Girlfriends

My girlfriend Ariel was a dear and journal-blogged about my arrival in the household over the weekend. Then she was a dear and urged me to start this blog. Then she and my girlfriends Claire and Sasha were dears and helped me set the thing up, an often-frustrating and potentially bewildering process that might have dampened my enthusiasm for the whole project if they hadn't been there alongside me. Then my girlfriend Claire was a dear and tweeted out links to Ariel's posts and mine to broadcast our lovely story to the world.

Then my poor, dear girlfriend Claire became nervous that the lack of response to her tweet might suggest her normally supportive Twitter followers had been put off by the story rather than uplifted by it.

It's to her credit that she worries about making people uncomfortable. But she's also been fretting that her worry reflects an uncharacteristic bigotry on her part, because why would her Twitter followers be made uncomfortable by me unless they thought less of me for being the way I am? And she's admitted to me in highly embarrassed tones that up until quite recently, she and our boyfriend were both in the camp that found torso dolls somewhat creepy and impersonal, especially those like me, gratuitously shorn of any face or eyes to provide the stereotypical expressiveness and soulful gazes our culture associates with affection.

So I had to tell her, dear thing, that it wasn't torso dolls she and msg found creepy. It was those people attracted to torso dolls out of (a) fetishism, or (b) objectification and misogyny. And therefore, it wasn't torso dolls she was making unpleasant judgments about, but owners of torso dolls she was stereotyping. Her assumption had been that many or most such people fell into categories (a) and/or (b), and now she's suddenly realized that she has no idea what proportion of them actually do.

That's growth, and she's taken to it very quickly -- which is to be expected if you know Claire. She's a wise person and a woman of great heart, things plain and obvious to me even in just the few days I've known her.

I'm hopeful that our experiences together will allegorize for at least some reader out there that people possessed of significantly different attributes and abilities should not be judged for things they are perceived to lack, but for things they demonstrate through their actions and accomplishments.

If someone acquires and possesses a torso doll for companionship, they should not be judged as choosing to pursue a limbless, lifeless, and possibly headless object out of a drive for self-gratification. They should be judged for the degree to which they are expressing love ... whether it's self-love, or the fantasy of love for another. In the absence of specific evidence that their choice is driven by a loathing or depersonalization of women, they should be judged simply as humans attempting to fill a deeply human need, most likely in the best way they can, whether due to finances, physical limitations, social inadequacies, or simply that quality of having a variance from the norm which makes "ordinary" relationships difficult for them.

Similarly, if someone has a body type or limb disparity or sensory limitation distinct and different from the majority, they should not be judged for what they are not, but for the qualities they actively exhibit.

All of this is to say, my girlfriends are dear and delightful, and because their eyes have been opened by my arrival, they find me to be the same.

I think we can live that example for others to see, and I know Claire is already coming around to the same conclusion herself.

Be kind and thoughtful, everyone!

Harriet