Monday 8 July 2013

Friendly Neighbourhood (Female) Weird Loner

(Caveat: Sometimes the 'friendly' can seep toward the 'grouchy' - so, somewhere between friendly and grouchy, is where the truth lies)

Apparently, according to Aristotle;
"Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god."
As a weird loner, I find this sentiment comforting. My task now is to deduce whither my true nature is that of beast or god. (Hint: it's beast.) Also, as I have never studied philosophy, I don't know how this Aristotelian wisdom is received, either in general or academically. I have minimal enlightenment of what deeper meanings are contained within its scholarship (though, scientifically, I'm a little sceptical that "society is something that precedes the individual"). I'm mainly interested in the weird loner beast/god dichotomy.

On my Twitter profile, I have declared myself a 'friendly neighbourhood weird loner'. I have also used this description as the title of this blog post, but have added 'female' as a way of highlighting societies' differing assessments, judgements and strictures of female loners in comparison to male loners.

All loners are freaks, obviously; popular cultural representations of loners frequently allude to this veracity. But the freakishness of female versus male loners, like women and men in general, is treated and valued differently.

Male loners are allowed to joyously avoid social attachments such as partners or children. Their rejection of traditional expectations often manifests as a reckless, but adventurous, spirit. A male loner is permitted (sometimes encouraged) to obsessively pursue interests or goals at the expense of human contact - even when those pursuits are dangerous. If the male loner has psychopathic tendencies, his psychosis is spectacular; he will generally try to manipulate and/or kill the largest number of people possible - there is a glorification in the presentation of his atrocities.

Female loners tend to be presented in a less exhilarating, if not dour, light. They are mostly confined to the roles of crazy cat lady and/or doting maiden aunt. Often, these tropes sub-textually (or textually) suggest that a single, childless woman compensates for the 'emptiness' of not having a partner or children by doting on cats and/or nieces/nephews. And if a female loner insists on having psychopathic tendencies, it must be under the rubric of bunny boiler (megalomaniac world domination is rarely the dominion of a lady loner - except for me; plus I'm a crazy cat lady, but I am nobody's aunt, doting or otherwise).

Using Aristotle's logic, can these two contrasting cultural milieus be categorized as metaphorical beast or god? And which one is which? (Another Caveat: I'm pretty much excluding speculative fiction type representations of loners, since these frequently turn out to be actual beasts or gods).

Given that men tend to be exalted to varying degrees, much more so than women, I think it's feasible to conclude that the male loner would more likely be seen as a god. Thus, the female loner, especially one who shuns her expected role of nurturing spinster, is more likely to be cast as beast. Paradoxically, however, the role of the most depraved of all the beasts is usually reserved for the male loner.