The Charlotte in me
September 30, 2009
My favorite name is Charlotte. How I wish I were Charlotte! The name comes from the French language and means “little” and “womanly.”
This longing, of course, goes against everything I stand for: the annihilation of gender stereotyping and the ascension of women and men to positions of self-acceptance. Let us not hate ourselves because we are women who challenge authority or men who cry.
Somewhere in time, I was doing my usual bit to overturn “the way things are,” and I started to cry often because this tendency of mine to scrape other people’s authority and bruise egos made me largely unlovable. Oh yes, I am an unlovable, abrasive crier as opposed to the alternative: a politician. And so, I find myself at an interesting gender crux: I try to rebuke hypocritical authority but I am weak and I cry. I try to epitomize my theories and principles, but what I really want is to be petite, slender, pretty and feminine – in the Victorian sense – just like the magazines tell me I should be. I want to be Charlotte even though “Charlotte” is…wrong? And people think that I have bad, selfish intentions when I question authority; but in my mind my intentions are noble.
Victorian novelist Charlotte Bronte did something revolutionary: she wrote about what really goes on in the female mind. In Villette, she wrote about Lucy Snowe and her madness, fearing her state of spinsterhood and haunted by the tragic ghost of a nun (as she perceived the apparition). She wrote about the mad black woman locked away in the attic – who at once represents the slavery women face in matrimony and the enslavement of the natives in colonial Jamaica – in Jane Eyre. Bronte wrote about “crazy” single girls; but her girls weren’t really crazy…they were merely thoughtful and frightened by their limitations as women in a patriarchal culture.
As much as I’d like to say that Bronte is the Charlotte in me, I am compelled to tell you the truth. This is the Charlotte in me:
Charlotte: "Little" and "Womanly"
This is my pit bull. And like me, she is largely disappointed in her state of being and commonly misunderstood. (I would call her a “pit bull mix,” but the “mix” part doesn’t seem to matter much to people who don’t know her.) She has a sadness in her demeanor.
How is Charlotte disappointed? She too wants to be pretty and petite.
A few years ago, we surprised her with a little sister: Tootie, the Boston terrier. Tootie is cute, and she is petite compared to Charlotte: they weigh in at 15 and 62 pounds respectively. And so it is that Tootie is more of a “Charlotte,” though she is the dominant dog in their relationship.
Charlotte and Tootie
Nonetheless, Charlotte and Tootie have adopted each other; they clean each other’s ears. Tootie, though small, fancies herself big and rules the roost by humping and sleeping on Charlotte. Meanwhile, Charlotte fancies herself petite and tries to climb on my lap whenever she can.
All of this is well and good at home. It doesn’t transition smoothly to the dog park, however. This picture (at right) is a picture of two secure dogs who know their pecking order and who accept “the way things are” at home. But at the dog park, the pecking order changes and they become insecure and a little crazy.
Why go?
I like to see my dogs running free. We walk them several times a day, but they are always leashed in such cases. My husband even believes that Charlotte “smiles” when she runs at the park. It’s worth the risk that Charlotte might snarl at another girl dog and offend a nervous owner.
I have been able to sit back and observe some interesting canine behavior during our visits to the park. When a new dog enters the arena, many of the dogs gather to perform an inspection. This 20- to 30-second period usually consists of ass-sniffing in a circular kinesis. One dog sniffs another dog who sniffs another dog, etc. Occasionally, there’s the assertion of authority: dogs – usually female – snap at each other causing a rumble.
The females are generally dominant at the park, and Charlotte is no exception. She likes to run with the boys and hump them to prove her superiority. Additionally, she loves when she can get a boy dog to lie on his back so that she can stand over him in triumph. (Somewhere, deep inside, all feminists want this experience too.) I think that Charlotte is afraid to let the boys win. And I think she is just afraid of the girls…period.
The dog park is also an interesting vantage point from which to observe human behavior…and so it is the human park too. There’s the man who hits dogs. That’s right; he hits them. He’s given Charlotte two strong whacks on separate occasions when she’s gotten a little bitchy with another…well, bitch. There’s the “lesbian brigade” (my nickname for these metaphorical or perhaps literal lesbians) who have staked a claim to the center picnic table and who bring at least half a dozen rescue dogs who circle around the table in playful glee. There’s the sweet but disabled elderly woman who is nice to chat with but who cannot physically restrain her dogs and relies on the hitter. There are the macho men with macho dogs (Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, Boxers, etc.) who stand on the benches to lord their superiority over the lesbian brigade, smoking big, fat cigars. There are the shy girls with big dogs and the shy girls with little dogs. (I guess I am the shy girl with both.)
So it would seem that girls rule in dog world…perhaps not so much in the human world? There are hitting, smoking lords and nurturing, adopting, soft-spoken ladies at the dog park, at least during peak hours. While Charlotte may be in control, or at least fighting for authority, I am sitting quietly in a corner reading books by authors like Jose Saramago and Margaret Atwood, merely dreaming of Utopia. And what did I do when the hitter attacked Miss Charlotte? The first time, he apologized, to which I replied, “That’s okay.” The second time I merely wandered away. Coward! I am angry at myself for participating in the assumption that I am a member of the weaker sex.
The thing that’s easiest to observe in people at the dog park are the relative levels of fear. In general, there is a pervasive wariness of pit bulls like Charlotte. Historically, some have bitten people and such stories always draw media attention. But Charlotte doesn’t bite people, and to my knowledge she has never bitten another dog. If she were a biter, she surely would have bitten the hitter. I probably wanted to bite him more than she. Charlotte just got down low to the ground with her tail between her legs and crawled away…as did I, in spirit.
The women at the dog park are less fearful of pit bulls. They keep and love them. It is only the gentlest, kindest, quietest men who bring pit bulls to the dog park. Most pit bulls are loving and silly…and a little bit dumb. You never see a smoking or hitting macho man with a pit bull for pit bulls really, by their own God-given nature, are not rough enough to show for these men.
However, it might be fear that keeps these men from owning pit bulls. And that is where the tables have turned: that is where women show their dominance in the human world, in our unwillingness to fear the underdog and our confidence to sit and read novels at the dog park.
When Charlotte is safely back at home, exhausted from an afternoon of play, she resumes her subordinate role to the wacky Boston terrier. She resumes her romantic sadness…and sleeps. And while we have silly names for the Boston (Rootin’ Tootin’ Tootie, Toots McGee, The Tootster, etc.), Charlotte has no nicknames. She is just Charlotte to me in my own home: “little” and “womanly.”
And while Charlotte dreams of being smaller than her 62 pounds, trying to get me to lift her up the way I did when she was a puppy and I plucked her from the shelter cage and she rested her head on my shoulder and sighed…I cherish my greater size so that I can hold her, care for her, love her like a good mommy does. In this madness – the madness of loving a pit bull – I am glad, for once, not to be so meek and little as I must seem at the park. I am glad to be brave, and just a bit big.
And I promise, Charlotte, never to let that man hit you again. For you are a part of me, and I see myself in your dog park play.
The case of the glued penis…huh?
September 11, 2009
I’m probably not supposed to laugh about this, but upon doing my usual news perusal this morning, I came across something that set me to giggling:
Women face trial for staged motel tryst ending with glued penis
How can you avoid investigating that headline further?
At first, I was expecting some ridiculous scandal involving a bachelorette party and a “pin the penis on the naked man” game. Perhaps things got a little out of control and the girls ended up streaking the motel parking lot with paper penises glued to their foreheads, thought I. It could – and probably has – happen(ed).
Well, sadly, this is not a case of girls gone wild for fun. This is girls gone wild for revenge. This is the kind of story that would make for a great, albeit dark, comedy movie like Heathers, Jawbreaker or Death Becomes Her. In the case of each of those films, women – young and old – do deadly deeds in pursuit of something it seems most women covet: the right to call oneself “most beautiful” or “most popular.” In the case of the glued penis – that kind of sounds like a good book: Nancy Drew and the Case of the Glued Penis – four women pursued the right to call one of them “most likely to grow old with the world’s biggest loser husband.” How’s that for a superlative?
It seems that they don’t get much reality television in Wisconsin. Four apparently bored women including the wife of the “victim” concocted a scheme to trap a man who was sleeping with three of them indiscreetly. No, this is not the pilot episode plot summary for The Real Housewives of Calumet County.
Therese Ziemann claims that she met the man on Craigslist – I knew it was good for something – and fell in love with him. She allegedly payed for their hotel rooms and lent him $3,000.
Ziemann claims to have been contacted on the day before the assault by the man’s wife who confirmed that she was married to the man and was mother to his children; and that it was subsequent to that conversation that Ziemann, the wife, another girlfriend of the cheating husband, and Ziemann’s sister agreed to ambush the man at a Stockbridge motel and make him confess his treachery.
The man told police that he met with Ziemann for a sexual encounter at the motel, and she suggested that she tie him up and rub him down. She used bed sheets to restrain him and blindfolded him with a pillowcase. Then, according to the “victim,” she cut off his underwear with scissors and texted her accomplices telling them that he was tied up.
The four women asked the man questions about where his true affections lie. Then Ziemann slapped him and used Krazy Glue to attach his penis to his stomach, according to her testimony. The women took his wallet, car and cell phone and left him at the motel tied up. He then chewed through his restraints and called police.
My favorite line of the CNN article is: “CNN does not name victims of alleged sexual assault and will not name the alleged victim’s wife since they use the same last name.”
Why do I love this line? Because CNN is taking this man’s status as a victim very seriously – his identity is known. I put the word “victim” in quotation marks: this man made a series of deliberate choices (some illegal) that resulted in his uncomfortable apprehension. He’s not a victim like, say, children who find their genitals cut off in sadistic “circumcision” rituals in Africa et al. He’s not a victim like the Micheal Vick pit bulls who were riled up and used for sport. Nor, is he like the small rabbits and kittens that are used to bait such fighting dogs. And he certainly isn’t a victim like the millions of women and children who are beaten by abusive men in the United States and other countries around the world. No. Additionally, he did not find himself shot dead by George Sodini in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania or Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech. He did not find himself lying dead at the base of the fallen World Trade Center towers eight years ago today.
Can men be victims? Sure. And women have been known to beat their husbands and their children too. But, this man is not the poster child for penile rights! According to the article, this man “has a criminal record in Wisconsin dating back to 1998, (and) is in custody on unrelated charges of child abuse, theft and harassment.”
While CNN references its policy about not revealing the names of “victims” of “sexual assault,” I wonder at what point does this “victim” become the villain? At what point do his wife and his two unsuspecting girlfriends become “victims” of his treachery? At what point do his children become victims of his child abuse, the robbed victims of his theft, and the harassed victims of his harassment? As far as I can tell, this man is not a “victim” at all: he just got a little taste of his own medicine.
Now don’t go thinking that I am trivializing what must have been agonizing sexual assault for this man… No, you’re right, I am. Sexual assault in the form a Krazy Glued penis neither alarms nor horrifies me. Had they cut it off, then we’d have a serious crime on our hands.
The Witches of Stockbridge?
Which brings us to the victims…eh perpetrators…of this incident: the women. At left is the image that CNN posted with its article. I assume these are the mug shots of Michelle Belliveau, Wendy Sewell and Ziemann (from left to right). That would make the woman on the right the man’s lover, loan shark and penis gluer. She doesn’t look too remorseful. Neither does her sister – who wasn’t sleeping with the man – on the far left. In fact, Belliveau looks rather pleased with herself. And the third cheated woman (Sewell in the center) just looks pissed off.
On the one hand, I want to say, “Good for them! They found a sisterhood and stood up for love and trust between sexual partners.” But on the other hand, I wonder what’s more pathetic: the fact that these women fell in love with and were duped by such a loser or the fact that they will stand trial and may go to prison for it?
Either way, I want to wear a t-shirt that reads “Release the Witches of Stockbridge.” For, even though they may have been tricked, they tricked back. In my book, “witch,” which is a term that has been applied to many women over the years including our esteemed – and often loathed – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a great thing to be: it means you’re smart, angry and perhaps a bit tricky! (I’m sure I would have been hanged from a scaffold in Salem, 1692.) At what point do women cease to be victims? When they rise up alone or together and fight back.
This really isn’t a case of men versus women where one or the other are bad guys or good guys simply because of their sex. This is a case of a group of people getting angry at a person for lying to them, stealing from them, neglecting them, etc. And this is a case of that group making a united stance saying, “We are not going to take it anymore!” For all intents and purposes, it’s the same thing when men and women of employment unions stand together and fight the good fight for better pay and working conditions. In this case, a group of people has also stood up for better treatment from “the man.”
I wouldn’t be singing their praises if they had really hurt this man. He didn’t physically damage any one of them irrevocably. But if people learn of this story, as with the case of the cut off Bobbitt penis, there might be a few men here or there who think twice before lying, cheating and stealing. And that’s a step forward for the happiness of heterosexual women, right?
If women heed the same warning, isn’t that a step forward for humanity as a collective?
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