Romantic Love

Eva and Marina were doing their presentation and talking about the ideas of the prince charging in on his white steed coming to rescue the princess. "Some day my prince will come!" kind of thing, and how it is a lie. In Spain, they have a saying that everyone is a "media naranja" an orange-half and they're looking for their other half so that they can be complete. But Eva was like "We are not orange-halves. We are full people, and we shouldn't be living under the illusion that we need someone else to be complete. The idea of romantic love is a lie."

It's very interesting to me that they're spilling the beans about this myth to a bunch of teenagers. I'm not sure how much they'll believe her. I know when I was their age, or even like, 6 months ago, I wouldn't have believed her. I didn't want to believe her. But Eva was arguing that a lot of times women who are in violent relationships stay because they believe in this myth of romantic love. And that makes me sad.

But I definitely do agree that the idea of romantic love is a dangerous one. Take Twilight for example. One of my favorite things to argue about. Bella was living a passive ho-hum life until the day that Edward smelled her blood (aka stumbled in on his white horse and magically became obsessed with her) and through this and that they lived happily FOREVER after as immortal vampires. Young girls are reading these novels and watching these movies and they are just eating every little bit up. Of course they know that twilight isn't real because there are no such thing as vampires... but they don't realize that there's no such thing as an Edward. A Jacob is a little more believeable (because he actually likes Bella for who she is, not for something beyond her control.)

And finally, I wanted to talk about a shirt that Urban Outfitters is selling (but I found it cheaper on another website) from a brand called Married to the Mob, which seems to have a lot of shirts with statements about women and being sassy. I particularly like this one, and I think I will purchase it in the near future.

It finally makes sense to me that it really is what it is. "Romantic love was invented to manipulate women." I'm not sure if it was an incredibly deliberate invention, and probably occured over many generations of cultures, but it all seems to come down to the idea that women need to be passive and wait for a perfect man to come by, instead of working to find an equal partner who you work well with. Otherwise it's love-at-first-sight or "he's so dreamy" and there's not too much thought about how a relationship would really work.

I think I've finally personally been able to wrap my mind around this idea. And I'm glad. I will no longer be disappointed in relationships that aren't perfect or settle for less because I think that there's some stronger romantic attachment that outweighs a disfunctional relationship. Good deal. Also I think that shirt is really cute, too.

More about the movie workshop.

For Eva to prove her point more about how women are invisible as authors and artists with the group of kids she asked everyone to write on one side of the paper a famous author and on the other side a famous painter or composer. I was thinking "Ooh I know two women, I can do this. Author: Ísabel Allende, Painter: Frida Kahlo." The kids wrote down Mozart, Beethoven, and a bunch of other men. Some people did have a few women authors, a few other women artists. But Eva was like "Look, the majority of what you've mentioned have been men, and all European." But when she got to mine she was like "Wait! This is awesome. Do you guys know Frida Kahlo?" And only a few did. I was excited that I picked two non-European women, when I didn't realize that it was so hard to find them.

During the second day, Eva and Marina wanted to talk to the kids about Violencia de Género, o Violencia Machista (Gendered Violence). They gave the definition of gendered violence (as to diferentiate it from regular violence) as agression toward a woman by a man because he feels that he has the right to do so. It makes it become the psychology of the violence, not just that it's violence between a man and a woman. But the kids wouldn't stop bringing up examples of women who hit men, arguing that women can commit gendered violence. However Marina and Eva were arguing back and forth with them, trying to say that a woman does not hit a man because she feels that she has the inherit right to do so. It's not because she feels that she is superior to the man. It becomes other types of psychological issue. And the most interesting part about this was that there are a boyfriend and a girlfriend that are in the group, the Columbian girl and her boyfriend, and they always fight and argue in the class, and the girl often hits her boyfriend on the leg or on the head like "SMACK oh shut up! hahaha..." And she hits him kind of hard. And it's crazy that she was the one arguing that women can commit gendered violence. I wonder if in her family she does have a woman, like a grandmother or something, that doles out smacks every once and a while. I know that at least Marina is a psychologist, and she was saying that when women hit their children or grandchildren, it's often because of the hirearchy created in the family, and ultimately comes back to the agression of the man. Which I find to be a heavy statement, but I really don't know very much about it. I'd have to learn more, and I'm sure she's studied plenty about it as she works at a women's rights org and probably talks to women who are victims of domestic and gendered violence.

The columbian girl was on a roll when Eva made the statement that sex workers were all slaves, because slavery is selling oneself to another, and that is what prostitution is, and that many women are forced into prostitution for different reasons. Then the Columbian girl was talking about how one of her really good friends is a prostitute right on Calle Montera and that she loves her job and she does it for fun and for the good money. And Eva was like, "Well, your friend is SUCH an exception. I'm glad to hear that she wasn't forced into that for economic or worse reasons, but that is definitely not the case for the majority of women in sex work." And continued to discuss the idea. But the girl kept insisting that not all prostitutes are slaves. It was really interesting how she wouldn't let it go, just like she wouldn't let the gendered violence thing go.

But to be fair that girl wasn't the only one that was being all like "No, what about this?" and all that jazz. I think these kids are all at points in their lives where they're trying to figure out the world and they need to hear the rules but also the exceptions to the rules to get a better idea about things. It's good that they're argumentative and inquisitive about it, but we could hardly get anything done yesterday because we'd go on tangents arguing about rules and exceptions.