MORE LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE ? QUESTION FROM A READER

QUESTION FOR MISSY

You've been researching and writing your blog for over a decade.  Has reading all those books and writing about all these people made you more liberal or conservative?

Jason

Los Angeles

ANSWER FROM MISSY

It's not easy for me to say.  I tend to think being liberal is about allowing other people to have their lifestyle, even if it's a way of life you don't agree with or want for yourself. So in that way I'm a liberal. Also I think the definition - or understanding of what it means to be a liberal or a conservative - changes with time.

Another factor in my having read so very many books about people - mostly women and mostly women who lived in the more overall sexist historical times - is that I have to remind myself about what subjects have gotten published. People who have reached celebrity are usually the subjects of books that I have access to.  As well, people who have been involved in scandal are more interesting to writers and publishers.  As time goes by, some of what was once considered scandal is no longer surprising to people.  I suspect there are more Mistresses (and Mantresses - my term for Kept Men) than ever, but overall, in a time of experimentation with sexuality and genders, society may not be so 'scandalized."

Missy