I’m having a bit of an existential crisis today. Perhaps that is reflected in my choice of topic, something I ranted about a couple of years ago and that occasionally comes to mind since. I’m pretty sure I haven’t ranted here yet, so i feel comfortable revisiting the incident and discussing the things I considered important. So here it is: why women (are/are not) kittens.

WOMEN AND KITTENS

A couple of years ago, a playwright I know had a play performed in a local theatre. This play presented an idea that a lot of people agreed with, including a great many women. One of the characters went into great detail about how to end violence against women…give every boy a kitten. What, you ask? Well, if the boy learns to care for his kitten, he will be ready to interact with a woman. He will learn to treat her like he treats the kitten, and everyone will be happy.

Too many people…especially women…accepted this as great and profound. I cringed, and tried to avoid shouting out obscenities as I was listening to this drivel…somehow, I managed. For a lot of people that don’t spend time thinking about it, this sounds great. Kittens are soft and delicate and need a lot of care; women are….stop right there. If you just had a WTF moment, you understand some of what I feel when I think about it. If you didn’t, you definitely need to continue reading as I pick this apart.

Some of this is very basic; you might understand that it is painting the women as dependent, needing care, fragile, unable to function without someone to feed her, stroke her, and coo at her. This is a popular vision of women from early twentieth century movies, and from many other sources throughout history, but it isn’t very accurate, is it? Even when women were being depicted that way (and in many places, they still are), they were out there working alongside their husbands in the farm fields, feeding farm hands, hauling water, chopping wood…and that’s just the farm wives. City women had a different set of things they were doing, but they were also tough.

The picture painted of women as soft, fragile, and dependent is an idealized picture of femininity as men pretend to want it to be. Pretend? Yes, pretend, because if you ever listen to a bunch of men talking about women, you will hear them hating on the dependent woman. They want a woman who is strong and able to handle a lot…in fact, they want a woman strong enough to take care of them. Few men I know want a woman they have to treat like a fragile piece of glass. They want a woman they can ignore when they want to, count on when they need to, and who doesn’t require constant maintenance. Yet, when they describe their ideal woman, for many men, you wouldn’t realize this. Soft, feminine, gorgeous, sexy…right up until they get to the word…yes, that one. Nurturing. A woman cannot be nurturing if she must be constantly nurtured. Once that word sneaks into the description, you know what they really want…a mother who looks like a mistress and cooks like a wife.

So we start out, from the very beginning of the thought experiment this playwright performed by perpetuating a stereotype…and one that does a pretty good job of busting the myth that all stereotypes are based in reality at least to a degree. Women are strong, often even when they appear weak. They have to be…the duties that have been laid on women require strength, not fainting and swooning. A handful of wealthy women might be able to get by with the kitten analogy, but even then, the women tend to be putting on an act more than really being weak and fragile. For women who aren’t wealthy? They work. If they leave the house to go to a paying job, they work. If they stay at home to take care of the family, they work. There isn’t a lot of time for fainting or swooning.

But there was a lot more wrong with this analogy. The first time I saw this play (yes, I saw it more than once…it was part of a playwriting group to which I belong, and was in the same festival where one of my plays was performed), I turned to a friend and asked her, “Did he just compare us to animals?” She nodded, too stunned for words. “And not even adult animals? Baby animals?” She nodded again, keeping her eyes focused on the road, which was good, since she was driving.

Think about that for a minute. Compared to animals isn’t unusual, now is it? We might describe a strong person as a lion or tiger. Ugly women are called dogs (another form of the dehumanization that is all too common). Brutish men are compared to apes. Gossiping women are called cats. Some comparisons are okay; the first one I used, the lion or the tiger, is usually a positive comparison. When Sarah Palin referred to herself as a Mama Grizzly, she didn’t mean it as a put down. But the rest of them – the dogs, the apes, the cats – are routinely insults. They are aimed at making an opponent or someone you dislike less human.

The comparisons to women and kittens in this play were many; it wasn’t just saying a man who could take care of a kitten wouldn’t be violent with people. There were literal lines drawn between women and kittens, making it plain he was comparing women with baby cats. BABY cats. Dehumanization and infantilization in one single metaphor. Two for the price of one.

I could rant on about this topic for hours, but soon I would begin repeating myself, and might start sputtering, so I will restrain myself. But I would like to know why women…strong, independent, intelligent…women who take care of themselves and others…why the women who found this play appealing, found this idea appealing, didn’t see all this? Perhaps because most of us have bought into at least some portion of the stereotype…many people, especially women, believe the world would be a kinder, gentler place if it were run by women, in spite of the reality of watching women like Margaret Thatcher, Teresa May, Angela Merkel, Indira Gandhi, and other strong women run countries. They were no kinder or gentler than the men, and some, like Margaret Thatcher, were actually more like steel, and weren’t move by compassion where policy was concerned.

            The stereotype is so pervasive that a lot of women internalize parts of it, and I often think you can tell a lot about a woman by what she believes of the female stereotype. A woman who believes women are caring and nurturing may not be herself, but she probably thinks she is. But any woman who can think a woman and a kitten are nearly identical in their natures…let’s just say, she needs to get to know more women…and kittens.