He says:
It is worth mentioning that [his fiance], as anyone who knows her would attest, is one of the most kind hearted and gentle people in the world. The cliché that has been propagated, of me abandoning a devoted wife to "run off" with a young actress, could not have been more falsely applied.
I've met his fiance and I think she is very cool (and smart and witty and a talented actress besides). But my ex seems to be suggesting that the nature of a woman's character is somehow directly responsible for actions that he himself either did or did not take. Which falls in line with the idea that it's "the other woman" who is always "the homewrecker", that she is the one to be blamed for "stealing" the man (no matter that the man allowed himself to be "stolen").
(No one is responsible for the end of my marriage except my ex-husband and me, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here.)
Of course, what my ex is really saying is I did not have sexual relations with that woman before I was officially separated, and no one can fault him for that, or for defending the woman he soon plans to marry. But he does this through a rejiggering of certain female stereotypes. His fiance, he is assuring us, is not and was never "the other woman" or "the homewrecker". Both of these stereotypes carry the connotations of whore, which is the "ultimate" degradation of reducing a person to her sexuality (what's more, that evil female sexuality that kicked us all out of Paradise and continues to plague and victimize helpless men). She is instead "one of the most kind-hearted and gentle people in the world". She is an angel.
Because he's also (wittingly or not) juxtaposing her against me, pulling me into the 'cliche' as the 'devoted wife' even as he states that this cliche could not have been more 'false'...
...because he then, a couple of paragraphs down, goes to some length to assure the reader that Dude (whom he makes a point to identify in full, and also to claim that Dude was a "friend" of ours throughout the marriage) did not play a role in our divorce. By saying this, he is implying -- "framing" -- that, in fact, Dude might have done just that. (This is a rhetorical device called 'apophasis', where you communicate one thing by stating its opposite.) He also refers to Dude as my "long-term" boyfriend, which might make a reader wonder, How "long-term" could he be if they just got divorced?
(We started dating nine months after my separation, but that's not my point either.)
Of course, what my ex is really saying is, Justine is no angel. Which is fine; I will admit that I am infinitely more complicated than that (and so, for that matter, is his fiance).
But if I'm no angel, then what am I? What are the options? You're a good girl or a bad girl. You're a madonna or a whore. And if his fiance is the good girl, then I must be...?
And then he swings into the rest of it, including his interpretation of the events surrounding our divorce. Which I won't get into here, but needless to say it puts me in a less than flattering light. One might even use the word (and say it with me, boys and girls): golddigger. And what is a golddigger but a glorified....[fill in the blank]?
So by saying that he is "correcting the record" about our divorce, by putting himself forward as the final and real authority on the situation, he is also defining a certain kind of reality in which his fiance and I get slotted into our "proper" places.
And I must roll my eyes.
I agree whole-heartedly with my ex about "the danger of cliches". People cannot and should not be reduced to cartoon characters. And women should have the freedom and dignity to exist in a space that does not involve pedestals of any kind (whether you're still on it, or you've been knocked off it). That is not truth. It's distortion, and it hurts.
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moschus- Justine Musk
- Tribal Writer (my other blog)
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I don't regret a bit of it, and together - or even if we were ever to go our separate ways, I know my partner and I have our children's best interests at heart. We're not likely to be rich but what we have, we've got because we've worked for it with everything thing that we have. We've never let hardship stand in our way or to stop us from helping our family out - unfortunately on both sides of the marital divide they're no strangers to poverty and fourteen hour working days with the endless suck of health care expenses for those few who have it and the crippling worry of those who don't.
We don't have a car. We live modestly. We value cheap train tickets, books, and our small but close family unit. We don't own a house, though one parent does, a modest affair in an out of the way place - and if we're lucky and the taxes don't take it or something else, such as our own mounting debt, we might eventually inherit it. Or we might not. Hopefully, before that, we'll be able to afford a place of our own. It would be nice and we both dream of it - in no small part because we've yet to be able to live someplace for more than two years at a stretch, and our kids are starting to get wind of the fact that where we live, often isn't going to be "ours" in a real sense, at some point in the future. It makes them worry sometimes. They've met homeless kids in the park and you see the wheels turning even at their young age.
Now, what's all this got to do with you? My tale after all, is not particularly rare or likely even interesting to anyone outside of myself. All over the country and across the wider Western industrial world, there are people just like us. In fact, there are millions and millions whose plight is much worse - the numbers rise the farther down the chain of worlds you sink. But we needn't even cross the oceanic waters or drive down through the poverty and drug-warfare riddled isthmus that separates north from south. The recent display of corporate-greed, fueled by a nation hungry for petrol burning cars, air-conditioning, suburban sprawl, cheap travel, and glittering swimming pools slapped down in the hot L.A. sun, just to use a topical example, has released a torrent of poisonous petrochemicals into the Gulf. It's not just killing life in the sea and along the shore, but throwing whole communities into penury and long term financial despair.
Perhaps the stalled economy is just gathering its breath before it rallies. Perhaps the coming global tide caused by anthropological warming - due in no small part to some of those same nasty petrochemicals going into our gas tanks instead of the Gulf - will lift someone's boat, though it's unlikely to be those of people like me - and even less likely to be those of the world's poor.
Oil however, is just the scum on the top. Greed, now that's the real killer. It's the one that says you never have enough, no matter how much you have and even if having more, means someone else, somewhere, is gonna have even less.
It hurts us all of course, even those who benefit, oddly enough. Greed fuels not just cars and oil spills, spiking temperatures, and corporate profits, it fuels acrimony, bitterness, and divorce. It blights lives, as surely as any environmental disaster, and in both cases, it's often the children who suffer the worst.
cont...