Read Online Songs of the Dead by Derrick Jensen - Free Book Online Page B

.”
    â€œThey’re perfect.”
    â€œThank you. But I’ve been told they’re too small ever since I had breasts.”
    â€œAnybody who would say your breasts are too small doesn’t deserve to see them.”
    â€œIt’s not just men. It’s advertisements. It’s movies. It’s television programs with large-breasted women looking happy. It’s a constant barrage of propaganda telling us what we should look like. We all compare ourselves to these standards reached by one-tenth of one percent of women, and them only after they’ve had surgery and been airbrushed. And even if you ask those women they’ll say, ‘No, I’m not happy with my body.’ Your comments right now get weighed against years of conditioning that go exactly opposite to what you’re saying.”
    â€œI still think your breasts are perfect.”
    â€œThank you. But then it’s this sort of nerve-wracking pushpull of: I want the nice thing to be true, but it’s not true, and you’re going to realize any second that you were wrong, and then it will be really humiliating. And even if you’re right, lots of women are left out by this standard, and their lives are very pained because of it. I don’t want what I look like to matter. I want every woman to be loved for who she is, not for what she looks like.”
    â€œAnd what she looks like is part of who she is, just as her intelligence is, her politics are, her grace is, her outrage is, and so on. To only care about your mind and not your body is just as patriarchal as to care only about your body and not your mind. It’s the same split, only the other half. That’s why Christianity and pornography are two sides of the same coin. One wants the soul and not the body; the other wants the body and not the soul.”
    She thought a moment, then said, “I can see that.”
    â€œA desire to be close to beauty is not just a product of patriarchy. Everybody—human and nonhuman alike—has a sense of aesthetics. Why else do you think nature is so beautiful? The problem is not in wanting to be close to beauty, but in wanting to consume it.”
    â€œTo possess it. To own it. The cannibal sickness.”
    Another silence, then I said, “I want to tell you a story, about beauty, and about sex.”
    â€œOkay,” she said, a little hesitant.
    â€œIt’s a groupie story.”
    â€œAbout you?” Her voice became colder. “Do I want to hear it?”
    â€œDon’t worry. It has a happy ending.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œTrust me. It won’t make you feel bad.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI’ve never done the casual sex thing. It’s just never interested me, and frankly I’ve never understood it. I remember I was at a friend’s wedding several years ago, and I didn’t know anyone there except my friend. I’m just standing around beforehand and this woman comes up and stands next to me. We introduce ourselves, and then there’s this silence. So I ask, ‘Who are you?’
    â€œShe says, ‘What do you mean?’
    â€œI say, ‘Who are you? What do you love? What’s important to you?’
    â€œShe says, ‘You don’t ask that question.’ What she doesn’t say, but I can read on her face, is, ‘Nobody asks those questions of me. I don’t even ask them of me.’ Then she shakes her head and stalks off, clearly disgusted. I didn’t take any of this personally: it’s just that if she and I were going to talk, I wanted to talk about something real; I wanted to know who she was. Anyway, I later learned that that night she got drunk and had sex with—I guess fucked would be the more accurate term—some guy she met that day. The whole thing kind of confused me, because I couldn’t understand how someone could find even the most basic conversational intimacy threatening,