounter for Tuesday lunch and Friday dinner. The only relationship I support involving a man is that of Hannah and my uncle-in-spirit Ed.

    In my prophetic dreams, I divine a quiet start to 2026, a time for personal learning (please allow me one month without material for the memoir). But upon my departure to another continent and inherent permanently offline pursuits, I will have much to speak on, I’m sure. In my crystal orb I see you all devoting yourselves to art and music and friendship (drop that evil man.)

    My 2026 will be filled with Patti Smith on vinyl, loose leaf tea from Hannah (thank you Hannah), and unshakeable peace. Soon to come: unreachability. If God permits it, I’ll be setting up a landline and living in a Tokyo love hotel from summer on. Stay tuned for my travel diaries from Alabama and Louisiana in March, further notes on sex, love, and grief also coming soon.

    My new year’s resolutions below:

    • beat my goodreads goal
    • sternum tattoo
    • join heavy metal band
    • more sobriety
    • publish more work

    There will be much discourse particularly in the new year about allowing yourself to take a step back from news cycles and the horrors happening around the world. Rape, child soldiers, decapitations, immolation. There will be a call to allow yourself to choose peace and calm, to prioritise your wellbeing. Don’t do that shit. In the best of cases, find it in your heart to advocate for yourself as a woman (and for the love of God, drop that evil man, I will not say it a third time). A tangtang reader’s greatest act of rebellion is finally relinquishing that horrid deep-rooted self-despising. It’s cold outside. Stay in touch with the horrors, plee.

    This festive season, educate the men you love, if they don’t already come pre-educated (and consider why you love the men who do not come pre-educated in the age of free internet access). Gift them the work of Andrea Dworkin, gift The Second Sex. Grow closer to the women in your lives, begin holding hands and filling the need for closeness with your sisters and your close friends. Wear red on New Year’s Eve.

  • He is the Subject, He is the Absolute. She is the Other.

    Everyone has read the quote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” from The Second Sex (1949) by Simone de Beauvoir. It is not especially difficult to determine that this means that women’s condition is not influenced or caused by biological sex, but by the formation of gender structure. Today we gather to agree that leaving it at that is uncritical and banal.

    The Second Sex reigns as The Bible of phenomenological analysis of the negative consequences of gender socialisation on the feminine. In nature, and because of the time it was written, it is extremely thorough. Feminism in 1949, I suspect, had to leave nothing to speculation, and so I forgive Simone for 700+ pages of tiny print. Due to this, I find that the fundamental crux (stealing this from Hannah) of the text is unfortunately lost upon unfocused reading. This is it: there is a reciprocal Otherness to being a woman that is created by a fabricated gravity between sex and gender, the body’s acculturation of this Otherness is the process of ‘becoming’. Simone will use the words ‘Destiny’ and ‘Situation’, because she had to debunk that women were physically predestined to being The Rib of Adam (the Other), in this century I don’t have to convince you of that. So we will ignore the biological aspect of ‘Destiny’ as a concept for the moment.

    I have brought you all here today to consider the most relevant aspect of the body’s ‘Situation’ in our present lives, which is that Objectification (‘becoming’) is not a choice, nor is it a selective occurrence, it is a fundamental happening across culture and time, it happens to all of us (all of us, Women).

    The earliest stages of childhood development are wrought with enforcement of the Otherness of female gender through pre-reflective choice. By this, I don’t mean girl toys are pink, boy toys are blue. Simone says that ‘The Child’ sees a vision of the world physically through themselves first, uses the body as an instrument for subjective pursuit of the child’s whim, and so cultivates separate pursuits to the parent. This is all great. Then, The Concern manifests when childhood spills into adolescence, here is where the consciousness of being perceived affects the woman disproportionately. Yes, it’s time for the Margaret Atwood quote,

    “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” (The Robber Bride, 1993).

    Instinctively, the meaning we discern from this is that we ‘become’ the Object being perceived by the Subject. Simone will tell us that ‘The Girl’ conceives that she “will gain value in the eyes of males not by increasing her human worth but by modeling herself on their dreams.” (347). Simone’s deeply thorough analysis leaves until the end, that there is, in essence, no conscious drive towards this, nor a choice to opt out. The tension here is that the self-concern and self-centred thought from childhood experienced by both boys and girls is still persistent for boys into adolescence. Yet, The Girl begins to experience her body as a conduit for desire and not as the autonomous instrument as through which to experience the world. The effect this creates is that of the fated Objectification, which sounds great and simple as a buzz word.

    To attempt to choose to not sustain your Human Worth via adherence to Objectification in the countless aspects of socialised Womanhood, raises the prospect of losing Human Worth inherently and factually. This is not my opinion! Refer to the text… In the attempted rejection of Objectification, women are still a male fantasy, everything is a male fantasy… conversation for another day.

    What can I say to you here? That this is a horrific and torturous process, that the entire time, we are tormented with this Terror of Objectification? No, there are Horrors and Gratification. The Terror comes when women divert completely from the prescribed behaviour of Object, because it narrows the gap between Subject and Object. Simone’s theory of the patriarchal society works great in 1949 but in present time, women are getting rebellious… seize them! What happens when Woman achieves face-value ‘equality’ virtually and logistically just like Man in society, but is still the Other, is still Object, just… less? The Horror of Abjection.

    The loss of distinction between Subject and Object makes space for the Abject, In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva proposes that outside of Lacan’s Symbolic Order (basically, Subject/Object, the Consciousness observing the Desired) exists Abjection. Abjection “preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body” (10) into consciousness of the will of said body. If we recall what Simone said before, the separation of the self from personal will into being the Other (the Object) is immensely violent. However, Kristeva argues that the alternative, the lack of distinction is more terrifying (for Man in this situation, she doesn’t think this specifically, but I do).

    Woman and Man as gender constructs are opposite, but the (lazy) attempt at (on paper) equality that we’ve seen in the past 20 years for women has narrowed the gap between Subject and Object (This is a good thing!). The complex labyrinths of gender oppression remain in our minds regardless of policy (… ever failing). Men must evaluate the Fundamental Terror of Abjection in the absence of distinction between Subject and Object, there is Abjection, and so assess where it comes from. Kristeva will argue that there is a perverted jouissance in this, “One does not know it, one does not desire it, one joys in it [on en jouit]. Violently and painfully. A passion.” (9) While I find this freaky and frankly, kind of Lacanian jargon, here is the point I am going to emphasise, Abjection terrifies and captivates, and Otherness in its progressed obscurity, terrifies the most.

    I don’t feel the need to explain that men are terrified of women… because it’s true. There is a mystique and an enigmatic nature to the feminine, (from this are born monstrosities, such as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl). The socialised woman has come to be so far removed from Man, that he is subconsciously disturbed by her unknown, the Otherness is unsettling, because Man consciously (hopefully) now considers Woman equal to a major extent. This new similarity begs the question, why are They (Women) still mysteries, still undecipherable? Here is why Otherness frightens, beyond Objectification: because it is ever-changing. The ‘becoming’ doesn’t end, the absence of an opaque end-success of ideal womanhood, the amorphous illusion of having ‘become’ is incomprehensible to someone who is completely external to lifelong socialisation towards such Otherness. Perhaps it is near inexplicable, too. I don’t find it unreasonable to compare terror for the feminine mystique to a fear of darkness (what capacity for evil lies in the unknown…?).

    So, having ‘become’ a Woman, there is no complete ‘unbecoming’… though it may seem simple to a man to fathom a fictional rejection of this Destiny (Situation) through acquisition of perceived freedom… our lives are built in tandem with the Otherness of the female gender, the notion of the existence of a Second Sex. There is always an Object because there is a Subject, even when women are relatively considered equal. Everything in society is sustained by structures of patriarchy (there it is!), which not only are a woman-man disadvantage but do very strongly disadvantage men who do not meet the imagined requirement of Masculine Subject. This is not a workplace matter, this is not a marriage matter, this affects absolutely everything we do.

    I wish to leave you with the final thought that I am the last to think Womanhood is eternal damnation. The intimate journey of emancipation from internalised Objectification is nothing short of Sisyphean (AT BEST!), but it comes with the loving embrace of the innumerable benefits of femininity which I think are self-explanatory and boundless.