It's Halloween. Feeling a little witchy, feeling a little like talking about what I've been thinking about. Something I wouldn't bring up on an easy Sunday morning having brunch with my friends and family. Something a little too existential for lively conversation but perfect as I blog away with Norah Jones and a glass of Chardonnay and not shooting to make sense at all.
Let's talk about something that's not easy to talk about, yet fundamental and revealing. Sex, power and manipulation, and what it means to be modern men and women .
On that, I was inspired by Rick Levine's response to the Weinstein scandal,* and have thought about its implications because it's so rich with complications. Without going into law and justice or even personal tragedies - as I think that is the straightforward part, I am interested in looking at how we responded to it in taking the temperature of our collective consciousness.
Of course Weinstein isn't the exception. Just a symptom large enough to finally have been given a spotlight so we may attempt to find a trail of healing to a rift that began eons ago. As Rick mentioned, we've reached a stage where no gray area is accepted, where we are to treat each other as individuals with depth and do away with stereotypical projections. We now must ask for permission before we make assumptions. And yes, the liberal part of me is going "duh." But there are greater implications.
I don't know if we realize, that in clearly stating what we do not deem acceptable - and rightfully so, we are also declaring that we now have a greater capacity of awareness and clarity to declare what it is that we want, and the clarity of taking responsibility for consequences. And that is good news. The stakes for unawareness v. self-knowing has been raised, and we can no longer plead ignorance for asking our guys to be cool and take responsibility for our fears (or more importantly our lack of vision), and we can no longer plead ignorance for asking our girls to fulfill fantasies without consequences, and here the genders are interchangeable, and changeable.
Ok, so I didn't really talk about sex at all, but this is at least related to sex if not directed rooted in it, and in our vision and conditioning in what sex is and our awareness of what it really means to us. Scary train of thought for me to engage in without the possibility of analysis-paralysis. And just short of the editorial climax that I totally should've taken the opportunity to reach here, I'm now going back to kiddie land with Snoopy and Charlie Brown trick-or-treating.
I would rather blog about hot chocolate and apple pies. So be it.