Duality

THE MADONNA-WHORE COMPLEX
We live in a world of canvases, people see you and suddenly it is decided what you get to be and what you simply aren’t, some people are generous with the canvases they afford people more opportunity to present themselves and others are fixed and cannot see anyone as more than their own specific narrow way of seeing people and that’s just that and we are somehow meant to accept that. There are very limited choices for people who aren’t just one thing but two or more.
Sigmund Freud coined the term the Madonna-whore complex, judging by how long ago Sigmund Freud wrote any books, this is a very old term, in this theory, women are simply blank canvases with the possibility of being either of two choices;
1. The Madonna: They are women entirely held together by piety or purity who are the non-descript sexless females whose only passion is childbearing and submissiveness, who are viewed as loyal and worthy of respect.
2. The Whore: who is characterized by the simple portrayal of a woman who is promiscuous, used up, skimpily dressed, even loud and is prone to all things viewed as impure like smoking, drinking and have no desire in childbearing and submissiveness, throw in feminist in this list and I’d say Freud would approve.
Freud’s entire dynamic is outdated and old but this does not negate its reality and relevance in 2020. It’s still applicable now as it was in 1899. It’s not uncommon to run into literature and movies or any other type of work that has this specific female characterization, it was not uncommon to read old Kenyan books, movies and music from the 90s with characters who left their homes in “upcountry” and moved to Nairobi and begun to live as Freud’s “ whore”, they began their “ungodly” plight of wearing trousers, smoking drinking and moving with men( that’s what they called it then) and their entire story ends with death through AIDS. Its such damaging literature and portrayals that give this entire theory credence even now in 2020.
The problem with giving women only two canvases to paint their entire personalities is that it locks out a lot of women who would otherwise be considered good relationship choices out of relationships altogether because in 2020 I assure you there is no Madonna in this era and having one shouldn’t even be an aspiration because this assessment is biased in that men do not get these same two portrayals and no woman has ever been are 100% “ whore’s as per this analogy or 100% madonna and the ones that say they are, are flat our lying and pretending.
In Kenya we have a “wife material” (the Madonna) or the non-wife- material ( the whore), these are unrealistic ideations, and it would be fairer if we accepted that in the Venn diagram of the Madonna and whore, are women who have the piety of a Madonna and the sexuality of Sigmund Freud’s whore or women who love to party and do every “whore-like” (am using this term loosely) things but have the sexless purity and mock prudence of a Madonna, the combinations in this analogy are limitless and that is person-specific.
It’s important to note however that a “Madonna” isn’t the first person men want to invite to parties or even spend time with generally in the same way Sigmund Freud’s whore is not the woman that men want to marry but if asked they prefer the company of, but even stranger is the bias men have with this complex, they want a woman who behaves like a madonna but acts like whore in the boudoir, so they want a pretender?
All things considered, we need to accept the duality in every person and question what our Freud inspired biases stems from in this very enlightened era and question why we allow a complex that is over 100 years old dictate our respective love lives and our ability to be accepting.