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

LINK TO PALIMONY.COM

Here's a link to a site devoted to the LAW as it pertains to unmarried couples. Now, this is an issue for gay relationships because gays can't get married like straights can, but the implications for the long term mistress in a serious and devoted relationship with a man - with the one problem that he is already legally married - and is in fact pretty much a bigamist, are far reaching....

http://palimony.com/

First posted this in 2009... the link is still good... OPEN THE DISCUSSION!

UNHEALTHY LOVE TRIANGLE or HEALTHY TRIAD? ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES ARE NOT AUTOMATIC EVIDENCE OF 'LOW SELF ESTEEM'

Any time you want to explore or being in an ALTERNATIVE RELATIONSHIP, such as a Love Triangle or Triad,(notice I did not say Hate Triangle) you are bound to hear criticism. It seems to me that the Psychology Profession is as good as Fundamentalist Christianity in pushing for "normality,' that is heterosexual relationships in which there is one female with one male or sometimes homosexual ones that are one to on. Though stats show how many unions end in divorce, the goal is to be in this one plus one relationship forever. I dare say that because of the advice columns I read that are authored, usually by a woman therapist (since now a degree and profession license makes anyone an expert), who tells other women that the only reason they get into or accept being part of triad (such as being Kept or involved with a person married to someone else) is LOW SELF ESTEEM. (Can't we just call it Sin?)

I do not believe that. I would say that a person who is sharing a person with another person, who is being treated well, is better off than a person who has only one person to his or her self and is being abused in the relationship.  It would say it is better to be unmarried, single, alone- not lonely, and celibate, rather than be in a bad relationship for the sake of being in one. 

There IS such a thing as LOW SELF ESTEEM but it could be argued that STAYING IN DYSFUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS such as staying married or at a job where someone abuses you would be as much evidence or more. Further, maybe it's because women are more apt to ask for advice than men, but the advice I read in such columns does seem to be aimed at women more so than men.

Some men get abused in the workplace and in marriages and other relationships too and don't up and leave. But staying in is thought of as honorable, even the role of a man, evidence of masculinity, appraised as he is 'soldiering' on, doing his duty. So maybe what's being said is that what is honorable for men is dishonorable for women?

It's worth mentioning here that throughout history there have been what we call ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES which were simply considered to be normality at the time. We may not find we'd want to recreate what it was for a woman to live in Ancient Rome, or China before Communism, or to be the member of certain African tribes where more than one wife was (and is) allowed and encouraged, but can we say that all those women had and have 'low self esteem?" We cannot.  

So is nonconformity 'low self esteem?'

One recent advice column I read suggested that a woman who is 'in love' with two men at the same time has a Personality Disorder and is only looking for grief. Excuse me? Human beings seem to be so capable of various forms of hatred as we observe man's inhumanity to man - war - violence - but not various forms of love?  

As for Personality Disorders, they do exist, but I happen to know a couple who have celebrated over 50 years of marriage together, getting the praise of their church and their community, who privately live an extremely screwed up life. Their children and grandchildren are the same. Neither of these people have any friends outside of the marriage, which must seem to be too threatening for them. There's always drama over there. It's difficult to even visit them for all the screaming and yelling, arguing, and emotional blackmail they can't even control while having a visitor. I go home to recoup after a visit with them. 

You can so love more than one person at a time.  I'll bet you already do. Consider the love of parents or other relatives, your best friends, your students or classmates, your children, people at your club, your pets (I do think they are persons, sentient beings) and the very many ways there are to love! 

Sometimes it is more difficult to CHOOSE because you feel such pressure to CHOOSE. The entire world is set up for two people to partner. Or someone in the Triad feels forced to so that imbalances things. No doubt about that pressure.  Which is why so many people choose also not to tell their boss, their parents, their relatives, their children, even their minister or priest.  They don't want to hear it. They should, however, be able to trust so they can confide in a therapist.

Now don't get me wrong, I KNOW THAT ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES are MINORITY LIFESTYLES. And like many a minority, living against the social conventions that dominate, you may need support. The support is supposed to come from a therapist who is NOT TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO LIVE, but HELPING YOU DECIDE WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU. (And if one of them is diagnosing you, billing an insurance company, and not telling YOU what the diagnosis is, well, would an MD do this? Is their professional opinion none of your business? That's disrespectful of you.)

Psychology is interesting. We know a whole lot more about it than we used to. Here's the thing about labels such as diagnosis. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they are just traps.  

Sometimes it's best to fire your therapist. And when they spew their PERSONAL OPINIONS or AGENDA based on the notion that they are trained as THERAPISTS and thus authorities in your life, well, something is amiss there.

It's my opinion that if you feel you need therapy because of an ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE, it may be best to seek someone who is practicing in the LGBTQ community, who has experience with Alternative Lifestyles.

Missy

C 2023  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

A TRY AT HOLLYWOOD as CHABING COOPER and GIVING UP ON LIFE

Isabel Rosario Cooper went back to entertainment or tried to.  Life in Hollywood didn't renew her work or fame that she'd left behind in Manila.

"Chabing (the name she used as an actor) went from playing a nurse, a geisha, a Siamese harem wife, a Native American, a Chinese servant, a Chinese-American secretary, a hula dancer, another Chinese servant, a Filipina servant, a Carabean slave, and an "Oriental" belly dancer.  In lower budget Charlie Chan films she has full scenes, exchanges dialogue with the lead.  In others she is just another body providing color, being a type.  (Pages 128-129)

"In the decade following her arrangement with MacArthur, Isabel Cooper relentlessly remakes herself, Isabel Kennamer, housewife from Washington, D.C; Belle Cooper, ingénue; Isabel Cooper, actress, possibly Isabel Moreno, wife, Chabing Cooper, nightclub hula dancer; Chabing, actress.  She shaves at least a decade from her actual age, claims to be white, Malay, Scottish, Irish, Javanese.  She moves from being a mistress to getting married, then divorced, to married again (and again.)

Finding herself evicted from a familiar role, and unsatisfied with the one that follows, she invents a plethora of selves in order to survive --sometimes just barely and with bruises to show--in the manifold niches available to women like her.  Both distant from and yet intimately bound to the war raging across both oceans, these roles show a woman making do with scant material and doggedly crafting a life and livelihood through ingenuity and manipulation, or what perhaps has been dismissed as "feminine wiles."  (Excerpt page 110)

The last film she appeared in was shot in 1953 and released the following year and was a fake documentary about burlesque. She had no other roles.

How Isabel continued to live is unknown. However, when she died, she was probably fifty years old and it was an overdose of barbiturates and was likely suicide. Her once upon a time husband, Frank Kennamer, now remarried with children, and a lawyer, was called upon and provided her a burial plot but it is without a headstone in Holy Cross Cemetery, Los Angeles.

There may have been an investigation but the file is lost.

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A LITTLE SOMETHING

 

THE END IS A NEW BEGINNING : A NEW MARRIAGE AND A MOVE WEST

Isabel Rosario Cooper moved out of the hotel in D.C. and may have been evicted from it. Soon she was living in another hotel in New York City.  A investigative journalist who was interested in exposing MacArthur to criticism for political reasons found Isabel and she showed him the love letters. It seems that this journalist was integral to a negotiation in which MacArthur didn't get away with stranding Isabel financially. $15,000 is said to have been the amount of settlement. Using an on-line inflation calculator this would be about $325,000 today. General Douglas MacArthur wanted the woman he once wished to possess to move back to the Philippines but she did not.

Now she did sail back to Manila for a visit. Then in 1936 when she was about twenty-six, she arrived in Seattle, Washington state, from Manila and she would never again set foot in the Philippines. She claimed American citizenship based on her father's American citizenship.

"It is telling that MacArthur's last communication with Isabel Cooper includes both a ticket and a job ad.  The classified ad column - "For women" - lists a variety of occupations deemed appropriate for women in 1934, ranging from commission sales and demonstrations of various products (food, Christmas cars, cosmetics), care taking for a young attorney and son), food services, nursing, and office work.  It reflects his thinking that Isabel Cooper was a kept woman, no more, that there would be no more generosity to support her life of leisure. Isabel Cooper could get a job. (Excerpt pages 25-26)

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Missy here:  This makes my blood boil. It tells me that General Douglas MacArthur was a narcissist. He was the seducer and he was the one who abandoned her. However beautiful or charming she was, Isabel was very young and he was old enough to know better. He wanted to use up her youth and vitality and derail her career and the way he treated her, the whole Go Get a Job thing is insulting and horrible. 

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"The domestic arrangements are tacit, but clear; MacArthur relies on his mother to provide him with the comforts of home while he ensures her well being. He turns to Isabel Cooper for sex and emotional fulfillment, but also to buttress his fragile ego.  Her role is not just to be adored but also to admire him.  Her presence is an indicator of his virility. Even though she is not officially his hostess, enough people in Washington know of her presence to conclude that MacArthur's sexual prowess must reflect his military rank."  (Excerpt page 26)

Instead, in 1938, she married a law student who she had met while living in Washington D.C. Franklin Kennamer. The Great Depression had begun in 1929 and World War II is coming. The marriage doesn't last. She has gone from being Isabel Kennamer to Belle Cooper.

But by 1941ish Belle Cooper was living in Hollywood, ready to give her career as an actor, dancer, and singer another whirl and took on another name for acting. She asked the same journalist who had helped her get a settlement from MacArthur for any help he might have - any connections he could offer. She continued to report into him and by 1951 when she was 40ish she had finally landed a film role of some significance in "I Was An American Spy." The film's story touches her personal life with MacArthur because he was the person who gave the Medal of Honor to the woman who was the spy during World War II. This worries her and she begins to reinvent the relationship, considering him to have been a father figure. However, the film was not successful and this was the best role she ever got.

Three months after her divorce from Kennamer, she married again, in 1944, to Milton Moreno. And then again in 1946 - no divorce between them recorded. She is thirty-seven. There is no record of this man in her life. Her may have been a batterer. There were reports of her showing up to work with bruises. Did he take off?

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

WREATH OF YLANG YLANG

 

SHE FOLLOWED A TRAIL OF LOVE LETTERS : HE CALLED HER BABY GIRL - DARLING OF MY LIFE - and MY BELOVED

Excerpt: 

"On the ninth of December, 1930, a young woman disembarks from the President Fillmore, which has just docked in New York City after a long ocean voyage. Isabel Cooper has finally arrived from Manila, having come to the United States at the behest of her lover, General Douglas MacArthur.  She is eighteen, or twenty-one, or somewhere in between.

She follows a trail of love letters strewn across the Pacific, written by MacArthur and posted from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kobe, Yokohama, Tokyo, Honolulu, and San Francisco.  They mark his route home after being recalled from his two-year assignment as the commanding general of the Philippines Department.  They also mark the intensity of his ardor for the charming, worldly Filipina performer he had met the year before.  (How worldly could she be as a barely legal woman in 1930?)

Just weeks before Isabel Cooper's arrival, the fifty-one year old MacArthur is promoted to the rank of general, ordered to Washington, D.C. and appointed by President Herbert Hoover as the chief of staff of the United States Army.

MacArthur installs Isabel Cooper in a suite at the Chasleton Hotel, conveniently near his State, War, and Navy Building office.  His redoubtable mother, Pinky, lives with him in the official chief-of-staff residence in Fort Meyer, Virginia.  He lavishes Isabel Cooper with gifts, mostly clothes. Their liaison is not a secret to Washington insiders -- it is his mother that he wants to keep in the dark."  (pages 15-16)

(Her letters back to him do not exist.  Did he destroy them?)

Quoting one of the letters Douglas wrote to her:

"My love encompasses you and enshrines you deep in my heart... I kiss your dear lips and press your soft body to my own... I long for you so that the memory makes me feel ill and faint." (page 19)

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ISABEL ROSARIO COOPER IN THE PHILIPPINES - VAUDEVILLE

This image comes from a brief news item that appeared in November 2017 in an

on-line newspaper called Philstar Global. Learned that date taken and photographer are unknown. It also appears in Empire's Mistress starring Isabel Rosario Cooper as a black and white copy. Even from afar one can see the dimples that gave her that nickname.