The first allusion caused by the tempting-menacing name, Women's City,
refers to a motion picture produced by Frederico Fellini, titled City
of Women (1981), in which the hero, Fellini's alter ego, finds himself
in a surrealistic city of his own memory, complexes, and fantasies, phobias
and passions. Through a phantasmagorical prism Fellini offers an extended
metaphor of the contemporary world, with its problems, curiosities, and
a light yet invariable bend on the apocalyptic.
However, it appears that the first one to write about this city was
Christine de Pisan, author of the treatise Le Livre de la Cite des Dames
(1405), one of the earliest sacred texts of modern feminism. Like most
other such works, this book is meant for the veneration, rather than readership.
Constructed as a dialogue between the authoress and three allegorical characters
(Intellect, Sincerity, and Justice), the book consistently refutes "male
chauvinist" views on women as inferior creatures denied intellect, enthusiasm,
purposefulness, and other allegedly purely male virtues. Christine de Pisan
rebuffs these "sexist pig" views by citing dozens of examples from history
when women proved much more spectacular personalities than men.
In any case, the title of her treatise endured the centuries, suddenly
echoing not only in Fellini's masterpiece, but also in the title of a chimerical
festival initiated three years ago in Slovenia by a group of female enthusiasts
from the Society for Assistance to Women in the Cultural Realm.
The aim of this festival (as formulated by its organizers) is to show
that women's outstanding achievements in the cultural domain are not accidental;
that women's art can not only be "different," but also "better." Most radically
this position was formulated by one festival participant, British composer
and performer, musicologist-medievalist, collector and researcher of the
world's most exotic instruments world, named Steevie Wieshart: "We are
raised and educated by men, using textbooks written by men, telling us
about the man's world; so what do we know about the women's world, their
role in history, except that they give birth to children and serve their
husbands?..."
In the final analysis this position is not all that radical, considering
that men remain the ruling minority, even in the most advanced countries,
and that reaching legal equality with men will not guarantee women's actual
equality, because in every society exists the powerful inertia of traditional
male dominance and the traditional social marginalization of women. This
inertia is manifest in a multitude of stereotypes, habits, and customs,
daily norms, prejudices, and discrimination when hiring women, getting
them enrolled in refresher courses, as well as in all aspects of career,
let alone anecdotes, standard abuses of women (and, consequently, of men)
in advertisements and commercials, movies, and television programs. After
all, our language is centered on man, the male, in which not only God is
masculine, but even the Homo sapiens, meaning reasonable man, except
probably Ukrainian which is a dying rarity, for its equivalent for man
as a human being, liudyna, is of the feminine gender - yet this should
not be regarded as the Ukrainians' lacking in traditional "male chauvinism";
evidence of this is the number of women in Ukraine's government, Parliament,
or anywhere else in leadership roles.
The sad social balance of this age-old male dominance is reflected in
the dry statistics published recently by a team of UN experts. Women appear
to be doing two-thirds of all the jobs around the world, receiving in return
for only 10% of the wages being paid, and most remarkably, possessing one
percent (!) of the world's wealth.
In view of this one can generally comprehend attempts by feminist activists
to change this status in quo which so humiliating to the women (and I think
personally that the same applies to men); they want to refute or at least
undermine all those male chauvinist stereotypes in all their manifestations
- and there is no denying the fact that such views are also widespread
among a number of women who have servilely adopted such norms and stereotypes
and put up with their subordinate status. In this context it is also understandable
why the organizers of this festival wanted to give the floor to women who
"resist the dominant (male) cultural discourse, trying to create their
own creative vocabulary, their own language."
However, paraphrasing a motto offered by a popular Lviv weekly, "the
consequences of artistic gatherings not always coincide with the intentions
of their organizers." The Ljubljana festival of modern art revealed two
serious problems peculiar to many such feminist actions. On the one hand,
it was a threat of a new, speculative-feminist conjuncture; on the other,
"female chauvinism" (often with definite Lesbian overtones), which feminist
zealots attempt to utilize in order to defeat their eternal enemy, male
chauvinism.
Fortunately however, the current action was not dominated by feminist
agitators. And its purely creative accomplishment convinced the public
more effectively than any propagandistic bombast. In particular, several
festival concerts were dedicated to the 900th jubilee of Hildegard of Bingen
(1098-1179), one of the first historically established female composers,
also known as the author of theological tracts and treatises on the medicinal
quality of herbs, trees, animals, and stones, along with detailed accounts
of her ecstatic visions. Born to an aristocratic family, she took the vows
and eventually became the convent's mother superior, an undeniable authority
in matters relating to the Canon Law. She corresponded with contemporary
bishops and aristocrats (including the Pope) who treated her with reverence.
She is often referred to as a saint, although the Roman Catholic Church
did not agree to canonize her. Some say that it never will, because some
of her texts point to her being suspiciously familiar with carnal knowledge.
Some even consider that she was among the first female authors to describe
a woman's orgasm, even though doing it in a typically medieval roundabout
manner. When a woman loves her head is aflame (she wrote) and that woman
feels a sensuous pleasure, attracting to her a man's semen. And when this
semen reaches the right place the flame raging in her head descends, drawing
in and retaining the semen, at which time that woman's flesh contracts,
as though grasped by a powerful male hand.
Be it as it may, the feminists have long canonized Hildegard as one
of the most spectacular intellectual figures of medieval Europe. Her major
musical composition titled Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum
(The Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations) was ceremoniously
performed by the Simphonye female quartet, led by Steevie Wieshart, and
Oxford Girls' Choir at St. Florian Church. Two charming young ladies from
New York, Zina Parkins (electric harp) and Jeanine Higgins (video composition),
contributed their interesting performance based on Hildegard's works.
I must confess, however, that, being an ignoramus in this sphere, I
was most impressed by the musical part of the festival featuring drum majorettes,
twenty bonnie lassies from Scotland united in a group with the exotic name
She Boom, tempting male passers-by, perhaps homing in on still unknowing
prey, puling off their Afro-Brazilian sambas, African, Latin American,
Celtic, and a score of other enticing rhythms. Well, I guess you can imagine
what twenty pretty girls are capable of, carrying twenty drums varying
in shape and size (I wouldn't know there were so many different drums in
existence in the first place). The Pet Shop Boys asked them to play on
their album, "Bilingual," so you can watch and hear them there, although
what they do in the album is the song of a bird of paradise compared to
what they did in Ljubljana's streets.
On the closing day they decided to invite all local enthusiasts of this
purely female sport to attend their workshop (we call it a master class
in Ukraine). Fortunately, they did not issue any drums to any of the enthusiasts
from outside, specifying that whoever wanted to join the crowd had to bring
his own monstrosities. But the result! Who could have thought of so many
drums being gathered in a country inhabited by two million on such short
notice?
Then the witches' Sabbath was over, after all of them made up as evil
spirits, furies, vampires, you name it, finally retired, leaving the streets
shell-shocked, disbelieving that the nightmare was over, this was actually
the end of the feminist festival; it had reached its climax (the word is
Scottish and does not mean what we in Ukraine think).







