Boys Will Be Boys, Girls Will Be ?

While Diderot in his novel, The Indiscreet Jewels, personifies a woman’s “jewel”-like genitalia, giving women’s genitalia the ability to speak, this personification actually gives ascribes even less agency to women than they originally had when they could control their own speech. The motif of today’s lecture and of The Indiscreet Jewels was that the genitalia uncontrollable/unconquerable by its owner, and is therefore truthful and driven by sexual desires, while the speech coming from women’s mouths is deceitful and misleading. The idea of the genitalia’s inability to mask its sexual desires relates to Montaigne’s essays On the Power of the Imagination, which details the experience of one’s battle with one’s own genitalia, unsuccessfully negotiating the tension between sexual desires and the desire to be accepted within society. Montaigne claims that, “[the physical expression of sexual desires] may be attributed to the narrow seam between the soul and the body, through which the experience of the one is communicated to the other. Sometimes, however, one’s imagination acts not only against one’s own body but against someone else’s” (74).Personally admitting to the struggles with these desires is one of the only ways to subdue these desires. In his essay, Montaine claims, “that by admitting his weakness and speaking about it in advance, he relieved the tension of his soul, for when the trouble had been presented as one to be expected, his sense of responsibility diminished and weighed upon him less” (70). However, I would imagine that if the women in Diderot’s The Indiscreet Jewels were to openly admit to their sexual urges and desires with their mouths and not their genitalia, these truths would not be well received. This is true in today’s culture, because, in my experience, young men speak openly about their sexuality, genitalia, and bodily urges, and society seems to receive this with a nonchalant shrug and some cliché to the effect of, “boys will be boys.” However, if a group of girls were to carry on publicly about their sexual trials and tribulations in any public arena besides the pages of an issue of Cosmopolitan, it would be considered unacceptable and socially inappropriate. What accounts for this difference? One could argue that patriarchal society accounts for the difference, but what is at the heart of the issue? Why isn’t there an old adage of “girls will be girls”?