A History of Sex

Image from MaryCassatt.org
Mary Cassatt did not get married, which does not tell you anything about her.

The ways we are having sex do not change with time, but the ways we interpret it vary with time and place. For instance, the President of France, Francois Mitterand, wanted to be buried in presence of his wife and his mistress, and it is how the two women presided the official ceremony in 1996 (you can find a picture of it here) I heard of Presidents of the USA who had a double life, but I doubt very much that a scene like this would be appreciated by the American voters: different places, different point of views.

Similar differences can be observed in the past. A history of sex should be mandatory for US historians, because they fail to understand the simplest cultural factors of the past. I was listening yesterday to professor Brands re-telling to a fascinated audience that Eleanor Roosevelt warned her daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that sex was an ordeal to be borne.
What does it mean? That Mrs. Roosevelt did not like sex? That she was a lesbian? That her husband was a prick? I am not sure. The one thing I know for certain is that four or five great aunts and old cousins of mine, all born in the 1880s like Mrs. Roosevelt, told me the exact same thing when I got married. Women born in the 1880s in the bourgeoisie all had a Victorian education (Queen Victoria died in 1901.)
Good women were not supposed to like sex, only bad women enjoyed it; good women only suffered through it. So, men got married to a bourgoise who had children and they had mistresses for the fun of it. This not only explains La Belle Epoque and the can-can dancers with open drawers (unlike the abundant lace you see in the movies), but a lot of the early 20th century architecture. Paris is full of bachelors' pads of the period, with just one large front room, a small bath and a kitchen relegated at the end of a long hallway, so the servants could respect your privacy.
I do not mean that married women of the early 1900s did not enjoy sex, just that they were not supposed or expected to: the culture was so pervasive all over the Western world that several of the old women I knew were convinced that female cats were always raped (only the male cat enjoyed sex!)

Image from cat-lovers-gifts-guide.com

So what is the meaning of what Mrs Roosevelt told her daughter? It means that she was born in the 1880s.
Similarly, all the discussions about lesbians in the 19th-early 20th century have to be taken with caution. A woman who writes to another woman nowadays that she wants to sleep in her arms is probably a lesbian. One century ago, the same letter does not mean a thing: maybe yes (I am longing for you), maybe no (like: sister, I wish we were peacefully together).What people write reflects their culture and their personality, you cannot infer who they are from what they write out of both contexts.
Above all: why would you care about other people's sex life?


Useful reading: Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (Galaxy Books) by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon by Mark Bostridge

Terrorism and Tacit Consent

Some years ago, I was convinced that my neighbor was a drug dealer, because I saw dealers going in and out of her apartment all day long. I was wrong: she would never deal because she was a very Christian person, but she sheltered the dealers. It was a totally new concept to me. Why did she do it? Because, she said, they were kids with no hope of getting a job. These dealers were hard to eradicate: they had been on our street for decades, but when that neighbor moved away, the dealers on the corner of my street moved too. It convinced me that dealing is the kind of crime that most often comes with a support group.

It reminded me of another Christian I had met in Ireland. He would never commit an act of terrorism, but he would always hide a terrorist. The idea of calling the police seemed to him equivalent to a betrayal.

Similarly, I knew of a very pacifist Palestinian who would never commit an act of terrorism himself, but he understood and would have protected terrorists. Why? He understood what they were fighting for, agreed with the ends if not with the means. And of course he was constantly subjected to propaganda. For instance he told me that the proof that "the Jews own America" is that the star of David is on the US dollar; I guess he meant the 13 stars from the 13 first states.

I do not understand tacit consent: to me, it is like shooting yourself in the foot; but it is a force that we ignore too often.

Administration vs Terrorism

Image from http://epistemysics.wordpress.com/

So, somebody made a spelling mistake in the name of a terrorist. Mistakes in official documents also happen, according to my experience of 70 years and lots of travels, about ten percent of the times, more so, obviously in countries that are not your own. I have had in turn on my passport/identity/visa forms/driver's license and various permits the wrong first name, the wrong middle name, the wrong date of birth, and one time the wrong sex. Several times, the authorities refused to correct their mistake: it was not in the power of the person handling me the document.And the name Lambert is shorter to spell than Abdulmutallab.
I am quite certain that somewhere in the US archives, somebody has statistics about mistakes done on uncommon and difficult names. And obviously nothing came out of it. As Justin Fox remarked today in his blog, how come the State Department is not equipped to handle this? Police files have many cases of people trying to escape justice by changing themselves a small detail in their own identity, so we must account for our own administrative mistakes plus a number of cheaters.
If you had asked me a few days ago how I imagined the State Department verifies if you have a visa, I would have said: "They probably have a list of similar names coming up with access to your picture, face recognition stuff, prints, possibly coded access to your whole file and the various alerts from different departments, CIA, criminal files, etc." I would also imagine that if you look for a Nigerian who has been a student in Britain, they all come up on the touch of a button.You could check on the list who also has a visa for the US. All this is elementary, so I also hope they get a good intersect with other agencies. Is it too much to ask?

Why is it the way it should work? I do stuff like that all the time with history problems. For instance, if I want to know who was at the US embassy in Vichy during WWII, it comes up, at the touch of a button and in a few minutes work.

Searching is a skill: it can be learned. How educated are people of the State Department in searching? How fast do they find ten red balloons?
How do you do a decent job without a decent instrument? A good no-nonsense search software seems to me more efficient than waterboarding!

Old Money

The press reported last week that this pastel by Degas was stolen from a Museum in France. It was worth over a million dollars.
It reminded me of a small Degas I saw hanging on the wall of the toilet, in the house of a notable French couple. I was surprised that it was not displayed more prominently. I bluntly asked to the lady of the house if it was genuine. "I would think so" replied the lady dryly. Then I asked why on earth she did exhibit it in the john.
"I just do not like it," she said.
That is the difference between old money and new money.
Old money, you can't fake it.

Front-Page: homage to Bruce Weber

There is nothing on a front page any more that we have not seen on the web. The French say:"A la une!" meaning: it is important, it is front-page stuff. It is still true, that if there is a big scandal or a national disaster, people buy more newspapers. This has made journalists believe that the front page is what readers are interested in, that it is what sells. Movies have re-enforced this theory, from Bogart to Robert Redford and Denzel Washington. And generations of TV anchors think that their job is to milk the death of Michael Jackson or the last terrorist threat. They call it "investigative journalism". Hmmm. This generation is not like the Nixon generation, people nowadays want excitement, they have no patience for information.

But of course, the front-page is just another myth that contributes to killing journalism. What I see around me, what I have seen since the 1950s, is that people take a cursory glance at the front page and turn immediately to the local weather and the obituaries. These topics are the true bread and wine of the readers.

It is specially true around the new year, when we remember the people we lost, some real friends, and some imaginary ones: actors, artists, musicians who were important to us. My heart misses a beat when I think of Patrick McGoohan, of the Prisoner's fame, or Maurice Jarre, not only for the music of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, but also for all the beautiful work he did for the theater before he came to the US. And then, caricaturist David Levine, brilliantly described by Bruce Weber in the New York Times.

Newspapers could be saved by less romanticism and a more honest look at their readers. Let obituary writers run the front page: it will remind the readers why they still want to buy newspapers.