Mirror Mirror

Sometimes I hate things feminine. Hate them.

As a result, I hate myself.

I will not let misogyny win. I will not devalue what is feminine.

Sometimes I admire feminine traits, especially if they are in men. That biological incident somehow makes whatever formerly despised role or characteristic better. Like the Samoans who believe men are better at doing women’s tasks simply because they is male and laugh at the thought of women doing men’s tasks. Men who cry are very attractive. Women who cry… well, what do you expect?

I will love myself. I am good at finding patterns in numbers and in words. I can grasp abstract concepts in physics and in emotional conversations. Both are important. I will not let my fascination with biochemical processes push out my interest in the personal lives of the people around me. Ha, I just did it with my word choices: fascination is read as more potent than interest.

I will fight my inward misogynist not by proving I am as good as any man, but by loving myself. Damn, that is harder.

Sometimes when I’m feeling stupid and incapable I remind myself of that Math & Science award or that time my Organic Chem prof gave me a chocolate bar for getting his impossible question. Why don’t I remind myself of the drama award? Why do I have to rely on outward approval to remind myself that I can think?

I am trying to look in a mirror and say, “I love you. You are worthwhile.” I can’t.

My throat gets thick.  No words come out. I feel panicky.

I want to punch something. Run away. Scream. Why is this so flipping hard.

I still can’t say it.

I will keep trying.

Update: I said it!  I challenge you to do the same.

Strength

http://nike.lotekk.net/archives/n52

 

I love this image.  Love it.  It might go nicely with the breastfeeding picture, come to think of it.

Feminine

Thinking over the opposite and similar game I play with Lil’T, I learned something.  I have let myself define feminine in opposition to masculine.  Since masculine was our society prototype, feminine has been the foil for it in my mind.

Masculine = Strong

Feminine = Weak

Masculine = Leader (headship in my former church lingo)

Feminine = Follower (or submissive)

But I don’t go through life feeling weak and submissive.  When I do feel that way, I don’t feel very alive.  I’m usually sick or struggling with depression.  Sick can’t be the ideal feminine except maybe if you are Victorian British upper- class.

When I am ovulating I have the highest concentration of so-called female hormones.  (We all have all of the hormones, they are just at different levels).  Lets say that the highest levels of LH, FSH, and estradiol coincide with higher femininity.  (Progesterone peaks right after ovulation, not during).  More estrogen = more feminine?

Then, when I am the most ‘feminine’ I feel

- strong and powerful

- playfully aggressive

- I’m alert, my senses are most acute, but I feel in control and able to focus

- I have strong passions and a strong mind

I feel most like a wolf or a panther; predatorial and protective.

I assume that most males when at peak levels of testosterone and androgens might feel similar.  We know that peak testosterone does coincide with more aggressiveness and poorer judgement, but women are also more likely to want to cheat on their spouse when ovulating, so it sounds similar to me.

Maybe much of what I thought was supposed to be masculine was just ‘healthy human’ and what I thought was supposed to be feminine was ‘unhealthy human’.   Screw that.  We can be different without being opposite.

http://iphone.88000.org/12__Howling_Wolf_Moon.htm

Internal Racism

I am racist.  There is an ethnic group I have spent much of my life hating.  It wouldn’t be of much consequence, since I rarely run into people from this background, except that I am also from this group.

It is easy for me to acknowledge my Dutch cheekbones, Norwegian chin, Irish love of storytelling, and Scotch love of arguing.  I blame my frizzy hair on the other.

I’ve lived in denial of my British background.  As a child I blamed the British for the treatment of Canada’s Natives.  I blamed the English for the colonization of Scotland, Ireland, India, the Americas and more.  I hate colonialization.  I hated the English.  It was another thing to hate about myself.

 What does being English mean?  What responsibilities come with that?   How can I reconcile the bloody history of invasion?  Is it ok to blame ignorance?

 Can I look past those English of the past?   Can I blame colonialization and invasion for the harm done under the British flag and not dislike the British who upheld it and benefited from it?   Of course, colonialization, slavery, and invasion were not invented by the Brits.  Arabs invaded Northern Africa and enslaved black people before Europeans did.  Romans invaded and enslaved others before them.  Greeks before them.  Egyptians before that.

Blonde hair used to be (and still is in Israel) synonymous with prostitution and sexual availability, similar to how Black and Chicana women are too often viewed today.  I can’t blame light skinned DNA for atrocities.  But I can blame people choosing to remain ignorant about privilege they haven’t earned.  Can I?

Now I will try and find something positive about being partly British.

My English great-grandmother loved to read.  She was adventurous and left a more comfortable life to come out to the Canadian prairies.  Her daughters all loved to learn and create beauty.  On the other side, my English great-grandfather has a reputation for integrity.  Stories of him revolve around helping his neighbours, even at personal sacrifice.  His children all have a twinkly sense of humour and are always there if someone has a need.

My name is PrairieNymph, and I have some British ancestry.   And frizzy hair.

Why working women are bad

Some of the excuses demanding that women support their husbands but not the other way around are just ridiculous.

One that particularly infuriates me is that some men feel resentful if they have to take care of their children.  If taking care of their kids in any way detracts from their career they are entitled to complain.   Now, I thought that most dads like being involved in their kids lives, but I guess the definition of involved hasn’t evolved in all circles.

Boundless has an article promoting the idea that women should be on call for their husband and kids 24-7 because…

Once upon a time there was a family where both adults worked.  On occasion, the man had to leave work on time to pick up his kids from the babysitter and even take the occasional sick day.  He resented the fact that other men could go to late meetings, get promotions, and work overtime without the extra burden of looking after kids some of the time.

Moral of the story: Women, don’t make your husband feel this way.  Never choose a job that would require him to participate in family life when he doesn’t want to.  The fact that the man was resentful is proof that men should never have to take care of children.

The article stated these things quite clearly.

By that logic, I should never take care of my kids because sometimes I feel resentful too.  I don’t like waking up in the middle of the night to soothe away nightmares.  I get over it, not because I have two X chromosomes but because I am a responsible adult.

A man from my old church recently visited a couple doing humanitarian work in Europe.  The woman had started the foundation herself and was doing great work with the Roma children and women in the ‘teach a person to fish’ tradition.  Her husband gave up his career here to be part of what she is doing.  Of course, he wouldn’t have had to give it up if the religious organization he was working for didn’t have such weird ideas about remarriage of divorced people, but we’re not allowed to talk about that.

The message that the man from my church took from that experience was not primarily about humanitarian action.  Nor was it about rethinking the prejudice against divorced people.  No, it was about how sad it was when a man was a woman’s helpmeet instead of the other way around.  According to him, it wasn’t right or natural that a man help his wife’s dreams.

Of course, this isn’t limited to fundy religious discourse just because it happens there so frequently.  A man was recently lamenting to me that his family doctor now worked only part-time since becoming a father.  The complainer sneered at his doctor’s wife, also a doctor, whom he said worked full time in a very prestigious role at the hospital.  The complainer blamed all sorts of personal problems on the fact that his doctor’s wife worked.

Really?  This man would be an alcoholic whether this women, whom he hadn’t met, worked or not.

These people thought it was bad for men to sacrifice anything to help their wives.  That they could blame any unrelated problem on a woman.  That men should be exempt from the realities of childrearing.  Women, on the other hand, are expendable.  Their purpose is to make men’s lives easier.

After all, the real reason our society has problems has nothing to do with greed, insecurity, prejudice or corruption.  It because some women have jobs and some have dreams and some men help them.

Life without Virgin/Whore

After reading this post http://veronicamonet.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/powerful-women/

I was thinking about how our personalities are shaped more by how we relate to others and their perceived expectations than what we really like or not.

My mom told me that some study proved that girls liked pink and that was why pink was a universal girl colour.  Since I’ve spent time in rural India where men wore pink and women wore red, I knew that was a ridiculous statement.

I have also observed my own daughter who preferred orange up to age 2.  Then she switched over to pink, purple, Barbies and princesses.  Just at the time when pop culture began to infiltrate her consciousness.  Nothing wrong with liking pink, but don’t try and say it is biologically inherent and exclusive to a double X chromosome (so one can justify telling you that you need to buy your little girl a new bike and not let her use her brother’s old one).

Instead of finding out that more females like pink, what that study found is that the majority of females will try to meet expectations.  People conform.  We are social animals and it builds group cohesion.  One major expectation that most women try to meet or react to is which type of femininity they will pursue: the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’.

Veronica brilliantly discusses this divide in types of femininity that our society allows.  We have the a-sexual virgin infantilized “nice” lady and the sex hungry bitchy “bad” woman.  Interestingly, we have told ourselves that nice ladies make the best mothers, not the sirens.  Penelope wasn’t sexually satisfied when Odysseus was away and that was supposed to make her a better mom. B.S.

When I’m not sexually active, I am cranky.  Cranky women are not the best mothers. I haven’t seen any studies, but I think this may be the case for more people than myself.

If our society changed our script of femininities, how would that change what most women look like?  If I had grown up in a society that assumed sexually confident women were the best wives, mothers, and citizens – would more women (and men) be encouraging sex instead of treating it like the great evil?

Perhaps a friend who cannot even say the word “stimulate” (no joke, I was talking about about external stimuli and she turned red and admitted that she couldn’t say that word) would be able to talk about sex.

Perhaps the best mother’s day gift wouldn’t be a new vacuum but a new vibrator.

Perhaps all those people who really are asexual or have low libidos wouldn’t be sought after as idealized marriage material.  Maybe they could be more free to not have sex on a regular basis.

Could it be that if the one who could give and receive good sex was the moral one, that slut-shaming would disappear?  That a new morality based on ethics and principles instead of fear based regulation would be mainstream?

In religious circles, all those women who are shamed at their sexual desires could be proud of them.  And the men wouldn’t have mixed messages about what it is to love a woman either!  Our boys were told that if they loved a girl they would not be sexually active or think about wanting to and anything more was lust and bad.  No wonder some early Christian men castrated themselves.

Could there be classes in high school about exploring your sexuality- sexual ethics?  Not graded of course, but a home study module where the kids could learn so many things.   On their own.  Can anyone really learn the art of a good blow job from standard porn?

How would this effect rape culture if sexually active women weren’t punished or told they ‘asked for it’ but were instead viewed as valued citizens?

Would prostitutes be seen as priestesses again?  Or be seen as fully human?

Only One Adult?

If we are unlucky enough to have read or heard about Onan, we have no doubt tried to explain it.  Why would god kill a man for ejaculating on the ground? 

My favourite explanation is that, since he was doing it to prevent a pregnancy and losing the ‘right’ to rape his sister-in-law, god was telling people he doesn’t like rape. 

Others prefer the  <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMx6X26iJ_c“>Every Sperm is Sacred</a> theory.  This has been used to ban male masturbation and birth control.  Two things our world cannot do without.

Of course, the one that makes most sense with the text and cultural context is that Onan wanted his ‘real’ offspring to inherit the family possessions thereby passing on his name and not his brother’s.

The weirdest explanation I heard was in a church sermon.  Apparently, the main issue wasn’t what Onan did or didn’t do, but on what his parents did/didn’t do.  The older brother, Er, was named.  It doesn’t say by whom.  The next two, Onan and Shelah, were named by their mother.

That was the root of sin.  The mother named them.  Which led to god being angry at them, supposedly for the problems created by the mother having too much authority and the father too little.

This makes no sense from the text since Er and Onan were killed, but not Shelah. 

This fact didn’t matter to the one preaching.  He then went on to berate the women for taking too much authority in the home and preventing the fathers from taking their lawful headship.  He called for the men to tuck in their little ones with prayers of protection, since they would be so much more powerful coming from the man.  Yes, he said that.

I felt sick and enraged.  There were single moms in the congregation who had fled abusive men in order to protect their children.  They were being told that their protectiveness not only wasn’t as effective as a man’s, but was dangerous and harmful.

I doubt the man preaching had ever tucked his kids into bed, let alone changed a diaper or talked to their teacher or bully.  Yet, he was authoritatively saying the problem with kids was that the mothers were too protective.

I marched up as soon as he finished and told the congregation that we needed Mamma Bears.  I told a story of when I needed to stand up for my baby and put others’ feelings ahead of my wee one’s safety.  It was the closest to contradicting an elder in the church I had ever done before.

Afterwards, one of the single mammas whispered “thank-you” to me as she slipped quietly away.  The preacher thanked me for “adding balance”.

Unfortunately, this bizarre dichotomy of women must decrease so that men may increase isn’t limited to church.  Neither is merely a relic of the past where Annie from Annie Get Your Gun is told that she should deliberately lose a shooting match so she can win her opponent’s heart.

There is a growing concern that women becoming competent adults is the reason more men are staying in perpetual adolescence.  I’ve heard this from Al Mohler’s crowd and Boundless webzine.  No surprise that they think a man can only be an adult if he has a needy infantile wife to take care of who in return, takes care of his every mundane need.

What does surprise me is the growing secular crowd preaching this same ‘only one adult at a time’ lie.  Various radio programs have featured concern over greater numbers of males living with parents and playing video games while their female peers are volunteering and buying houses on their own. 

One woman interviewed wrote a book about how women being responsible is the cause of men acting like teenagers.  

I’m not buying it.

I have more respect for men’s intelligence and competency than that.  Men can be capable fathers without their wive’s permission or submission.  Men are fully able to make adult decisions, get jobs and do good in their community without a stay-at-home wife relying on him to pay the bills.  Men are not irrelevant when women are allowed to support themselves.

The dance of over and underfunctioning does exist, but it is no one person or gender’s fault nor is it the ideal.  We don’t need to define ourselves by the perceived weakness of someone else.

I believe there is room for more than one adult at a time.

Rites of Passage

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. 

I listened on the radio to a young woman blaming feminism for women working the double shift.

So, a movement that is dedicated to the equal humanity of men and women, that pursues diversity and values every voice… is to blame for the fact that when women come home from their work day, they are still expected to do the majority of the housework and childcare?

It is because of feminism that these women are allowed to work in careers other than domestic service.  So, that is why!  If feminism hadn’t happened, they’d all be happily working at home even if it wasn’t their home.

The 25 year old on the radio talked about how women are born nurturers and just want to be at home with kids and how she can’t wait for her turn.  Meanwhile, she is able to earn a living at something she loves and is angry at feminism for that?  Of course, men can’t take care of children, why should we expect them to?

I was really annoyed.

I’m not saying men and women are the same, but I do think there is more diversity within the groups than between the groups and that the groups are not so binary as we wish.  I am proud to say that I know many men who are great with children!   I am sad to say that I know women who aren’t.

I know that women have twice the rates of depression as men do.  Biology?  Most likely a factor.  Social structuring?  Well, since the one group of men that has the same rates of depression as women are stay-at-home dads, I would say that is a major factor.

Today, in order to balance out all the focus on women

(nearly half of the radio programs featured women!  My god, it was almost equal representation in honour of women’s day!)

today, they had men talking about men’s issues and International Men’s Day. 

Great, I think we should talk about issues that are relevant for men.  I applaud that sincerely.  But, why does it have to be in protest for shining the spotlight on women?  Why can’t it just be because we need to talk about it?

Anyways, they talked about how young adolescent males need rites of passage.  They talked about risk-taking behaviour.  They pointed out that risk-taking behaviour in men drops as soon as they become involved in taking care of children.

Is this the way to peace?  Having all of society recognize that they are responsible for taking care of our vulnerable children?!!  Sounds great! 

Then I was thinking about my own rites of passage.  I’ve heard it argued that girls don’t need them because menstruation and childbirth and natural markers. 

As a young tween and teen, I felt fire inside.  I wanted to change the world.  I wanted to fight.  I took any dare I was given, the riskier the better.  I was quietly competitive in sports, since it was the only place allowed.  I would race my classmates in phys-ed to the point that I would throw up.  I did some dangerous stuff on the ski slopes resulting in numerous concussions.  I have permanent injuries from trying to show off. 

Apparently, I was male ?  Or maybe just a teenager.

I’m not saying that there is no difference between the competitiveness and risk-taking behaviour between the genders.  I think there is.  I just wanted to be allowed to express myself overtly.

Oh, but I guess I did have rites of passage.  Lets see.

Menstruation.  Age 14.  At school.  It was an initiation into the sisterhood of shame.  Girls whispering, red-faced, asking if someone had ‘something’.  Girls hiding in the bathroom until others had left or opening pad/tampon packages so slowly so no one could hear.  Taunts of boys regarding PMS or red anything.   The dreaded starting in the middle of class…

I was initiated into feeling ashamed.  It was referred to as the woman’s curse.  Yay, god cursed me.

(I plan to change this for my own daughters.)

Next, secondary sex characteristics.  Being called fat for widening hips.  Having frontal appendages remarked on for their size or lack of it.  Strange men grabbing my body and making all sorts of remarks.  Yay, I was initiated into being prey for predators.  Although, I didn’t get teased for a cracking voice. 

Then graduation.  (Getting a drivers’ licence was no biggie in the prairies.  We drove since age 8.)

Graduation.  Fear.  Pressure.  I was supposed to find my way.  Find a career.  Find a husband.  I mostly felt lost.  Normal?  I think so.

Marriage.  Loss.  Gain. (Mostly gain   I love being married to my guy! but I need to acknowledge the loss that came from moving away from my community and stopping my school that came with that time.) 

Birth.  I survived!  I was embarrassed in spite of my beliefs that birth is supposed to be noisy and messy.  On one hand, I felt powerful.  I had done something dangerous and difficult.  On the other, I felt out of control.  That was terrifying.

And I had it good.  So many women feel absolutely helpless during birth.  Medicalization of childbirth turns this event into a place where women are pumped through the system and treated as if they have a disease or are simply a vessel and not an active player.  Pregnancy has become a pathological condition according to the medical language.  Post Traumatic Birth Disorder is becoming a recognized issue.

Taking care of a small infant.  Post. Partum. Depression.  Suicidal thoughts.

So, I guess I did have rights of passage.  But, not into the free, strong, adulthood that I wanted.  Maybe no one does.  Maybe it is a myth.  Maybe we all need to find our own way of being maturing adults and that community celebrations aren’t the rite of passage itself. 

Yes, boys and men need rites of passage.  What they don’t need is to be told that being a man is somehow better or opposite than being a woman.

Women also need rites of passage into a mature adulthood. 

I think its a discussion we need to have together, not in opposition to each other.

Oversensitive?

I was recently talking with a survivor. She was putting herself down for being ‘oversensitive’. That is, something that would seem normal and non-threatening to most people was experienced by her as traumatic. Like a hug.

She was frustrated that certain things, which were not abuse, triggered strong reactions in her.

Knowing what she has gone through, I feel nothing but compassion for her sensitivity.

It is like a gaping wound that the lightest touch causes unbearable pain.

And then I realized that most people who overreact could have similar issues.

My mother loves to point out how sensitive I am about gender issues. She insinuates that it is my failing if I react. Well, I happen to have a big gaping wound about gender and the worth of things feminine.

My church and immediate culture scraped my soul raw with toxic messages about gender and gender roles. I feel like I was hauled naked over gravel. As I pick out the rocks of hatred, lies and indifference, I uncover hidden wounds.

Even feather brushes against it hurt. If someone mentions that boys are X and girls are Y, I immediately freeze. I get a sick feeling in my stomach. All over again I experience the message “women are worthless”. Even if X and Y are eating patterns, I still experience it as a trigger.

In reading blogs like Womanist Musings, I saw the issue of racial sensitivity come up time after time. These women of non-white status were being ridiculed for being sensitive about racial comments. They have gaping wounds that, like mine, go back generation after generation. A comment that would seem a friendly slap on the back of a white person (in our white-supremacist society), was actually stinging open flesh that had been sandpapered off by a lifetime of small, “insignificant” comments.

Not coincidentally, all of the ridicule I observed came from white persons. Is this because they are racist? I wouldn’t say that, just that they failed to see how an open laceration experiences things differently than unmarred flesh.

That brings me to other groups that react strongly to seemingly benign or honest statements: the privileged.

A classmate of mine was seething with anger that his Somalian roomie was racist against white people. I tried to explain that the definition of racism is prejudice + power, so the guy wasn’t racist – just prejudiced – at least while they are both in Canada.

My classmate got very angry at that and complained that he was always being discriminated against because he is a white, middle class male (although beyond his roomie’s hateful comments he could think of no concrete example, just his fear that he would be).

His immediate anger reminded me of other men who react to the fact that we live in a society that privileges (certain types) of men over women. The most common one I encounter is “I’m not sexist! Its just that women aren’t as ___ as men are!” Some people’s anger is truly frightening.

Now, why would a group that isn’t being put down because of their gender/body type/age/race and so on, react when this is pointed out? Why do they react as if it were threatening their very life?

I can understand when a Metis woman accused me of hating First Nations people on the basis that my skin was white. She didn’t even know my name. I assume she had been treated poorly so many times that my light skin was a trigger for her defenses. I can understand that.

I don’t understand why some men are so threatened by the realization that women are just as human as they are, that one cut off the nose of his teenage wife when she tried to get him to stop beating her. (National Geographic, Dec 2010)

Unless, he has convinced himself that her personhood really is a threat to him.

The same way that certain fundy evangelicals, JW’s and Hutterites convince themselves that the world is out to get them. That everything that doesn’t support their belief system is a direct and hostile personal attack.

How else could a person react to a kind and sincere “Happy Holidays” with outrage. What else could cause them to scream back to the person wishing them well that “Its Merry CHRISTmas and how dare you ignore the reason for the season! Christ hater!” (Yes, this is extreme, but yes, it happens.)

Some reactions I understand. Touching an open wound of abuse will get a painful reaction, even if the touch is meant as friendly or neutral.

Some reactions make me angry back.

I hope to be more patient with those people who react strongly to certain triggers and not to minimize the pain they feel, even if on the surface it appears oversensitive. Even if that person is myself.

Post Traumatic Stress Songs

My lover loves bluegrass.  I grew up in a church that condoned bluegrass and some country but no rock or anything with drums.  Even though our elder had been a drummer in highschool.  The sacred/secular divide is bemusing  – only elders can be involved with drums, the rest of us would be tainted.

As a result of hearing church songs accompanied by wailing violins, mandolins and organs, I have flashbacks when I hear out-of-tune bluegrass.  I can only enjoy the Celtic flavoured stuff.

An uncle recently gave us some tapes he made off old records.  There are some great 60s and 70s hits mixed in with the Gaithers.

The Gaithers make me cringe deep in my marrow.  The song in particular featured a grainy male voice prompting a fake-happy woman to sing the song.

He growls in a low tone, “I was nothing until you found me“

And she repeats it liltingly to whiny violins and tinny string instruments.

Now I picture him holding a gun to her head.  I picture her with a pasted smile that never reaches her eyes.  Her eyes are desperate to believe that she was nothing – her partner demands it – but desperate to disbelieve it.

Love songs of that ilk you can find in misogynistic rap songs.  (I love some rap songs, but there are blatant woman-hate in too many of them.)

This is our love song to god:  “We are dirt, don’t hurt us.  You are everything.  Only you are  good.  I am bad.  Please don’t hurt me, although I know I deserve it!  ”

I’m glad I know what love really is! 

And what good music is too :)