Reviews | Men fear me, society shames me and I love my life

I was once told that the challenge to making feminist porn successful was that what women wanted most was freedom.

If so, one could consider my life over the last few years to be extremely pornographic, even without all the sex that has taken place. This definitely has the makings of a fantasy, if we allow fantasies featuring single, childless women about to turn 50.

It’s not just by taking advantage of my age that I defy expectations. It’s that I exempted myself from the central things that were said that give meaning to a woman’s life, to partnership and to parenthood. I discovered that despite all the warnings, I don't regret any of these choices.

In fact, I really appreciate them. Instead of my prospects diminishing, as almost every message sent to me promises fewer relationships, less excitement, less sex, less visibility, I find them broadening. The world is more accessible to me than it has ever been.

Saying that shouldn't be radical in 2024, and yet somehow it seems to be. We live in a world whose power structures continue to benefit from keeping women in place. In fact, we are currently experiencing the latest violent reaction against the meager feminist gains of the last half century. My story and that of other women in similar shoes shows that there are other fulfilling ways of living.

It's disconcerting to have so much fun when there's so much to be sure of to expect the opposite, just as it's strange to feel so good in the face of so much horror in the world. But with age (hopefully) comes clarity.

Fifty years is a milestone. And the fact that my 50th birthday fell around another important fiftieth brought a few things into focus. Last year was the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which may be less well known but remains significant: It allowed women for the first time to have bank accounts and credit cards. credit in their own name, without the need for a male signature.

The fact that my birth date falls between the passage of these two historic laws makes it easier for me to see that the life I live is the result of women's authority over their bodies and finances. I represent a cohort of women who lead lives that don’t require asking for permission or approval. I have taken advantage of every choice available to me and, although the results have their own set of risks, they have been extremely satisfying.

The timing of my birthday also helps me understand the violent rollback of women's rights that is currently occurring in response to the independence these legal rights granted women. Forget the horror of being alone and middle-aged, there is nothing more terrifying to a patriarchal society than a free woman. That she can have a better time without permission or supervision is downright unbearable.

My entry into middle age certainly had the makings of an unpleasant story.

Like many, I spent the first months of the pandemic alone. This is the type of isolation that popular science and some men with platforms like to remind us of: the terrible future that awaits a woman who stays single for too long. I wasn't touched by anyone. Odorless too, which might seem strange to you to note, but it's even stranger to experience. Unseen except by the building's exterminator and the remaining doormen of the Upper West Side who greeted me friendly from afar on my evening walks in a Covid-empty New York.

Alone, single, childless, past what we call the prime of life. A caricature, culture would like, a marginal identity; a tragedy or a punchline, whichever you prefer. At the very least, a warning.

In August 2021, I was desperate not for partnership but for connection. I bought a ticket to Paris, a place where I spent a lot of my free time before the pandemic and where I had a group of friends.

Paris, I reminded myself, prioritizes pleasure. I dove. Cheese, wine, friendships, sex and repetition.

At first it was shocking. I was ill-prepared to get what I wanted, what it seemed I had summoned. There were times when I wondered if I should be ashamed. I had never felt so free and so fully myself. I felt no shame or guilt, only the thrill of knowing I was exercising my freedom.

These days, generally speaking, there is little in cinema or literature, much less in the online world, that suggests that when you are a single woman (let's forget a middle-aged woman), the things happen as I have often experienced. .

There have been better times. In the 1980s, sitcoms were full of women starring women for whom men were only a minor character. Designing Women, Murphy Brown, The Golden Girls, which, if they aired today (and that's a big if), would seem radical. Later, there was Girlfriends. Even Sex and the City, with its often regressive marriage plots, remains surprisingly modern in its depictions of adult friendship and sexual mores. In each case, just as it seemed like these narratives might begin to take full root in the real world, the women largely went back inside (or into body bags, in the case of many of Law & Order). At first we were housewives again, real and imaginary.

I suspect that much of this negative reaction has to do with the terror men have felt at discovering that they are less necessary to women's development than centuries of law and history have allowed them to believe. believe him. This terror is abundantly apparent today: since Harrison Butchers opening speech suggesting women can find more fulfillment in marriage and children than in a career, again before the Supreme Court discuss access to abortion has the pressure to go back No-Fault Divorce Laws: All of these measures aim to return women to a place where others can properly manage their access to just about everything.

It is in this light that my enjoyment begins to feel radical. Come fly with me. There is no fear here.