Preemptive Retaliation

I have a friend that likes to talk gender politics with me. She talks about the silent pressure exerted onto her by men and boys, and other women. How there’s an expectation to sleep with nobody and everybody, a dichotomy of expectations that’s both confirmed and ruined by who she speaks to. She tells me about the boys who expect her to mother them, and then the authoritarian pleasure she receives when she does. She feels that boys are oppressed because they’re conditioned not to cry, to stand strong and fight when they’re hurt. “We’re all part of this giant, fucked up system,” she says, picking flakes of tobacco from her lips, “we’re all victims of society, locked into a patriarchy that no one really wants.”

I nod along. I have the knowledge of a sociology drop-out, but I did study gender identity while I was still around. Men and masculinity, feminist revolution, bell hooks and Beauvoir and a recognition of privilege – a dirty word these days. Still, despite my background and thoughts, I don’t really keep up. I follow along, but always a little behind, throwing in a few suggestions and questions, playing like I know what to think about it, only for my devils advocate to be steamrolled over by more experienced voices. There’s a podcast I listen to called The Guilty Feminist, and there’s a moment when one of the hosts says that a feminist male can only really be one thing; smug. That frustrated me – downplaying my beliefs, reducing me to male ego and pushing me back into my gender – until I realised it was true, to an extent. My feminist ideals could be reduced to a smarmy smile and waggled eyebrows that say, “Oh look at how progressive I am.”

All of this has nothing to do with Emma Cline’s The Girls, but in the same way it has everything to do with it.

In brief; the novel is a retelling of the Manson family murders (an event I knew the barest amount of until reading this novel), but told from the perspective of Evie, one of the girls in the family. It’s a classic coming-of-age book of a girl finding sexual awakening and toeing the line of puberty, but under the looming shadow of murder and obsession. It’s interesting in its sideways view of the event, in among the murderers whilst not quite completely there. But what I found most interesting about The Girls is, ironically, the boys.

There’s a myriad of boys in the book, from her best friend’s older brother to the Charles Manson stand-in Russel. Each of them are viewed from a distance, like they are strange beings of unknown power. Each time she’s with one she seems like a small child, pushed on by their influences and bidding, whilst with the other girls she’s equal to them an adult. Sure, the main relationship is with one of these girls – acting like a big sister and a mentor – but it’s with the boys that the perspective gets interesting. All of the boys try to inflict their power on Evie. They coerce her, or use her, or drag her along all she can. They use her for sex or to bolster themselves. And it works. She gets pulled along each time, with her only immunity being the paternal figures in her life. The rest of them just want sex, and take it from her as much as they can.

It was a switch of perspective, a glance through the looking glass into the minds of girls. A few days ago I found myself in a pub I didn’t want to be in, far too sober for the time of night it was. People were dancing and laughing, and there were girls dressed in low-cut tops, high riding skirts and everything in between. They were singing to each other, and dancing, and having fun, but I couldn’t stop seeing the men at the side, coolly sipping from their beers, eyeing the girls up with long, steady stares. There was this predatory smirk on their lips as they silently, as a group, took in all the girls had to offer, sizing them up, undressing and redressing them, and coming to a decision before launching themselves into the dance floor to hunt their game. I just couldn’t get my head round it. It felt so skeezy, so aggressive and calculating. But it was natural, it was something that happened everyday in millions of places across the country. I was so taken aback by the vibe that I almost forgot that I used to be one of them. I hold myself so loftily as a paragon to the scene because I’m married and I’m not looking for that… but I remember nights of half-hearted dancing, instead scanning the room to catch an eye or a breast or something to hone in on. And on that night I did see those girls, and probably sized them up like those boys did, but I didn’t need to hunt. 

I don’t know. I liked this book. The prose annoyed me at time, and the story seemed to lose track somewhere round the middle, but the themes really struck close to me. It made me want to be part of a conversation that I can’t join, because I don’t know enough about it, because I haven’t thought about it because it doesn’t affect me every day.