Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive
Well, this is certainly an ironic follow-up to How to Ditch Your Fairy. Anyway, moving on. Learning to Drive is a loose collection of autobiographical essays; the first few deal primarily with Pollitt’s breakup with a long-term boyfriend. Pollitt got a lot of flack for Learning to Drive when it first came out, primarily because she admitted to typical stressed-ex behaviors like cyber-stalking her former boyfriend. Some younger feminists felt that this was undignified, that this made women look weak or something, but I thought it just made Pollitt look human: I mean, seriously, if a man had been dumped by his partner for a much-younger person, and he found out that his ex had been cheating on him throughout their entire relationship, do you think there would have been nothing but wordless stoicism involved? Being humiliated in love is part of the human condition, and if the contention is that Pollitt should have “known better” because she’s a feminist, that she should have realized the ex was a philanderer, that she shouldn’t have let him dictate her life to her because she ought to be Better Than That—who are we kidding, here? No matter how old you are, no matter how radical you are, you are still vulnerable to being overawed by someone’s apparent intelligence, by their charm, by the fact that they are so amazing and they picked you, schlubby old you. It’s disappointing, yeah, to realize that your heroines are human and can be dazzled like everyone else, but grow the fuck up. I don’t want to be held to that impossible, never-to-be-duped standard, and I’m not going to hold anyone else to it, either. (more…)
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