“Who is this New Woman, this epicene creature, this Gorgon set up by the snarly who impute to her the faults of both sexes while denying her the charm of either — where is she to be found if she exists at all?”
— Sarah Grand. ‘The New Woman and the Old’. Lady’s Realm (1898)
When postulating theories about men and women, advancing strong claims without exhaustive caveats often results in unproductive generalization. Yet, treading on the side of paranoid cautiousness often results in nothing of value either. Feminism, I have now concluded, is like Game Theory on crack. To avoid the pitfalls of either approach, I choose to present neither theory nor caveat.
Instead, here are some excerpts of the romantic life of a friend of a friend of mine; of this epicene creature you’ve all probably met at some point in your lives. If you’re into gender psychology, she scores high on both legs of the BSRI – masculine, and feminine too. Gorgon can be found here.
The Epicene Girl at Age Eleven
Her homework is not yet finished but the day is too sunny to waste on possessive pronouns and conifer anatomy. Her blond strands of hair are loosely bunched into a ponytail, swishing softly over a grey t-shirt reading “Georgetown Hoyas.” There is a weathered pigskin clutched between her biceps and rib cage as she walks decisively over to the park. She knows Sasha will be there.
On a large expanse of green grass, next to a pair of rusty swings, five boys are determining who can throw a sneaker they’ve just found next to the sewers the farthest. Beneath the shade of an oak tree, out of shoe’s way, her girl friends are comfortably seated, discussing both the total stupidity of shoe throwing, and the relative brilliance of the shoe throwers.
Upon reaching the shade’s unwelcoming boundaries, the epicene girl courageously asks – like she sometimes does – wanna throw the football around? Collectively speaking, the brown oversize lemon she always drags around everywhere is deemed as totally stupid too. The girls – like they always do – share a few glances and come to a firm conclusion: nah, not today.
The boys, attracted to the object like, well, boys to football, abruptly end their impromptu shoe contest and request the girl’s pigskin instead. She feels like a traitor; a gendered Judas. What if she misses important topics? She knows the price for huddles and fake touchdown dances: her name will form the next bullet point on the minutes of their feminine discussion. Nevertheless, she heads off on her merry way, mimicking Favre, Montana and Elway, glancing back to the shade of the oak tree every once in a while.
A few improvised routes into the afternoon, Sasha – the classroom clown, the sandy haired boy every school teacher always ends up forgiving – approaches the girl who had been effortlessly firing perfect throws across the field.
Are you sure you’re a girl? It’s okay, you can tell me.
Aghast, she grasps her Detroit Pistons shorts in the front and the back and pulls them backwards, providing evidence that she owns no such bump.
There! I’m obviously a girl. He adds, that doesn’t prove anything! You’re lying! and pulls on her pony tail. Catch me if you can, you man! is his final statement, and is whispered quickly as he sprints off into the park.
That night, her diary reads: I want to kiss Sasha. Not that she’d ever tell that to anyone. In the midst of a youth having provided poor eloquence for issues like these, she jots down something as primitive as he is so funny and he is so hot. I like him.
But Sasha likes the dark haired girl who is sitting beneath the shade of an oak tree.
Can you blame her for liking the funniest 6th grader of all? Can you blame him for liking the dark haired girl under the oak tree?
The Epicene Girl at Age Seventeen
Prototypical Prom. “Holy crap. Who is that?” her classmates each gaping, wondering who exactly that tight dress could possibly be covering. She looks good, but she doesn’t really know it yet. Classic case of the Little Giant’s ‘Becky the Ice Box’ as cheerleader meets Love and Basketball’s Monica in haute couture. It’s the wow-factor every sweatpants-sporting teenager faces. Nothing surprising here, but it’s always kind of awkward. Oh my god you look so good today can sometimes be slightly daunting. Are they saying she looks like crap the rest of the time? Because she cares a little bit; she is a girl after all. But she’s too much of a guy to make any kind of changes.
Speaking of overly simplistic stereotypes, she loves those Hollywood movies too. She is Monica. She is Becky. In her journal, she unknowingly though eloquently hopes for more truth to Oscar Wilde’s radical position: anti-mimesis. Or life imitating art. Maybe then she’d get her own Quincy. Maybe she’d get her own Junior Floyd.
Can you blame her for wanting her own little stereotype?
The Epicene Girl at Age Twenty One
Friday invokes two-dollar drinks night at a bar we’ll call the Green Carpet. It’s the kind of night you stumble upon last minute, but whose consequences always last much longer than the morning headache. The Green Carpet is a pretty simple bar. It feels like an abandoned warehouse, littered with pool tables, electronic slot machines, middle-aged men, and flocks of budgeting university students. Its carpets are stained with rings of cheap beer the chesty bartender always sells in massive quantity. But nobody cares about those. The beer stains, not the chests.
The epicene girl loves this place. It is low maintenance, just like her. While she has finally mastered the language of women (somewhat), she remains largely fluent in the language of men. She’s Bilingual. She oscillates between sports news and women’s magazines, mostly to laugh at the inanity of both. She’s dabbed into the objectifying world of pink blushes and bronzers but prefers sweat on her face whenever she can.
On this very specific Friday night, she’s lost both a game of darts and the concept of time. She counts minutes in bar units: one Black Label, two Spicy Captain Morgan & Cokes, and two Baileys deep into the evening. The guy footing half of her bar bill? We’ll call him Charlie. He has pomaded his dark hair with enough obsessive care to give it the proper laisser-faire illusion. His features are rugged, his smile is slightly predaceous. He smells like testosterone, if that’s even possible. He is what well-adjusted folks call a jock. It’s a lazy disclaimer, but it paints an adequate picture. So yeah, he’s a jock, kind of like her. She could write many things about him in this journal of hers. A more eloquent version of He’s funny, and he’s so hot, with the added bonus of we can relate; we’re two of a kind.
The two had agreed to meet for drinks after she’d lost a bed to him in the afternoon. That’s Freudian slip for bet. I mean to say she’d lost a bet. She’s still kind of pissed about that loss, but thinks the sacrifice worth the benefits. Soar loser, that one.
Drinks and words are flowing as time runs its toll on their livers. Charlie’s fashionable detachment is slowing turning into the sick and twisted object of fantasy. Not that he has much to prove: men and women don’t typically make bets and meet for drinks unless a non-Freudian bed is involved.
In between talk about generally despising some random baseball starlet, dentists, and the fact that they both grew up feasting on Life of Reilly, Charlie nonchalantly opens up about himself. I’m kind of selfish sometimes. […] I refuse to grow up. I guess I’m immature. In his admission, of course, she sees an attractive form of repentance. She’s figured he is at least honest, and holds on to authentic bearings of self. Women search for checkmarks where they can find them.
Charlie’s wingman, who we’ll call Bilbo Baggins, has played it nicely. He has invested most of his unfruitful night in serenading the aforementioned chesty bartender, but he makes up for in quality what his presence lacks in quantity. You can’t drive home, Bilbo points out to the girl. Our place is just up hill. You could crash on the couch for the night. And so because she has no bed and has lost a bet, she follows.
Upon staggering their way up the third floor apartment, Charlie and the girl stand in the hallway, awkwardly. They share a few jokes, a few more slightly tipsy glances that say a whole lot more than English ever could. Swiftly, he outlines her options: the couch is infested with snakes, scorpions and really mean rats. His room is infested with, well, nothing.
And so, she chooses the room option. Not because of the rats or the scorpions. But because she is young and stupid and thinks that a guys who describe a couch as snake-infested are kind of cute. Because she thinks that a guy who admitted to being selfish and immature is actually thoughtful and mature. She’s picked the room because she can; he’s made it easy for her. She hasn’t picked the room because she should.
Can you blame her for hoping to relate to somebody who’s as hot and as funny as the boy named Sasha, way back when?
The Epicene Girl at Age Twenty Four
Metaphorically speaking, the girl now believes she shares an office with three African naked mole rats. Click on the link and you’ll know what I mean.
They look like penis with teeth.
Scavengers mining the underground for the easiest prey.
Disgusting mammals who sometimes eat their own feces.
Now the latter description is not entirely relevant, but because their behaviour contributes to her daily misanthropy, she throws in the coprophagy indictment out of spite every once in a while.
It’s not that they look like naked mole rats. Such a physical condition would negate the need for that comparison. It’s that they act like penis with teeth: They eat. They copulate. They do mindless things over and over again. From shoe throwing to video games, some things don’t seem to change. The apparent content of their cortex could be uploaded on a rat brain without any need for data compression. Their thought process is so basic it could be replaced by a few lines of computer code.
IF((breast = C OR breast = D) AND DressSize <=6)
BonePotential = TRUE;
PRINTF(“you busy tonight? ;) ”);
END IF
IF((breast != C AND breast != D) OR DressSize >6)
BonePotential = FALSE;
PRINTF(“sorry. I’m pretty busy.”);
END IF
Does she sound bitter much? Sure. She’s used to being with men. Her classrooms were filled with them. So is her workplace and her address book. But she’s tired of their enthusiasm over cup sizes and airbrushed thighs. Tired of their sexual groupthink. They relate to women like rats relate to rats. Her coffee breaks are filled with her coworkers’ stories of half naked chicks with half brains. This bird didn’t even know the difference between consultant and investment banker. Rat brain likes rat brain. Banged her. In the kitchen of the goddamn restaurant. They don’t mind discussing these things with her. The epicene girl doesn’t really count. She gets to hear it all. Remember, she can speak the language of men.
She’s now concluded that behind every man is a mole rat. Charlie had been a mole rat. And to be fair, she’d been the half naked girl with a half brain once too.
She now wonders how to appeal to both the mole rat and the man (could the two be disjoint features?), without having the man thinking she’s one of them too. It’s kind of a Catch-22. Needless to say, she hasn’t had a date in a while, and couldn’t be bothered to go one another hopeless one.
Can you blame her for being sick and tired? Maybe you can. Maybe you’re hoping shell opt for something other than alpha and male? How about opting for the same kind of substance she blames men for overlooking in her?
The Epicene Girl… at Some Point in the Future
It’s three in the morning. She’s taken your advice to heart: try something else. They’re both sitting on the couch of a austere looking apartment, intro page of a DVD movie looping endlessly on the television. It reminds me of something you said the other day, and I think you’ll like it. That’s how they got to where they are right now. He asks about her childhood. Topic 73 of the day. She talks about playing in the parks and throwing shoes around, but her mind wanders elsewhere.
Would he just please do something? Her dopamine center cries. She almost thinks, maybe to calm her own ego, that he’s void of naked-mole-ratness; that he’s incapable of being just a little bit alpha and man. She never thought she’s think it, but she hopes there’s a remnant of that wretched mammal in him somewhere. She hopes it will intermittently switch its on-button soon. There’s only so much English can convey.
But he operates on a different algorithm; one she hasn’t decoded just yet. He hasn’t described himself as selfish or immature; he’s busy discussing other things than half true personal disclaimers. Asks the right questions. But that last thing she wants right now is another guy friend.
She answers his queries semi-nonchalantly, stuck in the maze of her own sense making… maybe he’s just an epicene man? Not effeminate, just thoughtful. Not predatory, just interested. Not camouflaging his insecurities with laisser-faire detachment… just a little shy.
A penny for your thoughts? He asks, noticing her mental absence. Which would normally make her want to vomit but right now seems kind of fitting.
Would you just please be a man? Talk about rat infested beds or banging in the kitchen of the restaurant? That’s what she’s thinking.
Patience, epicene girl. Patience.
Note: The original artwork at the top of this piece is by Scott Shaffer.
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Sounds like the flip side of the discussion Paul began in an earlier post: To be yourself or to be as you think others expect you to be.
Btw, sometimes non-mole rat males need an extra push to realise they don’t have to be ‘just’ good friends. I may have personal experience with this.
Oops, coding should have only been for ‘may’, but you get the idea.
Thanks, Annick… you pretty much summed up my dating life in a rather concise article, and in much prettier language than I ever could have!
Scott L is right on the money.
Annick- I think this epicene girl, whoever she may be, is very lucky. The thing is, when men grow up (that is…IF they grow up. Not all men make that leap into adulthood), they are awestruck by the woman who would rather throw around a football than sit under a tree, and would rather read Scintific American than read Cosmopolitan, and prefers going to dive bars that serve cheap beer to frequenting lounges that serve expensive cocktails. This girl–the epicene girl–usually possesses a certain balance of logic and emotion (or…manly thought processes and womanly thought processes, respectively) that mature men don’t even know they’re looking for until they find it. And when they do find it, especially in a woman who looks gorgeous in a prom dress, they rarely let it go. So this girl has good things to look forward to. Make sure to tell her that. ;)
So wait, I’m confused. Were there really snakes, scorpions and rats in the couch or was it just a clever scheme. That guy should write a book!
I knew a girl like this. She could throw a football AND a frisbee, and we did both on one of our first dates. Still the best date I’ve ever been on.
Friday invokes two-dollar drinks night at a bar we’ll call the Green Carpet. It’s the kind of night you stumble upon last minute, but whose consequences always last much longer than the morning headache.
Great line
“Friday invokes two-dollar drinks night at a bar we’ll call the Green Carpet.”
How would you translate : “jouer aux boules” lol?
Et “mole rat” est un euphémisme pour parler de “Charlie” (ces choses-là sont vraiment écoeurantes btw).
Continue d’écrire, c’est d’une justesse… les comparaisons, la forme, les comportements/relations humaines, l’humour ni trop léger ni trop noir… simplement délectable. Encore!
Emilie