A pox on you Game of Thrones for pushing my summer reading to the margins. Just look at the great stuff that has been gathering dust in my book-pile. This is an excerpt from Susan Brownmiller’s work titled “Femininity”.
“Nancy Henley, psychologist and author of Body Politics, has written, “In a way so accepted and so subtle as to be unnoticed even by its practitioners and recipients, males in couples will often literally push a woman everywhere she is to go – the arm from behind, steering around corners, through doorways, into elevators, onto escalators … crossing the street. It is not necessarily heavy and pushy or physical in an ugly way; it is light and gentle but firm, in the way of the most confident equestrians with the best-trained horses.”
In this familiar pas de deux, a woman must either consent to be led with a gracious display of good manners or else she must buck and bristle at the touch of the reins. Femininity encourages the romance of compliance, a willing exchange of motor autonomy and physical balance for the protocols of masculine protection. Steering and leading are prerogatives of those in command. Observational studies of who touches whom in a given situation show that superiors feel free to lay an intimate, guiding hand on those with inferior status, but not the reverse. “The politics of touch,” a concept of Henley’s operates instructively in masculine-feminine relations.”
-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity. p. 200
Sociological experiment time ladies and gents. Let’s test the politics of touch in real life and be aware of how your partner interacts with you on the street. Is the gentle steering there? The quote mentions that this is close to being an imperceptible phenomena, so hike up your conscious awareness to 11 and observe what happens.
For extra fun why not try and lead your partner, or be lead to see how the role reversal works out?
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
6 comments
August 11, 2014 at 7:51 am
john zande
Wa!?? You mean this can be done with gentle manipulation; a guiding hand? Well, i might have to box the cattle prod and try this fancy newfangled method on the wife ;)
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August 11, 2014 at 8:38 am
The Intransigent One
Back in my tango dancing days I was a switch, and when I was dancing lead, I would, naturally, also guide my partners on and off the dance floor much as the article describes (at least when they were women; my male follows would steer me onto the dance floor and then very consciously hand over the reins when we got into dancing frame). When you’re not used to steering others as a matter of course, it’s a unique power-feeling. I’m curious what it must be like to do it all the time as a natural entitlement, rather than as a conscious adoption of a temporary dominant role.
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August 11, 2014 at 11:01 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
Lol. I’ve always heard there are unique culture facets from every region in the world – I’m guessing the generous cattle prod of male protection is a rare Australian/Brazilian cross-over artifact?
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August 11, 2014 at 11:02 am
The Arbourist
@TIO
An analogue for privilege perhaps?
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August 11, 2014 at 12:30 pm
john zande
Western Queensland, yeah… But hey, its not like we’re Northern Territorians or something. I mean, our prods have variable settings, not just the single NT: Water Buffalo Down Now option :)
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August 11, 2014 at 1:15 pm
The Intransigent One
@Arb – very much so. The genderfuck of dancing both roles gave me a unique perspective on male privilege relating to women’s bodies: when I was in a “masculine” role with women, women deferred to me as naturally as they do to men; the men, even if they were going to be dancing follow, couldn’t relinquish their privileged “handling” of me until the framework of the dance specifically required a turning-over of authority.
I should add, though, that adopting the stereotypically-masculine mannerisms like steering with a hand at the small of the back (for example), were behaviours I deliberately cultivated as part of my leader persona, not something that arose “naturally” from being in a dominant position.
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