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Even some of the most apparently iconoclastic artists seem to fall happily into the soft feather bed of traditional gender roles in intimate relationships. Of course, I mean male artists, because there’s no such bed for female artists according to tradition. When it comes to relationships, the stereotypes would have us sleeping on a thin futon on the floor (which really isn’t all that uncomfortable if the floor is tatami) or wearing corsets over our hands and mouths to gain a place in a bed that at least looks more comfortable and probably has one of those lacy canopies that I wanted so desperately when I was eight years old.

So maybe I overextended the metaphor. What inspired me to bring all this up here was an article on CNN.com about Anita Thompson and her book about her dead husband, Hunter S. In discussing his work habits, she seeks to undo the idea that his wild experiences with drugs were sufficient to make him a great writer– a notion supported by common stereotypes about writers. When she describes her relationship with him, however, it feeds right into traditional notions of how a woman married to a writer should behave.

She refers to herself as the “designated grown-up”– because, of course, a wife is expected to mother her husband; this is magnified when the man in question is considered to be a genius. She also refers to him as her “teacher” and “boss”. The age difference does nothing to eliminate the sexist overtones of those roles. Moreover, it connects to a social tendency to elevate the male artist as the master. Since the Victorian gender spheres came into vogue, it was assumed that women would study art and literature since some moderate level of accomplishment in it would increase their desirability as wives and mothers, but that didn’t mean they were taken seriously as creators of original work (just ask all the women writers who had to change their names or use their initials in order to get published). Men were still considered the great ones, the ones to learn from. While you won’t find that explicitly stated these days, the idea still haunts social judgments.

The most unnerving illumination of the traditional nature of the Thompsons’ relationship comes in the quotes near the end of the article. “I will always work for Hunter . . . It’s like Venus — doesn’t want to lose the sun. One day you wake up and the sun is gone. What do you do?” This illustrates just how much she was expected to– and did– submerge her identity in serving his.

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1. Sex, Gender, and the Non-Elite Athlete

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