The Law According to Lidia Poët: a feminist analysis

The Law According to Lidia Poët is an Italian-language Netflix series based on the life of Lidia Poët, Italy’s first female lawyer. Despite having earned her law degree in 1881, working in a law practice for two years, and passing the Order of Advocates of Turin examination, Poët was prevented from practicing law because she was a woman until 1920. Described as a mature version of Enola Holmes, the combination of strong female character, period drama, and murder mystery is irresistible to me so I had to check it out.

Lidia is a sharp, gutsy, tenacious young woman who doesn’t waste time explaining why she isn’t what society says she is. She just gets on with her work, catching things her arrogant male peers don’t and quickly seizing upon opportunities to find clues. One episode features a lesbian relationship and though Lidia is heterosexual, she’s not interested in marriage or children. She creates opportunities for her niece, who seems to be legitimately in love, to spend time alone with her boyfriend. We also see in Lidia’s sister-in-law a woman who is resigned to patriarchy and grooms her daughter for a life of obedience and male servitude. She doesn’t approve of Lidia’s feminism but has no choice but to tolerate her as Lidia is living in her home and has somehow managed to twist her brother’s arm into allowing her to work for him behind the scenes. Matilda de Angelis offers an energetic and engaging portrayal of the feminist heroine.

Unfortunately, the series falls back on tired pseudo-feminist elements, wasting a lot of time doing so. My first critique is that independent female characters are never made all that independent and The Law According to Lidia Poët is no exception. Lidia insists the guy she’s sleeping with isn’t her boyfriend and true enough, she doesn’t pine. One gets the sense that she genuinely likes or may even love him but maintains her focus on her career and cases. A question few seem to ask is why female characters have to have romantic relationships with men in the first place. Over and over again, we get the message that women can be capable, autonomous beings, but there always has to be some man – or men – inserted into the story who is more than a friend or could become more. The imperative of romance is ever-present.

Viewers may appreciate that far from being chaste, Lidia is sexually active and unashamed. Still, we’re presented with that false dichotomy: belong to a man or have casual romps. How feminist can a woman be if she sleeps with men who use prostituted women? Surely this isn’t something the real Lidia would have done. The subliminal message to women is that men must be in the picture.

My second critique is the predictable female objectification. There’s an unwritten rule that the bodies of strong female characters must be exposed. The camera must capture carefully angled shots of her naked, hairless body, and erect nipples. Male viewers are rewarded with female nudity while female viewers – the intended audience – are reminded that women are ultimately never full human beings. There are a couple of quick pans of man bum. In one scene a man stands in the blurred background with his tackle out (one wonders if it’s prosthetic or CGI). Anyway, it doesn’t compare to the amount of gratuitous bare breasts on display. Another scene has Lidia investigating a wealthy murder suspect; naturally, on that very night he’s hosting a sex party. What does any of this have to do with a woman who fought to include her sex class in the legal profession? These decisions are deliberate.

Now for the third critique, related to the second: saucy fantasies and period dramas aren’t cool unless they include some depiction of prostitution. A boring plot gimmick that provides more opportunities and excuses to show tits and ass, brothels feature in tons of fantasy and period dramas, including Game of Thrones, The Witcher (including Blood Origin), Carnival Row, and Black Sails. The sex trade is often represented in an uncritical light or simply an inevitable fact of life. The oldest profession, don’t you know? In The Law According to Lidia Poët, Lidia visits an opium den to further her investigation. Naturally, there are high, sex-starved women draped everywhere and a half-naked temptress saunters over, advertizing her wares to a male patron. The theme of prostitution is sprinkled throughout, and though Lidia notes at one point that it’s hardly a good life, it comes off as opportunistic.

My fourth and final critique is that strong female characters are always portrayed by women who are conventionally (and exceptionally) attractive. Even if the historical person being portrayed isn’t particularly beautiful, only a dazzling actress is selected to play her. Matilda de Angelis is indeed gorgeous and does a commendable job, but these choices perpetuate sexist beauty standards, reminding women that we’re never good enough. Apparently it’s not enough for Poët to be an average-looking or even plain woman with an above-average intellect. Unless you’re a man, looks matter even if you’re a genius. A Review Geek article says of de Angelis (note that the writer is male):

Everything about her – hair and makeup, costumes – is compellingly crafted to embellish Poet’s appeal.

Arnav Srivastava for Review Geek

Her appeal to whom? If the principle audience is women, why should it matter to us whether the actors are beautiful? Surely this is more alienating than anything to the average woman. Why should we care about hair, costumes, and makeup, except to assess whether they’re well executed and historically accurate? This is the obligatory injection of femininity. It seems the assumption is that without the glossy femininity, romance, and sex, women wouldn’t enjoy a murder mystery series about Italy’s first female lawyer. Apparently one cannot make a modern production that’s exciting and provocative without these ingredients. Apart from perpetuating liberal sexism, it’s unoriginal and tiresome. With only six episodes to tell Lidia’s story, instead of focusing on what must have been a fascinating and groundbreaking development in women’s rights, the producers reduced the show to a smutty bastardization of Lidia Poët’s life. It wasn’t until the final episode that we see any depiction of feminist organizing. There are women demonstrating on behalf of her legal appeal, shouting from the back of the courtroom. She doesn’t even look at them. Somehow she has no idea women are gathered outside her home in a candlelight vigil to her honour her fight; she only finds out because she has to walk past them and even then, she doesn’t engage with them. Imagine what they could have done with the source material!

It’s unknown whether the show will return for a second season and the ending of the first deviates drastically from what we know about the course Poët’s life took. The Law According to Lidia Poët is clearly intended as liberal feminist, sex-positive entertainment so if you’re looking for an honest biography that engages with Lidia’s circumstances and the struggle for women’s rights, I’m sorry to say you’ll be disappointed. At the very least, the series may inspire people to learn about the real Lidia Poët, a brilliant feminist whose astounding accomplishments benefitted not only herself but women as a class.

Sex, power, and the myth about consent

Yesterday, it was reported in the news that Jian Ghomeshi, a well-known Canadian broadcaster and radio host, is no longer employed by the CBC. The CBC has vaguely stated that the reason centres around information they received about Ghomeshi. Ghomeshi claims that he was fired because his employer was afraid that the details of his sexual life might become public and create unwanted controversy. Ghomeshi is now suing his former employer for about $50 million and wasted no time in posting his side of the story on his Facebook page, claiming that he’s a victim. Some people question why he would spill the beans on his BDSM lifestyle, but I think it makes sense if it’s all going to come out eventually anyway. Juicy details will inevitably emerge as a result of the suit, so maybe he figured he’d just get in front of it. It’s certainly one way of demonstrating that he thinks he has nothing to hide and has done nothing wrong.

Some time ago, I read an article by a woman about a bad date she allegedly had with Ghomeshi, whom she characterized as a womanizing, sexually aggressive creep. At this point, what we know is that a number of women allege that Ghomeshi physically attacked them.

One of the things people are arguing about is the issue of consent; it doesn’t matter so much whether Ghomeshi enjoys having kinky sex as the fact that these women are saying that he acted violently toward them, and not in a way that they had discussed or consented to. In other words, the allegation is that he didn’t just have a raunchy, rough tumble in the hay with them – he outright assaulted them. And you can’t consent to assault.

So why are we talking about consent? As a feminist issue it’s getting lots of attention. But becoming more sexually liberal as a society, so in addition to talking about consent in the context of rape, we’re also becoming more knowledgeable about alternative or fringe sexual lifestyles. Books, movies, other sources of information and forms of entertainment have added to the discourse and practices such as polyamory are getting more mainstream attention. It is possible for adults to engage in genres of consensual sex that most people don’t find arousing or pleasant. Leaving aside what “most people” actually means – because we don’t really know what people do behind closed doors – what I’d like to argue here is that consent isn’t a magical ingredient that makes everything okay all the time. While unequivocal consent is critical, it doesn’t automatically cleanse any given situation of ethical questions. This is where I think discussions about BDSM can get messy, so naturally it’s at this juncture that I think we have the most to gain in terms of how we approach the topics of sex, power, and gender.

I don’t practice a BDSM lifestyle. Never have, never will. I only know people who do. I think there’s a level of comprehension about what it is and how it works that a person on the outside can’t fully grasp. It can take on an endless number of variations and involves complicated protocols. Practitioners say it’s not a license for random debauchery; it’s a structured way of satisfying one’s urges that’s based on trust and communication. And what many people take to be kinky (e.g. hair pulling, handcuffs, spanking, etc.) doesn’t really qualify as kinky in the BDSM world. Buying a racy toy at a sex shop is a far cry from joining a leather family.

Now, I’m the sort of feminist who believes that patriarchy still governs our daily lives on multiple levels and that consent does not erase this reality. I believe that like any form of oppression, sexism can be internalized and reproduced even by victims, in different ways and for different reasons. So the contention that no exploitation can possibly exist where a woman provides her consent just doesn’t fly with me.

In a recent Twitter spat, someone told me flat out: you either accept all forms of sexuality or you don’t. This was their response to my opinion that in a patriarchal society, a man who craves the sexual domination of women is a misogynist. My opponent’s argument was that this was like stating that homosexuality is wrong because it’s underpinned by the same moralistic attitude. The thing is, the only reason anyone would be critical of homosexuality would be as a result of religious or cultural conditioning. There’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong about the idea of people of the same sex acting on their attraction for one another. I agree that ignorance still factors into social norms regarding sexuality. We’re raised to think in predetermined ways about what’s acceptable and what’s not, so anything that falls outside of “respectable” or “vanilla” sexual encounters is frowned upon without much examination. But those norms are in large part constructed to control women. And equating criticism of one person acting violently toward another to criticizing homosexuals who have consensual sex is terrible logic that not only uses homosexuals as pawns but also ignores some important considerations.

No, we don’t have to accept that all forms of sexuality are okay. Just because something turns someone on, they shouldn’t necessarily be able to pursue it with abandon by virtue of that fact. There are people who are sexually aroused by morbidity, including things that very few people would consider acceptable. Even in cases where consent exists (I’m thinking of men who agree to allow other men to cannibalize their sexual organs), whatever the reason or cause for that type of fixation, it’s not healthy. Not everything that manifests as an emotion or a preference is alright. That’s an empty existential argument. It’s irresponsible to pretend that consent neutralizes the ethical questions that might surround a given sex act.

Sure, one could describe an outsider determining when exploitation exists as being paternalistic. But women who are abused and prostituted often don’t recognize that they’re involved in an abusive situation because they’ve been rendered dependent on someone who is manipulating and controlling them. Stockholm Syndrome is a thing, and a community that glorifies torture, sadism and masochism attracts people who wish to prey on others as well as people who’ve already been groomed into submission. One might argue that BDSM itself, when done properly, doesn’t involve coercion or deception. But the culture out of which the practice arose is patriarchal. How has this practiced managed to avoid internalizing any of that? And how does a person who’s devoted to equality and justice justify the eroticization of domination?

How is it ever okay for a person – male or female – to be gagged, made to vomit, choked or punched? Why would anyone get turned on by having those things done to them or by doing it to someone else? Analyzing what it means to want to be humiliated or to want to humiliate someone else isn’t a matter of imposing normalcy on people with freaky habits. It’s not healthy. There’s a difference between raw, even rough passionate sex, and domination. We don’t always understand our impulses. We might want to be ravished – but that’s nothing close to, say, being tied up and having sensitive areas of the body zapped with electrical currents. Or walking on all fours with a dog collar around your neck.

Some people feel that there’s a physical connection between pain and pleasure because they can push us beyond our boundaries both physically and emotionally. They can be transcendent. I think that in some cases, this is all a person might crave, and someone they trust helps them to fulfill that desire. For them, gender, income, etc. don’t matter – they’re just two human beings sharing a private experience of their choosing. Why should that be our business? Because we live in a world that’s ordered and structured by social inequality. How many aggressors hide behind the sexual freedom defense because they know that the sphere of sexual behaviour has been staked out as strictly individualized territory and is thus supposedly impervious to criticism?

Governments shouldn’t be in the business of moralizing, but protecting is a different story. It’s simply not true that everything that happens between consenting adults is between them and them only. Consider the case of a battered wife. She doesn’t consent to the battery, but if she stays in the relationship and refuses to call the police, the abuser has license to continue. Should we do nothing?

There’s a reason for the distinction between civil and criminal law. In common law, a tort is a private wrong, whereas a crime can involve something the assailant does to just one other person – and even behind closed doors, on their own property – but they can be charged with a crime by the government on behalf of society. When a harmful act is serious enough, our legal institutions say it involves all of us. That’s an important tenet. The concepts of consent and privacy in sex and relationships have legitimate bases and should be respected, but they shouldn’t be exploited by extrapolating those concepts to every private situation imaginable in order to shield individuals from accountability. You can’t draw an imaginary boundary around your bedroom and pretend that anything goes.

Furthermore, when a person who holds a position of privilege acts in a violent way toward someone who lacks that privilege, don’t we understand that as an act committed against that entire group of oppressed people? When a person hurls a slur at one individual, is there only one victim? The same logic applies to men who commit violent acts against women. It’s not a one-on-one situation. And why should it make any difference whether the act was of a sexual nature, or whether she begged for it?

Even if a woman is intelligent, emotionally stable with no history of abuse and fully understands the implications of a dominant sexual relationship (which I recognize is true of many women who participate in BDSM), the man isn’t home free as far as I’m concerned. What are we to make of men, all of whom possess male privilege whether they’re raging sexists or not, who argue that they’re not doing anything wrong as long as a woman consents to sexual aggression, torture, submission, discomfort, control, or violence? The key question is this: Why, in a patriarchal society, would a man crave the domination of women, sexual or otherwise? He already has plenty of power and privilege over women. Why the thirst for even more control?  What is it about that exactly that excites him, and why? The only way this makes sense from a pathological standpoint is if a man harbours feelings of powerlessness, a fear of rejection, loss, or uncertainty. That’s parasitic. And oppressive. It’s not any woman’s responsibility to be a punching bag for someone else’s benefit. Those things should be worked out between the person who has those urges and a trained therapist whose labour is compensated. When a person with privilege tells themselves they’re powerless and refuses to take responsibility for solving that problem, that’s dysfunctional. And potentially dangerous.

When I ask myself whether I would lose respect for a man if he was okay with indulging in rape fantasies, even if it was my idea, the answer without any doubt is yes. It’s my firm belief that a decent man would be alarmed by such a request and understand that it’s not the request or the consent that determine its ethics; it’s the question of whether it plays into the patriarchy that’s still a reality today. Any ethical person who possesses privilege should recoil from an opportunity to further entrench that privilege even if it’s sanctioned, and even if it piques their sexual interest (and arguably, especially when it piques their interest).

In the course of my discussions about the subject of BDSM and sexism, some people have asked me: What about women who want to dominate men? When we consider that women live in a world dominated by men, it’s understandable that a woman might feel empowered or aroused by the opportunity to dominate a man who agrees to submit to her. As long as male privilege is a reality, we can never substitute a man for a woman and pretend that the situation is comparable. Personally, I don’t find the idea of dominating anyone appealing. Such a compulsion may signal an underlying issue that won’t go away with temporary relief from some emotional discomfort.

It’s important to note that although there are men who fetishize femininity and submission, this doesn’t represent an equalization or neutral endeavour. Men who engage in these practices usually use misogynistic language, calling themselves (or asking to be called) “bitch”, “slut”, “sissy”, etc. These terms debase women, not men.

Ultimately, no matter who you are, the idea of dominating another human being in whatever way is rooted in ego and the fetishism of power. If we have urges involving aggression or violence either in or out of the bedroom, I think we need to examine this because even if some people believe it’s natural for them, that doesn’t make it natural or acceptable in general, and it matters most of all because this has the potential to cause harm. That’s not simply a private concern. It’s a social issue.

Although we all live in a highly subjective reality, we have to be willing to acknowledge that some things just are wrong. Defining that is a messy business that will continue to evolve, but it’s precisely because it’s a controversial subject that we should seize the opportunity to establish why weird isn’t wrong, unusual isn’t wrong, and we should always be open to talking about what “wrong” actually means. The idea of wrong already rules our lives in legal and social terms, so why not bring it out into the open so we can figure out what it means for us today, rather than blindly condemning or condoning an entire subset of practices that might be quite different, one from another? We like to pretend that morality is relevant only when it concerns issues such as poverty and greed but irrelevant where it might infringe on individual and especially perceived sexual rights.

I’m all for sexual expression, but not where we use the principles of individuality and personal freedom as tools to take advantage of the willingness of others to be vessels for violence. Exploitation with consent is still exploitation. If you can’t explain why your actions are ethical other than to say, “It’s none of your business” or “They wanted me to do it”, that’s not good enough. We have to do better than that.