Feminist? Moi?

After I wrote a piece denouncing Republican attacks on women, a kind reader asked me to participate in a feminist forum on another site. A very gracious offer. But it did take me by surprise.

You see, I came of age at a time (the 1970s and 1980s) when the feminist movement was controlled largely by women at war with the male Id.

Yes, they also paid lip service to such concepts as equal pay for equal work and the equitable sharing of the household chores and such. I never had a problem with basic fairness. But the feminists of that time seemed particularly concerned that I not look with lust on the female body.

That bit was difficult for me.

As I've mentioned before, I'm an artist. Those who tell artists to draw and paint what they like are sometimes surprised when an artist starts to draw and paint women with large breasts. Gay artists are permitted to fill canvas after canvas with images of muscular males -- but that, I have been informed, is a very different matter. Very different.

What can I say? I'm the guy who -- while the art teacher droned on and on about the virtues of Kandinsky and Mondrian -- kept furtively glancing at reproductions of Frank Frazetta's work. Frazetta understood.

Bottom line: On innumerable occasions, I have been on the receiving end of The Usual Lecture on the horrors of objectifying women's bodies.

I was often admonished, in tones befitting Cotton Mather: Avert your eyes. Do not stare. Even when looking at advertisements, do not notice that lady in the bikini.

Please understand that, during a Los Angeles summer, many lithe young ladies glide and bobble about the shopping malls and the Venice Boardwalk wearing little more than a few wispy hints of cloth. Telling a young man (yes, I was once young) not to look at their bodies is a bit like saying: "When you walk through the Louvre, you can look at anything you like, except for the paintings."

I've always considered that last joke rather cute, but feminists never chuckled at it. In fact, whenever I dared to make that "Louvre" comparison in a feminist's presence, she would invariably deliver The Usual Lecture. As though I had never heard it before.

I also noticed that some women were decidedly raw in their verbal appreciation of a male they considered -- well, is the term "hunky" still used? At any rate, feminists quickly assured me that those displays of appreciation were a very different matter. Very different.

Lesbian acquaintances never seemed to have a problem with my drawings and paintings. They expressed their views in terms that were, to be frank, far cruder than were the remarks offered by males. But that, too, was a very different matter. Very different.

At any rate, the time came when I had to tell myself: If feminism means feeling perpetually ashamed of my own id, I am no feminist. Since then, I've slunk my way through the streets of Los Angeles wearing a perpetual Groucho-esque leer. Remember Terry Jones doing the "Dirty Vicar Sketch"? That was me, during most of 20s and 30s.

You may be interested to learn that I now live in a female-dominated household. As my ladyfriend and I will happily concede, our home has but one final authority and ultimate center of attention -- a small fluffy dog named Bella. We bow before the Bitch Princess, and are content.