Interview: Brad Listi In an ethereal bed with a young American novelist
What would a world without women for you entail? Pure misery, really. I love women.
I just saw Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola - What did you think of I thought the film was beautiful to look at, but to be perfectly honest with you, I fell asleep about twenty minutes into it. My fiancee and I were in bed, watching it on DVD, and I was exhausted. So the fact that I dozed off isn’t really a commentary on the quality of the film. Sofia Coppola is wonderful. Do you think there is any difference between men and women in terms of No. I think men and women are the same as far as the human condition goes. We all want to be happy and avoid suffering, regardless of gender. I do believe that we probably deal with the human condition in different ways, generally speaking. Men tend to handle their suffering and their happiness differently than women, and vice versa. I tend to view women as the superior gender when it comes to accessing emotions. It’s not a universal rule, but I think it probably holds true in a lot of cases.
Have you ever read a book written by a female author that made you discover something about what it is to be male? I just read a wonderful book by my friend Kate Holden called In My Skin. It’s a memoir about her years as a heroin addict and a prostitute. It taught me a lot about what it is to be male. Having been a prostitute, and a very bright one at that, Kate learned a hell of a lot about men, which she shares in the book. And naturally not all of the news was comforting.
What did the word feminist mean to you age 21? has it's definition evolved since? I must start out by confessing to be a bit primitive in my understanding of feminism and women’s studies, and so on. I’m not extremely well-read in this department. That said, when I was 21, “feminist” meant a woman who wanted equal rights. A woman who didn’t consider herself inferior to her male counterparts in any way. It had a positive connotation in my mind. I supported the general idea as I understood it. As to its evolution in my mind ...I would say it’s been fairly minimal. I continue to think of a feminist as a strong woman, a woman who is interested in equality of opportunity, and so on. A woman who is interesting in challenging the status quo. That aside, I do believe the word is open to wide interpretation. For some people, feminism conjures images of angry lesbians with hairy armpits. To others, it’s fairly benign, a distant relative of a word like justice. I think I tend more towards the latter category. I don’t spend much time thinking about it, quite frankly, and I don’t know too many women who are all that caught up in it. This probably has something to do with the fact that things have improved quite a bit for women over the course of the past century. There is still a lot of room for improvement, certainly, and there continue to be parts of the world where the treatment of women is pretty atrocious. But in a Western context, I think we’ve seen some pretty good progress. Maybe that’s naively optimistic and insular of me to say such things, but that’s my particular take on it at this point in time.
I think it still exists, sure, but I don’t think it’s nearly as pronounced or socially significant as it used to be. And as I said earlier, the loss of stature is probably rooted in the evolution of thought and the improved standing of women in modern society. It seems to me that the less women are oppressed, the less we’re going to hear a word like “feminism.” So the fact that it’s lost a bit of its import and currency is probably a good thing.
Now that traditional social barriers are in many way defunct - the I’m not so sure that the social barriers are defunct. In the States, the social barriers feel ever-present, particularly as it pertains to marriage and having children, and so on. It’s a financial issue, more and more. There was just an article in the Washington Post the other day that talked about the ways in which marriage and child-rearing are becoming the sole provenance of the educated and the affluent, more and more. People of lesser means are either having children out of wedlock, or they aren’t having kids at all. They’re excluded from the experience. It isn’t practical for them. They can’t afford it. That said, there are obviously plenty of psychological barriers that come into play in modern love stories, and this is interesting. However, I tend to believe that these internal barriers are nothing new. I think these barriers have been there, in one form or another, since the dawn of man. That said, I do think we talk about them more explicitly in the modern era. In fact, we seem a bit obsessive these days when it comes to our internal worlds. For many of us, it’s a bit of a fixation, and a manifestation of a weird neuroses. Back in Victorian times, for example, this kind of emoting wasn’t nearly so acceptable, particularly in public, or in the company of strangers. People kept more to themselves, generally speaking, when it came to matters of love and psychology. Nowadays, a lot of people won’t shut up about it. To some degree, this is a good thing. In other ways, it tends to be a bit worrisome. Which sex is more powerful in terms of controlling the mob? Women. Without question. I once read a quote from someone regarding the power of women over men. It had something to do with the Aristophanes play “Lysistrata”—, and how women, if they really wanted to, could put an end to war once and for all. All they would have to do is withhold sex from all the men until they agreed to lay down their arms. A bit of a fairytale, certainly, but to my mind, a thought like that contains more than a small grain of truth.
To read more about Brad Listi and his best-selling novel Attention Deficit Disorder, check out his website bradlisti.com
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