Mimi (38 page)

It wasn’t always so. Women once ran the show. And life was easy, and fair, and artistic! There was plenty of leisure time for art, music, dance, and other cultural activities. Neolithic people had a four-hour working day! Women, as childbearers, were recognized and valued in a society concerned with life, art, and knowledge,
not
ignorance,
not
beauty contests, bombast, and death. Women’s
bodies
and bodily
processes
were valued too.

Then men, bored, restless—envious after thousands of years of menstruation festivities—rose up and insisted on playing things
their
way: war, rape, despotism, empire, carnage, genocide, racism and class divides, pollution, and energy-saving light bulbs. Okay, they also caught fish, built some stuff, created the occasional public park or nature reserve, and developed a few ideas of jurisprudence, but at what cost? The desecration of the air, land, and sea, the ruin of happiness, the ruin of intimacy, the ruin of
sex
.

In a mere five thousand years, men have wrecked life on earth. Thanatossers! Power meant more to them than survival itself. Only the dead kill.

Equality no longer seems enough. What we need is matriarchy.

IT’S ODALISQUE TIME!

4
. 
WE’LL ALL HAVE CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS WHEN SHE COMES

The odalisques Henri Matisse painted in the 1920s
aren’t
slaves. They feel swell, lying around topless in harem pants, taking it easy, basking in the breezes of the South of France: these are post-orgasmic women delighting in sunshine, serenity, and safety. Matisse was a guy with coziness on the brain. His odalisques, as an expression of coziness, are the designated emblems of the Odalisque Revolution.

Ever wondered why women go to such lengths to be attractive? They want what Matisse’s odalisques are having! Joy, comfort, kindness, color, and light. They just want their DUE.

Men have been missing the point about sex for thousands of years. Though obviously necessary and exciting for both genders, sex is not primarily about male pleasure, but female. Biologically speaking, the male animal exists to please the female. The penis is shaped specifically to enhance
female
, not male, orgasms—because pleasing the female is the best way for a male to help ensure his genes get carried on. Rape is rare in nature. Instead, much attention is given by most species (excepting
ducks
, maybe) to courtship, and to the female orgasm. Nature is very keen on female pleasure.

Men have thwarted women’s pleasures as a psychological means of hanging onto male power. And, in doing so, we’ve depressed everybody! Instead of hassling women, we should be humoring them, instead of boring everybody to death with our dreary male desires, fetishes, and fantasies, we should be finding out what
women
want.
Men
should be the sex slaves—they’d love it!

Because, if men are here to please women, we’ve wasted a lot of time. What a drag, when we could all have been getting laid!

Enough guff, enough rebuff. Enough of feminism and its backlashes. Enough tweaking of the patriarchal setup here and there. It’s time to concentrate on making things
monumentally
better for women. We don’t
have
to deprive and displease them: it would be more fun to
please
them. A world in which the female orgasm isn’t nurtured, celebrated, applauded, and generously sought, is no world for women
or
men.

We don’t even know what women are yet—that’s lost in the mists and myths of patriarchy. We’ve been so busy bossing, badmouthing, begrudging, and bullying women, and boosting ourselves, we missed out on buddying up! Missed out on a
lot
of stuff. . .

Imagine a world of proud, content, amorous, sexually satisfied women. No more bored housewives descending into hypochondria, no more irate teachers and belligerent waitresses, inconsolable single moms, hopelessly infatuated secretaries. Ever wonder why teenage girls are (statistically speaking) the most troubled people on the planet? Because they know they are about to have to engage with all this bullshit! They already know they will never be loved, honored, and obeyed enough, they will never even be humored, hugged, and
kissed
enough—and it’s
getting them down
.

Enough of men’s free-floating contempt for all forms of life. HAIL the much-maligned uxorious man! He had it right all along. This is a man’s natural role: devotion!
Not
disdain,
not
disapproval,
not
violence and subjugation. We got everything mixed up and turned around, upside-down, topsy-turvy, back-assward. For centuries we’ve treated uxoriousness as an oddity, a minority aberration—when in fact it’s what men are made for!

5
. 
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY IS A WOMAN

The Statue of Liberty is a woman. Okay! But men can be liberators too. After all, women have done enough. It’s time for all good men to come to the aid of the people, time for them to get up off their lazy-boys, and all those fences they’ve been sitting on, and start reversing some of the damage men before them have done. In Delacroix’s
Liberty Leading the People
, there are lots of men lying around at Liberty’s feet. Rise up, comrades, and lend a hand with those barricades!

Hand over the power
and
the privilege. Give women respect.

But what bestows respect in our society, besides youth, beauty, street cred, up-to-date computer technology, a talent for learning languages, an in with royalty, and frankincense and myrrh? MONEY. At this point in human interaction, money really counts. Men base their lives, their whole sense of self, on how much dough they make—and they base their contempt for women on how little
they
make, these low-status appendages of ours.

So here’s the plan, guys: GIVE WOMEN THE MOOLA.

Next time you’re revolted by the bombing of innocent civilians or the torture of prisoners,
give money to women
. Next time you’re heartbroken about nuclear plant meltdowns,
give money to women
. Next time you hear about violence against little girls, or the raping of babies,
give money to women
. Turn the tide, man! Give women the freedom to act, and they just might save us. GIVE THEM THE MONEY.

A lot of us don’t want to be terrorists, we had terrorism thrust upon us (by our fathers, teachers, priests, and peers). REBEL. Stop degrading women—parade them! Stop demoting them: promote them. Honor and obey, praise, pamper, and pleasure them. THIS IS YOUR NEW JOB (forget the old one!).

We don’t even know how much the guilt over our complicity in their suppression has grated on us. But divesting ourselves of power might be a big relief. Then we can get on with helping women repair society. They shouldn’t have to do it all alone: they’re odalisques! They should take things easy.

So no more pleas of innocence whenever another woman gets garroted and dumped in a trash can, or a girl gets acid thrown in her face by an indignant boyfriend. “What the hell can I do about it?” is no longer an excuse. You
know
what you can do about it: GIVE WOMEN THE MONEY.

Give a woman or women, of your choice, your checkbook, your stocks and shares, your credit cards, your spare change. Give them the land. Give them the parks and the buildings. Give them
the power
. They couldn’t do a worse job than we have.

Sure, there are madwomen out there (not just in the attic either, though our literature is full of those!). Women who kill, women who go along with murder, or give their lovers HIV. There was at least one woman who stopped her husband seeing his mother on her deathbed. There are unfair women, unpleasant and conservative women. Let’s face it, they’re nuts! But
you’d
have a screw loose too if you’d been harassed and disrespected from birth. Women might be a lot less cranky if the world was their oyster.

You get to choose which woman to give your money to; but if each man, throughout his life, transferred the majority of his assets, earnings, property, and wealth to one or more women (or a charity run by and for women), wealth and power would soon be in women’s hands. In such an atmosphere of respect, a diminution of violent crimes against women is likely to follow. Eventually, it should become
taboo
to bother a woman. So let’s do something right for once: GIVE WOMEN THE MONEY.

This is not a bribe or bargaining ploy—no, the hand-over of money to women entitles you to
nothing
in return. It must be given freely, no strings attached, in acknowledgment of, and recompense for, your voluntary or involuntary participation in the campaign of terror against all women that has gone on for thousands of years. This is one way you can start to make amends.

Enough lip service to women’s freedom and equality—just go ahead and empower them! Don’t creep up behind them on the street.
Help
them. Give women priority, give them a fair chance, give them the benefit of the doubt. Stop stereotyping them from birth to death. Stop criticizing and complaining about them. Stop glorifying that minute proportion of women chosen to act as examples of womanly perfection to beat other women with. Just
enrich
them all.

And stop taking up all the room on the couch! That couch was made for ODALISQUES.

Enough mother-in-law jokes too, and all the jovial sneers at women. These are the condescending chortles of the slave-owner. Enough fatherly disapproval of daughters. ENOUGH. Dad, you’ve had your day. Show them you regret their being terrorized,
show
that you don’t condone the massacre of women all around us. Show them some
respect
. Stop sitting on your slave-owner ass talking the talk, and put your money where your mouth is: start freeing those slaves, man! GIVE WOMEN THE MOOLA.

I used to scorn the ancient womanly pursuits, like my mother’s bottling and baking. A cake, or a jar of jam, seemed feeble and futile efforts to me (compared to my father’s hotshot job at a
gum
factory!). I scorned domestic comforts like quilting and cleaning and childcare. I scorned cushions! But I was really just scorning
femaleness
, that half-buried force for good in the world, and those lowly female concerns like life, pleasure, and well-being. I had no respect for them (but I ate the jam!).

GIVE WOMEN THE MONEY. Respect will follow.

During and after the revolution there will no doubt be “pockets of patriarchy” (male tyranny): bankers banking on their banks, toy-boys toying with their toys, farmers who won’t hand over the deeds to the land. Vulnerable women, targeted by resentful men, may be persuaded to divert their newfound wealth to them. Don’t let this deter you. As with speed limits, you only need the
majority
of people to go along with the idea for it to work. Women will gradually get braver about keeping the cash.

Mayhem isn’t amusing anymore; we’re all sick of slaughter. The Odalisque Revolution is a last heroic stand against the male death wish. Therefore, its aim is an unobtrusive, undisruptive, nonviolent hand-over of power. The beauty of the Odalisque Revolution is its gentleness, and its voluntary nature. Giving your money away can be an entirely intimate, intuitive, personal, private, even clandestine, process.

In time, the Odalisque Revolution may be refined to become a truly cooperative redistribution of wealth—not communism perhaps, but
commonism
. Once capitalism, patriarchy, and war have been superseded, women will be free to rethink the entire monetary culture that has ruined life for everybody, and new designs for human happiness may be instigated.
But that’s up to them
, not us. All we have to do is clear the way for women to act, and assist them in carrying through their wishes.

Puccini’s Rodolfo would have given Mimì all his money (if he’d had any) but in the end, it’s
Musetta
who buys Mimì her muff. Let’s do something
right
for a change:

GIVE WOMEN THE DOUGH!

6
. 
INSTRUCTIONS TO MEN OF FEELING

When combined, in order of appearance, the first letters of each item above form an apt final instruction, dependent of course on the woman’s consent. (H.H.)

$ GIVE women a chance:
first
chance. Never mind maintaining the “Supremacy.”

$ RELINQUISH any lingering sense of superiority over women. It is wholly erroneous.

$ ALLOW women to decide the future.

$ SCORN the mockery of women, the denial of women, the judging of women, and discrimination against them.

$ PRIORITIZE women’s welfare, women’s concerns, and women’s interests.