Love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Roumania. – Dorothy Parker
We don’t know what love is! But what many of us do know is that something is not right. The feminists in recent U. S. history have been trying to tell the rest of us something and have struggled to understand exactly what they wanted to say and how to say it. “It’s hard not to read these women again during our own era of political and sexual upheaval and wonder whether love is standing in the way of a feminist future.” (1) Or indeed if it is one of the key obstacles to a sustainable future for our species.
Dana Densmore, a founding member of the separatist group Cell 16, pulled no punches about sex as a necessity for women. “In 1968 in a journal appropriately titled ‘No More Fun and Games,’ she wrote that guerrillas had more important things to do and couldn’t be sidetracked by sex, which was ‘inconvenient, time-consuming, energy-draining and irrelevant.” (1) It’s been nearly 50 years since Densmore ran up the flag of radical feminism. How have things changed?
In the context of Simple Reality we identify the pursuit of plenty, pleasure and power as obstacles to creating a healthy community. But for Nona Willis Aronowitz, as an example, her false self (ego) will continue to choose pleasure over deepening awareness. “For me, a woman who came of age with Lil’ Kim and ‘Sex and the City,’ the idea feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face; eroticism is an irresistible source of pleasure.” (1)
There you have it. Two contrasting opinions about the role that love plays in the unfolding of the human narrative. “Maybe it’s necessary to accept that love is an obstacle to rational thought.” (1) No maybe about it—it’s time!
Click on the link below for a profound analysis of the role that love has played in the struggle to discover the good, the true and the beautiful.
Insight # 90: “Romantic love is the single greatest energy system in the Western psyche. In our culture it has supplanted religion as the arena in which men and women seek meaning, transcendence, wholeness, and ecstasy.” – Robert Johnson
Links:
- Love on this blog and in print in The ABC’s of Simple Reality: The Encyclopedia of Self-Transformation, Vol I (2018), pages 311-321, by Roy Charles Henry.
References:
- Aronowitz, Nona Willis. “Don’t Let Sex Distract You From the Revolution.” The New York Times Sunday. February 17, 2019, page 5.
