THE FLOWERS II

SHOULD SHE TURN TO WOMEN SINCE MEN HAVE BEEN SO MEAN TO HER? MISSY ANSWERS!

SHOULD SHE TURN TO WOMEN SINCE MEN HAVE BEEN SO MEAN TO HER?

Dear Missy,

I'm near 40 years old and have been celibate for over a year. In this year I've been thinking a lot about my past relationships with men and I'm so turned off!  For some reason men are mean to me.  I'm a nice person.  I think that and my girlfriends say that and my mother does too.  Why are men so mean?   I've never been married so I have no children.   At my age I see I probably never will.  The last time I had sex with someone that I waited about six months to have sex with it was bad.  I can't even have a fantasy about sex with another man so I'm wondering if I'm gay.  What do you think?  Should I start dating other women?

Nancy
New Rochelle

Missy Answers:

Nancy, it sound like you need TIME OUT.

If you are not having fantasies about having sex with other women you probably aren't gay, just tired and disgusted with men.  I suppose you could go out to wherever lesbians can be found in your area to meet each other and be experimental but I think you should be honest and tell any lesbian woman who is interested in you that you're simply questioning rather than sure. 

I have no idea why you have a collection of mean men in your past.

I was trying to relate your question to one of my women friends who is also a very nice person and has had one stinker after another since high-school including two mean husbands. 

PERHAPS IT IS LIKE THIS.  You have to be able to realize it when someone is being just a little bit mean to you and not let them get away with it.  Allowing it, pretending it isn't so, because you don't want a confrontation, want to make nice, or are too forgiving, probably encourages them to get away with more meanness.  I have a theory that while we women are raised to be "nice" we are also afraid to END A RELATIONSHIP that is no good.  You are probably so nice that people think everything is always OK with you without asking.  You might give the impression that you are happy to just go along for the ride or have no needs.  Maybe it's more that you're PASSIVE than nice.  Just a few thoughts here about meanness because I think the real question is about sexuality.

Some women are always bi-sexual, some women do choose to be lesbian at some point in their life, even after marriage and children with a man.  Women who've been raped often express having no desire for sex with men for some time after that experience.  A bad relationship can effect desire.  If you persist with no sexual interest at all you might want to get some medical tests to see if what's happening is hormonal, related to blood sugar, or some other condition like depression. 

Basically I think you need to HEAL!  Give yourself time and lots of love!

Missy

JAZZ AND PARIS GET ALONG

THE GUERILLA GIRLS MESSAGE : WOMEN ARE UNDER REPRESENTED IN THE ARTS

GUERILLAGIRLS - FEMINIST ACTIVISTS FOR WOMEN IN THE ARTS

FROM THEIR SITE:  "We’re feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman. How do we expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture? With facts, humor and outrageous visuals. We reveal the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. Our work has been passed around the world by our tireless supporters. Just in the last several years, we’ve appeared at over 90 universities and museums, as well as The New York Times, Interview, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Bitch, and Artforum; on NPR, the BBC and CBC; and in many art and feminist texts. We are authors of stickers, billboards, many, many posters and street projects, and several books including The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art and Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Guide to Female Stereotypes. We’re part of Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign in the UK; we're brainstorming with Greenpeace. We've unveiled anti-film industry billboards in Hollywood just in time for the Oscars, and created a large scale installation for the Venice Biennall, and street projects for Krakow, Istanbul, Mexico City and Montreal. We dissed the Museum of Modern Art at its own Feminist Futures Symposium, examined the museums of Washington DC in a full page in the Washington Post, and exhibited large-scale posters and banners in London, Athens, Bilbao, Montreal, Rotterdam, Sarajevo and Shanghai."

 

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IF YOU'RE A TALENTED WOMAN ARTIST you do not have the opportunities for employment, agent representation, gallery representation, art sales, or to ever make it into a book or museum.  I saw the Guerilla Girls at a college years ago.  I was impressed.  The masked women said that if their employers knew they were part of this group they would be fired.  I have to wonder, if women artists were experiencing equality, would fewer of them become mistresses?

ART DECO LOVE BIRDS

DECLARATION FOR MISTRESSES : Sex Questions

"I won't be shy about asking sex questions of any person I might have sex with!"

Missy here!

If you're thinking about having sex with someone you should feel free to ask them some questions about their sexuality and health and relationship status before you do!  Many people move from having a hook up, a meet up, friends with benefits or a fling, an affair or an adventure, or just sexting into a "relationship" without knowing much about the other person.  It is too dangerous out there health-wise to be so casual about your sexuality.  

HIV infection and AIDS is a big worry.  But did you know that if you're exclusively heterosexual and  you're with someone who is also exclusively heterosexual, don't do anal sex, and don't share needles for drug use, you're biggest STD concern is herpes?  In some parts of the United States up to 25% of the heterosexual population has herpes and if you become one of those who has herpes you could be on expensive prescription drugs for years, have painful outbreaks that make sex terrible, need to have a C-Section birth, and will have to use protection each and every time you have sex even when you're married?  SO WHY NOT USE PROTECTION EACH AND EVERY TIME YOU HAVE SEX now so you won't have to deal with such issues later?

Besides asking a person to use protection, you may also want to ask them some penetrating questions (pun intended!) about their relationship status.  Are you married?  Do you have a girlfriend?  Are you seeing anyone else?  If the person says they are married ask them if they are legally separated or living alone and how long they have been.

Do not be one of those people who, when confronted with the truth, confronts the other person, only to be told "Well, YOU never ASKED!"

C 2014 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

ART DECO FLOURISH

MISSY ASKS : ARE YOU A LESBIAN KEEPING A LESBIAN?

I know that some of you lesbian women are so keeping other lesbian women!

Not being able to marry legally may be blurring the issue here because the Classic Definition of "KEPT" or "MISTRESS" insists that someone involved is married but, well, sometimes a woman of means will "help" more than one woman, be a patron of the arts, or get that younger woman through college or get her a first career break. 

Sometimes there isn't any sex involved! (Lesbian Bed Death?) but sometimes there is!

Would love to hear some of your stories!

If you leave a comment it WILL NOT APPEAR ON THE INTERNET without my approval and I WILL NOT APPROVE for public use anything you TELL ME YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO PUBLIC!

Truly!

Missy

K.D. LANG : DON'T SMOKE IN BED

JANIS JOPLIN : PEICE OF MY HEART

Janis Joplin loved men but she was bisexual during the brief years of her young life before she died at 27. I've found no evidence that she Kept anyone or that she herself was Kept. 

LE FEU - WOMEN LOVING WOMEN

PANDA FAKING PREGNANCY FOR BETTER TREATMENT?

CLICKONDETROIT : PANDA FAKING PREGANCY FOR BETTER TREATMENT?  full article by Laura Smith-Spark  of CNN

"Not only was it a phantom pregnancy, but zookeepers suspect the panda, Ai Hin, may have been faking it to improve her quality of life, the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding told Xinhua on Monday.

Ai Hin, age 6, had shown signs of pregnancy, including a change in appetite, moving less and an increase in progestational hormone in July, according to Xinhua..."

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY and COURTESAN LIANE DE POUGY

Much of my  knowledge about this coupling comes from reading around the Internet.  Some of the text I read was referenced and some was not.  Consider this post to be a paraphrase!

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It is said that in about 1899, after seeking Liane in a Paris dance hall, Natalie showed up where Liane was then living, wearing a royal page costume. She said she had been sent by Sappho, a famous ancient Greek lesbian who also wrote poetry.  Liane was bisexual and accepted Natalie as a lover and patron, and though it was a brief affair, she eventually wrote a memoir about it called "Idylle Saphique."

HERE IS WHAT GOOGLE BOOKS HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE BOOK: "In spring 1899, Liane Pougy, friend of the writer Jean Lorrain and sworn enemy of Caroline Otero, meeting an American twenty-three, Natalie Clifford Barney. C'est aussitôt le coup de foudre. It was immediately hooked. Pendant l'été qui suit, les deux femmes vont vivre une véritable passion. During the summer following, the two women will experience a true passion. C'est cette passion que Liane écrit au fur et à mesure qu'elle la vit. It is this passion that Liane written as she saw her. Idylle Saphique, paru en 1901, est un brillant témoignage de cette époque " fin de siècle ", tellement décadente et tellement tumultueuse, où le plaisir et son assouvissement règnent en maître à Paris. Sapphic romance, published in 1901, is a shining symbol of that era "fin de siècle", so decadent and so tumultuous, where pleasure and satisfaction reign supreme in Paris."

GOOGLE BOOKS/TRANSLATE Idylle Saphique by Liane De Pougy

According to Wikipedia, this book became the talk of Paris and was reprinted at least 69 times in its first year.

SUITE 101 PAGE ON LIANE DE POUGY - Quoting Souhami, Diana. Wild Girls: Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. London 2004

"She became quite wealthy. According to The New York Times, Liane ‘acquired a handsome house with magnificent furniture’ in Paris. She also owned houses in Brittany and St.Germain. ... She fell very much in love with the notorious lesbian, Natalie Barney, who was an American heiress. When Natalie’s father found out about the affair he threatened to disinherit her and ordered her to return to America. She refused. However Natalie was eventually unfaithful to her so the affair ended badly..."

QUOTES OF NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY

You can learn a lot about a person's character and sensibility hearing their quotes. 

I loved this video!

HARPERS MAGAZINE COVER: WOMAN WITH TWO CATS

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY : WAS SHE OR WASN'T SHE KEEPING OTHER WOMEN?

    Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972)

image from http://www.arcamax.com/knowledge/quotes/s-34416

"When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks."  - Natalie Barney

As gay marriage becomes more acceptable (and legal) we may soon forget that lesbians have long had to live in a secretive manner in order to survive. 

Gay life compared to heterosexual life is rather undocumented. 

It's only in our contemporary culture that coming out or being out has been popularized. So, when you try to find literature or news or some documentation of lesbians who lived openly and kept other women it's a hard go.  Really you must listen to whispers, speculations, and read around the subject to get a clue. 

When I do this one of the names that comes up is NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY, an American who grew up in Ohio, accepted her lesbianism at a young age, became an independently wealthy heiress who took herself to Paris, France and lived the expatriate life there among the creative who understood. 

Natalie Clifford Barney was highly involved in the artistic and literary scene there, running a Salon for about fifty years. Because she was rich, she was in position to reach into her money and give it to women who were both amorous and deserving of help. They weren't all also independently wealthy heiresses or rich from their own creative pursuits.  It was worse then than it is now for women in the arts; the arts may be one of the most discriminatory areas to work in.

Natalie had affairs that are well known and long term with other literary and poetical lesbians such as Renee Vivien and Romaine Brooks, but she was seductive and, if not promiscuous, and she may've been that too, unapologetic about being polyamorous with other women.  She sometimes seduced women who were primarily heterosexual, and those whispers extend to the dancer Isadora Duncan as well as the Courtesan Liane de Pougy.  SInce Liane would accept financial help from men, why not women?

Isadora Duncan, never a greedy or materialistic person, was always broke, always in need of the help of friends or rich patrons for her dancing schools, and once tried affirmations to bring a rich man into her life*, and it's my strong suspicion that there may've been a financial aspect to her affair with Natalie.  Saying there is a financial aspect is not to say it was only financial just that realistically Isadora always needed money.

July 2011 was KEPT GAY MEN MONTH here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO... 

This month I'd like to focus a little on WOMEN KEEPING WOMEN.  I hesitate to say Lesbians keeping Lesbians because sometimes a Woman Keeps a Woman who is straight, bisexual, or not sexual at all.  Sometimes it can be a situation such as the late heiress Doris Duke who Kept a younger woman, Ms. Hefner, adopted her as a daughter, had a falling out, but who gave millions to this younger women, both in or out of a good relationship.

If mistresshood is a well-kept secret among the heterosexuals, imagine if you will being a man who is married to a woman who also keeps another woman as a mistress. It happens just as it happens that married to heterosexual women men have boyfriends they also keep on the side.  With gay marriage more acceptable and legal it's my notion that fewer people than will ever be marrying "for cover" and perhaps these kinds of "arrangements" will die out.

From what I hear listening to those whispers, lesbians keeping lesbians have an emphasis on mentoring, patronage, and helping another person achieve their life's work, just like gay men do.  There are women who give mentoring and patronage to other women without it being a very personal, romantic, or sexual relationship. But since men, straight or gay, make so much more money than women - still - lesbian women couples continue to be marginalized enough to face having two low incomes!  Therefore, by my way of thinking it's less likely that a lesbian is kept by another lesbian than other couple combinations because of this financial fact.

That's where independently wealthy lesbian women heiresses are exceptional and can keep other women.

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY moved to Paris in 1920.  Paris itself has sometimes been called A MISTRESS AND A MUSE to artists!

* I read Isadora Duncan's memoir in which she accounts saying affirmations to attract a rich patron into her life.


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