The history of feminism is usually defined by waves: the first wave was the era of the suffragettes, women fighting for the most basic rights--the right to vote, to own property, to hold a job; the second wave was the feminism of my college years, the era of fighting for equality--a woman can be just as good as a man at anything she wants to do; the third wave started somewhere around the 90s, and acknowledged that women's rights come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, races, and ethnicities.
In the 80s, we were all about getting rid of the trappings of femininity that had limited what we could do--the traditional women's roles of cooking and housekeeping and raising children took up so much time that you couldn't do anything else. We were all about convenience foods and day care and streamlined plans for cleaning the house (or not cleaning at all) because suddenly there was a whole world of things we'd rather do--write a software program or go for a hike or become a potter or work overtime to advance our careers.
All the old female pastimes seemed like a cage that was designed to hold us back. We wanted to be taken seriously, because we hadn't been before; we wanted to be judged on the merits of what we could do, not on how we looked or what we wore or (worst of all) what our husbands/bosses did. We wanted a level playing field with the men.
The obvious outward sign of this was clothing. When I was in early grade school in the 60s, girls were still required to wear dresses or skirts to school. The boys could run around the playground, hang from the monkey bars, and slide down the slide, but if you were wearing a dress, there were serious limitations to what you could do. Some of us figured out how to wear shorts under our dresses (Danskins were perfect because they fit snugly and didn't show), but even then you ended up with a bunch of fabric wadded up around your waist that boys just didn't have to deal with.
So when the second wave came along, most of us were overjoyed to switch to jeans, pants, gauchos (remember those?)--anything that didn't restrict our movement. Skirts and dresses became something that you wore to weddings, funerals, and job interviews. High heels were seen as a torture device designed by patriarchy to keep us looking good but unable to move. Fussy clothing--ruffles, lace, bows, puffs-- UGH. I wanted nothing to do with any of it.
So it was with a great deal of surprise that I and many other second wave feminists watched the third wave take up girl-y clothing and make it into its own kind of power. Girl power, grrrrl power, however you want to spell it-- you had the Spice Girls wearing 5-inch platform shoes and even though they were all adults, being unabashedly girly. Manicures that had to be fussed over, mini-skirts that kept you from being able to lean over, stiletto heels that would break the ankles of lesser humans--instead of signs of weakness and subservience, these became signs of female power. We can kick ass and look good doing it. We bring men to their knees.
There were, of course, many great things about this. First of all, it meant that this generation of women could take it for granted that they would be taken seriously, which is is something so profoundly wonderful that it brings tears to my eyes to think about it. They could wear flirty, feminine clothes, dress like an eight-year-old, a vamp, or a diva, and it didn't even seem to occur to them to worry that someone would ignore them or accuse them of sleeping their way to the top.
And there were lesser positives, too-- when I was in high school, having your bra strap showing was enough to send you red-faced and embarrassed to the restroom to stow it away again. By the mid 90s, camisoles were designed specifically to show your bra strap, and underwear came in vivid colors and animal prints--the whole intention was for it to be seen. And it was lot of fun to play dress-up and feel powerful doing it.
But there were also moments when I just shook my head--like one time I was wandering around the women's clothing section at REI and came across a bunch of tops intended for rock climbing that tied with a bow in back. Seriously? How can you be taken seriously as an athlete if your clothing ties in a bow? What if it came untied and presented a climbing hazard? But of course times had changed. No one thought about it like that anymore. I can already hear how a third waver would respond: Just because I climb with the guys doesn't mean I have to look like one.
Recently I've wondered if things have finally come full circle. I've been increasingly disturbed at the pictures that women post of themselves--or parts of themselves. Cleavage shots, shots of their butts, torso shots where their only coverage is an arm across their breasts. It's the same thing of course-- women feeling powerful in their bodies, and proud of how they look--and there's nothing wrong with that. I will admit to some prudish, eyebrow-raised reactions, but usually even I can tell that this isn't about prudery.
But it has struck me recently as a little odd that we've gone in the past thirty years from women being outraged that they might be judged for their tits and ass to now being insistent on being judged that way. If you use a cleavage shot as your profile picture, it almost demands that people see you as a pair of boobs.
It's not an observation that they would appreciate. They see it as a claiming of their own power to be able to revel in looking good. But as a former card-carrying member of the second wave, it just strikes me as odd.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
if you just tried harder, you could be one, too!
The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue arrived in the mail today. We've subscribed to SI for years. Minus a 3-4 year break when finances were tight, we've had a subscription since the mid-80s. We both read it. Dean often reads the whole thing, cover-to-cover, and I pick it up when something catches my eye--like a recent article on coach-athlete abuse, or the Olympics last summer.
When we first started our subscription, I was fresh out of college and I was a feminist and I was mad about everything. I could rant on cue at the drop of a hat--hand me a topic. But for some reason, the annual swimsuit issue never raised my feminist ire. Mainly because it's such a blatant fantasy--the women were so perfectly toned, styled, made up, air-brushed, and retouched that it was hard to get too worked up about it.
Even when I was young and thin, I never looked like that. So paging through the annual flesh-a-thon definitely had (has) the capacity to make me feel like a pale, shapeless blob. But I could never take it very seriously because nobody looks like that. I mean, obviously those women do (even without the airbrushing and photoshopping, they're still way more gorgeous than most of us), but there's a dozen (?) of them, out of all the women in the world, and that's why they got the job: because they're way more spectacular than the average woman. It's not supposed to be about reality. And you can hardly blame the magazine-- I wouldn't be surprised if they make more money off the swimsuit issue than they do on the rest of the year's issues added together.
But this year, 25+ years later, they finally offended me. Not the women, who are still impossibly gorgeous. Not even the settings, which I've just read have offended some people, because of juxtaposing "natives" with white women in swimsuits (although that did occur to me as a bit strange).
Nope, it's because of a new feature about "how to get the look" of the swimsuit models. What? Oh, please. There's always been a section about where you could buy the swimsuits, and there's nothing wrong with that. But this is an 8-10 page insert with inspiring phrases from the swimsuit edition editor like, "Beauty is within all of our reach. It begins with confidence." Advice for hair, eyes, lips, skin, nails and "Insider Tips" from the hair stylist and the makeup artist.
The whole thing irks me so much I'm having a hard time knowing where to start. Are they serious? The women on the pages of the SI swimsuit edition are each one in a hundred million, and even then, they've been styled, prepped, accessorized, airbrushed, photoshopped, and edited. That look is not WITHIN OUR REACH. It's insulting and patronizing to suggest that it is.
The kind of beauty they display on those pages is a fantasy, and it is as a fantasy that it's OK with me. It's not much different than me watching Batman Begins to ogle Christian Bale. Dean knows I'm never going to look like a swimsuit model, and he knows that if one of them showed up in our town next week, he would not be in the running to be her escort for the evening (at least probably not, although there is an outside chance because he's pretty dang hot). Just like I know that Christian Bale isn't really like his onscreen persona, and if he showed up at our house, I wouldn't rate a second look.
It's just insulting for them to infer that with a few tips from them, we could "get the look" of a swimsuit model. Or that we'd even want to, as if we sit up nights wishing we could be swimsuit models. They are full-time professional models, with the near-infinite resources of a best-selling publication to help them look fabulous. There's a reason I didn't go into modeling as a career (besides the obvious one that no modeling agency in their right mind would have wanted me)-- I'm willing to spend about 20 minutes a day on my looks, and that's including a 12 minute shower.
And to top it off-- this little "Secrets of a Swimsuit" section is a mini-magazine of it's own that is detachable from the rest of the magazine. WTF? So some guy is going to pull it out and hand it to his girlfriend?? Are they freaking serious? Here, honey, read this and you can look just like a swimsuit model. the whole thing is just ludicrous.
The irony is that I suspect that it was written with exactly the opposite intention-- I suspect that the editors were trying to downplay the one-in-a-million aspect and make it sound like true beauty comes from within or some such nonsense, which would be all well and good if you'd just flipped through 60 pages of women they'd picked off the street--women with muffin tops and flat hair and no makeup, or at least makeup inexpertly applied.
But it's a little much to assure us that you don't need a beauty team to look gorgeous when they've just published a magazine full of pictures of models made gorgeous by a professional team of photographers, lighting techs, stylists and makeup artists.
Give it up, SI. Just let it be what it's always been-- an impossible fantasy.
/rant over
When we first started our subscription, I was fresh out of college and I was a feminist and I was mad about everything. I could rant on cue at the drop of a hat--hand me a topic. But for some reason, the annual swimsuit issue never raised my feminist ire. Mainly because it's such a blatant fantasy--the women were so perfectly toned, styled, made up, air-brushed, and retouched that it was hard to get too worked up about it.
Even when I was young and thin, I never looked like that. So paging through the annual flesh-a-thon definitely had (has) the capacity to make me feel like a pale, shapeless blob. But I could never take it very seriously because nobody looks like that. I mean, obviously those women do (even without the airbrushing and photoshopping, they're still way more gorgeous than most of us), but there's a dozen (?) of them, out of all the women in the world, and that's why they got the job: because they're way more spectacular than the average woman. It's not supposed to be about reality. And you can hardly blame the magazine-- I wouldn't be surprised if they make more money off the swimsuit issue than they do on the rest of the year's issues added together.
But this year, 25+ years later, they finally offended me. Not the women, who are still impossibly gorgeous. Not even the settings, which I've just read have offended some people, because of juxtaposing "natives" with white women in swimsuits (although that did occur to me as a bit strange).
Nope, it's because of a new feature about "how to get the look" of the swimsuit models. What? Oh, please. There's always been a section about where you could buy the swimsuits, and there's nothing wrong with that. But this is an 8-10 page insert with inspiring phrases from the swimsuit edition editor like, "Beauty is within all of our reach. It begins with confidence." Advice for hair, eyes, lips, skin, nails and "Insider Tips" from the hair stylist and the makeup artist.
The whole thing irks me so much I'm having a hard time knowing where to start. Are they serious? The women on the pages of the SI swimsuit edition are each one in a hundred million, and even then, they've been styled, prepped, accessorized, airbrushed, photoshopped, and edited. That look is not WITHIN OUR REACH. It's insulting and patronizing to suggest that it is.
The kind of beauty they display on those pages is a fantasy, and it is as a fantasy that it's OK with me. It's not much different than me watching Batman Begins to ogle Christian Bale. Dean knows I'm never going to look like a swimsuit model, and he knows that if one of them showed up in our town next week, he would not be in the running to be her escort for the evening (at least probably not, although there is an outside chance because he's pretty dang hot). Just like I know that Christian Bale isn't really like his onscreen persona, and if he showed up at our house, I wouldn't rate a second look.
It's just insulting for them to infer that with a few tips from them, we could "get the look" of a swimsuit model. Or that we'd even want to, as if we sit up nights wishing we could be swimsuit models. They are full-time professional models, with the near-infinite resources of a best-selling publication to help them look fabulous. There's a reason I didn't go into modeling as a career (besides the obvious one that no modeling agency in their right mind would have wanted me)-- I'm willing to spend about 20 minutes a day on my looks, and that's including a 12 minute shower.
And to top it off-- this little "Secrets of a Swimsuit" section is a mini-magazine of it's own that is detachable from the rest of the magazine. WTF? So some guy is going to pull it out and hand it to his girlfriend?? Are they freaking serious? Here, honey, read this and you can look just like a swimsuit model. the whole thing is just ludicrous.
The irony is that I suspect that it was written with exactly the opposite intention-- I suspect that the editors were trying to downplay the one-in-a-million aspect and make it sound like true beauty comes from within or some such nonsense, which would be all well and good if you'd just flipped through 60 pages of women they'd picked off the street--women with muffin tops and flat hair and no makeup, or at least makeup inexpertly applied.
But it's a little much to assure us that you don't need a beauty team to look gorgeous when they've just published a magazine full of pictures of models made gorgeous by a professional team of photographers, lighting techs, stylists and makeup artists.
Give it up, SI. Just let it be what it's always been-- an impossible fantasy.
/rant over
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
crash course in literary theory
And if that title didn't turn you off, I'm not sure what would. I'll try to make this interesting-- it's going somewhere in a future post. I'm going to start off with feminism at length, and then use that as a way to briefly discuss some of the other theories.
So when last we discussed feminism, which was last January, I believe (aside: I just went and looked and the post I was thinking about was November 2010. My, how the time it does fly.).... whoa. Anyway. Last time, I was talking about the difference between the "constructivist" way of looking at gender vs. the "essentialist," which is at the heart of gender theory. A constructivist believes that there is nothing inherently feminine or masculine, the idea of gender is "constructed" by our culture. The character traits we associate with being male or female are all just types of behavior that our culture has come to associate with that gender. There is nothing "essential" about gender, nothing built-in to every female that is feminine, or into every male that is masculine. An essentialist believes the opposite-- that there are ways of being that are "essentially" or (worse) "naturally" male or female.
In an academic environment, there is only one way to be: constructivist. In fact, in one of my theory books, the guy says that he always thinks that people who are essentialist don't really know what they are saying, because they couldn't possibly be essentialist if they understood what it means. Which immediately gets my back up-- who is he to define what somebody else believes? He's only defining what he thinks an essentialist believes. You don't get to define what your opponents believe.
He goes on to say that the essentialist point of view means that there is only one healthy, normal way of being male or female. Of course there are very few people that would agree with that statement, even among the most ultra-conservative. My own view was that there are poles of masculinity and femininity and that each of us fits somewhere on the continuum between the two; we each have our own unique combination of masculine and feminine traits. I felt pretty strongly about this, because I also believe strongly that our patriarchal culture neglects the feminine side of things in favor of the masculine. When feminists say that gender is constructed and that no one is inherently male or female, it seems to me that it's generally because they want those more powerful, more highly paid masculine attributes. So that feminists of that type become the ultimate betrayers of their own sisters.
but you see what I've done there: I've separated masculine and feminine qualities from the biological state of being male or female. It doesn't matter what your biological combination of Xs and Ys is, you can have any mix of masculine and feminine traits. sigh. In defending essentialism, I've become a constructivist. So I finally had to give in. They're right. I hate it that they're right, because "they" are often smug and strident and anti-"feminine." But on that particular issue, they're right. The intelligent hermaphroditic sea-horses of Alpha Centauri IV do not have the same conception of gender as we do. (get it? "conception" and sea-horses? it was a totally brilliant pun. really it was.) There is no inherent female-ness in the characteristics we think of as feminine.
My Modern Poetry professor tossed me a bone, though, after I explained my dilemma to him. He told me about "strategic essentialism," which is an idea of Gayatri Spivak's. There are times, apparently, when it is strategic to be essentialist. I haven't had time to read it yet, but I'm intrigued. I hope she means exactly what I've said above-- in defense of the feminine side of things, it is sometimes necessary to take an essentialist stance.
I'm barely started. If this bores you, tune out for the next several days. just sayin'.
So when last we discussed feminism, which was last January, I believe (aside: I just went and looked and the post I was thinking about was November 2010. My, how the time it does fly.).... whoa. Anyway. Last time, I was talking about the difference between the "constructivist" way of looking at gender vs. the "essentialist," which is at the heart of gender theory. A constructivist believes that there is nothing inherently feminine or masculine, the idea of gender is "constructed" by our culture. The character traits we associate with being male or female are all just types of behavior that our culture has come to associate with that gender. There is nothing "essential" about gender, nothing built-in to every female that is feminine, or into every male that is masculine. An essentialist believes the opposite-- that there are ways of being that are "essentially" or (worse) "naturally" male or female.
In an academic environment, there is only one way to be: constructivist. In fact, in one of my theory books, the guy says that he always thinks that people who are essentialist don't really know what they are saying, because they couldn't possibly be essentialist if they understood what it means. Which immediately gets my back up-- who is he to define what somebody else believes? He's only defining what he thinks an essentialist believes. You don't get to define what your opponents believe.
He goes on to say that the essentialist point of view means that there is only one healthy, normal way of being male or female. Of course there are very few people that would agree with that statement, even among the most ultra-conservative. My own view was that there are poles of masculinity and femininity and that each of us fits somewhere on the continuum between the two; we each have our own unique combination of masculine and feminine traits. I felt pretty strongly about this, because I also believe strongly that our patriarchal culture neglects the feminine side of things in favor of the masculine. When feminists say that gender is constructed and that no one is inherently male or female, it seems to me that it's generally because they want those more powerful, more highly paid masculine attributes. So that feminists of that type become the ultimate betrayers of their own sisters.
but you see what I've done there: I've separated masculine and feminine qualities from the biological state of being male or female. It doesn't matter what your biological combination of Xs and Ys is, you can have any mix of masculine and feminine traits. sigh. In defending essentialism, I've become a constructivist. So I finally had to give in. They're right. I hate it that they're right, because "they" are often smug and strident and anti-"feminine." But on that particular issue, they're right. The intelligent hermaphroditic sea-horses of Alpha Centauri IV do not have the same conception of gender as we do. (get it? "conception" and sea-horses? it was a totally brilliant pun. really it was.) There is no inherent female-ness in the characteristics we think of as feminine.
My Modern Poetry professor tossed me a bone, though, after I explained my dilemma to him. He told me about "strategic essentialism," which is an idea of Gayatri Spivak's. There are times, apparently, when it is strategic to be essentialist. I haven't had time to read it yet, but I'm intrigued. I hope she means exactly what I've said above-- in defense of the feminine side of things, it is sometimes necessary to take an essentialist stance.
I'm barely started. If this bores you, tune out for the next several days. just sayin'.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
we're all goddesses around here
I can't think of a dang thing to blog about today, so how about the archetypal feminine? why sure, that's just what I was thinking about as I sat here drinking my pero. Which is lousy without honey, I might add, but we are out.
One of the things I really miss in grad school this time around that we had back in the olden days is archetypal criticism. I think there are still people who do it, but it seems to have fallen in to disrepute. You can find the occasional reference to Northrup Frye, but Jung? Have not heard one word about him since I started school again two years ago.
Strange, yes? Because in the mid-80s, archetypal criticism was huge. Or maybe I just thought so because I liked it. I read a lot of it. Granted, most of what I read was popular stuff, not academic criticism, but it wasn't uncommon to reference Jung in the classroom. There were Women who Run with the Wolves, The Heroine's Journey, Goddesses in Everywoman, a book-length archetypal interpretation of Sleeping Beauty (can't remember the title or author), and another book of several interpretations of Grimm's fairy tales. It was so much fun. I was involved in at least two or three women's groups where we read the books and then tried to retell our own lives as archetypal tales based on the underlying themes of women in western culture.
To understand it, you have to let go of the idea that masculine and feminine are about individual men and women. According to Jung, we all have masculine and feminine elements in our psyches. In my mind, the masculine archetype is about going out into the world and achieving something-- conquering, inventing, building, doing. The feminine archetype is about creating community, promoting compromise and tolerance, connecting with others in a way that honors our differences, and developing an inward focus that leads to contentment with the self. The idea is that although each of us has varying amounts of masculine and feminine within, you have to develop both to become a whole human being.
Again, this isn't about you or me or anyone in particular, and it certainly isn't about biological destiny (i.e., if you're a woman, you must find fulfillment in being a mother). Many women achieve great things, many men value community or contemplation. It's about learning to find the balance between the two, both within ourselves and in our culture. Obviously our culture values the masculine over the feminine. Even many women value achievement over all that emotional crap. I have to admit that I do, too. But I'm learning about this. To value achievement only by the patriarchal standards of our culture is to discount a part of myself. Oh, good grief. I had no idea this was where I was going when I started this. I thought it was going to end up being a movie review (I may still get there). damn.
One of the hardest things for me about my adult life has been my lack of achievement. It makes me angry that I haven't had the opportunity to have the kind of career I would have liked to have had if we'd lived somewhere where I could have a legitimate job. Sometimes it makes me very angry. But I was ventilating about this to my younger sister about a year ago, and she reminded me that to say I haven't done anything in my adult life is to discount the very real things I have done. the kind of things that don't count in the patriarchal mindset, that are more in line with the feminine archetype.
So indulging in this particular whine is a way to beat up my inner feminine self. Which is unfair, because she has accomplished a lot. I've created an environment (I hope) where my kids can thrive. I've read and written and learned and explored my own psyche. And there's other stuff, too, things that would sound silly written out. These are not things that I valued in the past. Not one time in the first 25 years of my life did I think, gee, I hope someday I will grow up to be a mother and a homemaker.
This is a tough one. I'm having a hard time writing it even now. Maybe I will switch tracks to the movie review. One of my all-time favorite movies is Howl's Moving Castle, a kids' movie based on the book by Diana Wynne Jones (which I also love). I've watched the movie at least six or eight times. It's about a young woman, Sophie, 18-ish, who works in her family's hat shop. Her father is dead, and the shop is run by her mother, who is the polar opposite of Sophie—flashy, gossipy, flagrantly emotional. One night the Witch of the Waste comes in and puts a spell on Sophie, turning her into an old woman. So Sophie leaves the shop and the life she knows, and goes off on her own adventure to find her own magic.
I watched it again last week, and it occurred to me that the reason why I love it so much is that it is about the archetypal feminine journey. How many gazillion books and movies have there been about the archetypal male journey? But this is the only one I can think of that manages the feminine perspective so beautifully-- the other ones that come to mind have to end in disaster or cynicism because in a patriarchal culture, what hope is there for a successful feminine journey?
Anyway. Sophie has to leave behind her biological family—who don't understand her at all—and her boring job, which she does only out of loyalty to her dead father. She heads out into the Waste and meets up with the Wizard Howl. Her journey is about creating a new community with herself at the center in the role of lover, surrogate mother, and creator of order out of chaos. And the movie does all this without turning her into Ma Ingalls, either. Along the way, she has to come to terms with her own attractiveness/sexuality (it's a kid's movie, so this is only indirectly addressed, but I think her fear of her own sexuality is what the curse is all about). And she has to learn to stand up to and refute inappropriate feminine archetypes, like the misuse of feminine power in the service of patriarchy (Madame Suliman), and the lecherous older woman who just wants to steal the power of younger men (the Witch of the Waste).
Her successful completion of the journey results not only in happiness for herself, but also the community she's created and even the entire nation in which she lives. (It's a fairy tale. It could happen). And although she gets her man at the end, there's another man waiting in the wings. She isn't necessarily going to spend her life as Howl's consort. It's really brilliantly done. I could go on and on, because there's more, but I think I'm starting to gush.
It's also beautifully made. The artwork is stunning. I wish I could have seen it in the theater, but I'm not sure it ever came to our town, since it is a Foreign Film. We don't hold with any of that furrin nonsense around here. But it's so well dubbed in English that you'd never know.
And while I'm on the subject of the feminine archetype in films, I will also mention Prince of Persia. It was one of the big summer blockbusters last summer. The plot is kind of dumb--the whole thing is about learning who you can trust, but then at the end, time is turned back to the start of the movie, so all that stuff they learned about trust is gone, and they end up gazing into each other's eyes and saying, You'll just have to TRUST me. It's almost comical.
But the stunts and special effects are cool (of course) and it has Jake Gyllenhaal, which I'm not going to complain about. But the best thing about it is that it's the only blockbuster male action hero movie I can think of ever that takes the female sidekick seriously--at the end, the Jake Gyllenhaal character even pays homage to her as ruler of her people. I can't exactly recommend it or you might come after me for two hours of a plot that is just plain lame, but if you don't mind that, it's worth a watch.
One of the things I really miss in grad school this time around that we had back in the olden days is archetypal criticism. I think there are still people who do it, but it seems to have fallen in to disrepute. You can find the occasional reference to Northrup Frye, but Jung? Have not heard one word about him since I started school again two years ago.
Strange, yes? Because in the mid-80s, archetypal criticism was huge. Or maybe I just thought so because I liked it. I read a lot of it. Granted, most of what I read was popular stuff, not academic criticism, but it wasn't uncommon to reference Jung in the classroom. There were Women who Run with the Wolves, The Heroine's Journey, Goddesses in Everywoman, a book-length archetypal interpretation of Sleeping Beauty (can't remember the title or author), and another book of several interpretations of Grimm's fairy tales. It was so much fun. I was involved in at least two or three women's groups where we read the books and then tried to retell our own lives as archetypal tales based on the underlying themes of women in western culture.
To understand it, you have to let go of the idea that masculine and feminine are about individual men and women. According to Jung, we all have masculine and feminine elements in our psyches. In my mind, the masculine archetype is about going out into the world and achieving something-- conquering, inventing, building, doing. The feminine archetype is about creating community, promoting compromise and tolerance, connecting with others in a way that honors our differences, and developing an inward focus that leads to contentment with the self. The idea is that although each of us has varying amounts of masculine and feminine within, you have to develop both to become a whole human being.
Again, this isn't about you or me or anyone in particular, and it certainly isn't about biological destiny (i.e., if you're a woman, you must find fulfillment in being a mother). Many women achieve great things, many men value community or contemplation. It's about learning to find the balance between the two, both within ourselves and in our culture. Obviously our culture values the masculine over the feminine. Even many women value achievement over all that emotional crap. I have to admit that I do, too. But I'm learning about this. To value achievement only by the patriarchal standards of our culture is to discount a part of myself. Oh, good grief. I had no idea this was where I was going when I started this. I thought it was going to end up being a movie review (I may still get there). damn.
One of the hardest things for me about my adult life has been my lack of achievement. It makes me angry that I haven't had the opportunity to have the kind of career I would have liked to have had if we'd lived somewhere where I could have a legitimate job. Sometimes it makes me very angry. But I was ventilating about this to my younger sister about a year ago, and she reminded me that to say I haven't done anything in my adult life is to discount the very real things I have done. the kind of things that don't count in the patriarchal mindset, that are more in line with the feminine archetype.
So indulging in this particular whine is a way to beat up my inner feminine self. Which is unfair, because she has accomplished a lot. I've created an environment (I hope) where my kids can thrive. I've read and written and learned and explored my own psyche. And there's other stuff, too, things that would sound silly written out. These are not things that I valued in the past. Not one time in the first 25 years of my life did I think, gee, I hope someday I will grow up to be a mother and a homemaker.
This is a tough one. I'm having a hard time writing it even now. Maybe I will switch tracks to the movie review. One of my all-time favorite movies is Howl's Moving Castle, a kids' movie based on the book by Diana Wynne Jones (which I also love). I've watched the movie at least six or eight times. It's about a young woman, Sophie, 18-ish, who works in her family's hat shop. Her father is dead, and the shop is run by her mother, who is the polar opposite of Sophie—flashy, gossipy, flagrantly emotional. One night the Witch of the Waste comes in and puts a spell on Sophie, turning her into an old woman. So Sophie leaves the shop and the life she knows, and goes off on her own adventure to find her own magic.
I watched it again last week, and it occurred to me that the reason why I love it so much is that it is about the archetypal feminine journey. How many gazillion books and movies have there been about the archetypal male journey? But this is the only one I can think of that manages the feminine perspective so beautifully-- the other ones that come to mind have to end in disaster or cynicism because in a patriarchal culture, what hope is there for a successful feminine journey?
Anyway. Sophie has to leave behind her biological family—who don't understand her at all—and her boring job, which she does only out of loyalty to her dead father. She heads out into the Waste and meets up with the Wizard Howl. Her journey is about creating a new community with herself at the center in the role of lover, surrogate mother, and creator of order out of chaos. And the movie does all this without turning her into Ma Ingalls, either. Along the way, she has to come to terms with her own attractiveness/sexuality (it's a kid's movie, so this is only indirectly addressed, but I think her fear of her own sexuality is what the curse is all about). And she has to learn to stand up to and refute inappropriate feminine archetypes, like the misuse of feminine power in the service of patriarchy (Madame Suliman), and the lecherous older woman who just wants to steal the power of younger men (the Witch of the Waste).
Her successful completion of the journey results not only in happiness for herself, but also the community she's created and even the entire nation in which she lives. (It's a fairy tale. It could happen). And although she gets her man at the end, there's another man waiting in the wings. She isn't necessarily going to spend her life as Howl's consort. It's really brilliantly done. I could go on and on, because there's more, but I think I'm starting to gush.
It's also beautifully made. The artwork is stunning. I wish I could have seen it in the theater, but I'm not sure it ever came to our town, since it is a Foreign Film. We don't hold with any of that furrin nonsense around here. But it's so well dubbed in English that you'd never know.
And while I'm on the subject of the feminine archetype in films, I will also mention Prince of Persia. It was one of the big summer blockbusters last summer. The plot is kind of dumb--the whole thing is about learning who you can trust, but then at the end, time is turned back to the start of the movie, so all that stuff they learned about trust is gone, and they end up gazing into each other's eyes and saying, You'll just have to TRUST me. It's almost comical.
But the stunts and special effects are cool (of course) and it has Jake Gyllenhaal, which I'm not going to complain about. But the best thing about it is that it's the only blockbuster male action hero movie I can think of ever that takes the female sidekick seriously--at the end, the Jake Gyllenhaal character even pays homage to her as ruler of her people. I can't exactly recommend it or you might come after me for two hours of a plot that is just plain lame, but if you don't mind that, it's worth a watch.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
GS: last one for awhile
Since I'm boring myself to death with the grad school posts, I'm sure it can't be too much fun for anyone else, either. Fortunately, we are done with the theory portion of my Intro to Graduate Studies class, so there will be less to think about. The rest of the semester is about research methods, getting published (not one of my goals), and getting into a PhD program (also prob not in my future, esp since the school I'm attending doesn't have a PhD program in English).
Yesterday we went to the university library and visited the archives. I could never devote my life to archival research, but in the short run, it might serve a useful purpose for me. The archivist was ... oh, the term is demeaning, but still... he was adorable. We were all politely yawning behind our hands at the tedious boredom of it all (only one box on the table at a time, only one folder out of the box at a time, ask for permission, ask for permission, ask for permission, etc). But the archivist was practically dancing around in his excitement about his special collections. I find human beings endlessly fascinating. And btw, the latest way of taking notes: instead of copying or typing while you're examining the materials, you bring your digital camera and take a picture. No lie. How cool is that? After you ask permission, of course.
Anyway. A few observations before I leave theory behind-- I wish I could say forever, but I fear it will be with me for at least the next couple of years till I'm done with school. I'm still thinking about feminism, of course, and it occurred to me that what I'm arguing with myself about isn't whether or not feminism is valid (because it is), but how it should be practiced. I was reminded of something that happened in the first theory class I took, which was back in June. Of course I'd heard about the biological vs. cultural definition of gender, I'd even had arguments about it, but it was the first time I'd studied it as an academic discipline. The professor was going on, for about the third class period in a row, about how there is no significance to our cultural definitions of what gender should be, it is all just a construction. And I had another one of those little moments, where the fog lifts and you get it. Geeze, this is two posts in a row about something like that, which will lead you to think I have these moments all the time, which is not true-- this was six months ago. Anyway. For a moment, it was like this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. All those expectations of what women should be like-- chatty, maternal, good cook, homemaker, endlessly involved in their friends lives, interested in clothes and makeup and jewelry -- and which I am manifestly not, disappeared. It was like floating.
Whoa.
So it's not that I don't get it. I do. But it was followed almost immediately by a feeling of betrayal-- that if I leave cultural femininity behind, I am betraying my sisters. this is difficult to explain. bear with me here for a minute. Because feminine values are not valued in our culture-- the ones I listed, and a lot more (vulnerability, interdependence, cooperation, to name a few). So while I completely support the banishing of cultural expectations that are imposed on anyone about almost anything, I can't support the denigration of feminine values. I'm learning to separate those two out. In fact, that's what this post is about. Me trying to figure out how to let go of all those years of feeling like a failure, while at the same time not devaluing the feminine.
Because feminism often feels to me not like male-bashing but like female-bashing. Broadly speaking, it often feels like we feminists want men to be feminine and women to be masculine. And to an extent, I agree-- to the extent that each of us needs to balance out within ourselves our own unique mix of masculine and feminine aspects. And given the nature of our culture, that sometimes means that women need to over-emphasize masculine traits (like valuing the individual over community (to be blunt: acting out of self-interest), or being strong and opinionated) and vice versa in order to compensate for cultural programming.
But even as I say that, I still staunchly stand by the importance of femininity. Even though I'm not a very feminine person. You mess with my sisters, you mess with me. It's a funny mix where we are right now, isn't it? Because women are still discriminated against in ways that have much to do with the way our culture is organized. I'll even go along with using the term patriarchy, as long as we're clear that a) patriarchy isn't just about men being in charge, and b) women can (and often are) just as patriarchal as men. Because how are we going to undermine patriarchy if women are all trying to be patriarchal? Being a biological female doesn't excuse being ruthless or cruel, or using unethical means to get what you want, or ignoring the importance of people in your push to own power-- all of which are things that I associate with patriarchy (not masculinity), and all are things that I've heard feminists justify as being OK if it's done by a woman with feminist goals.
I'm boring myself again. I was going to skip the reading report for October because I hadn't "read anything" until it occurred to me that I could report on some of the academic reading I've had to do. Because everyone should read House of Mirth and Age of Innocence (both by Edith Wharton). Oh, lord, should they. Wharton is such an incredible writer. HoM is earlier, and the writing is more sort-of in-your-face so you notice it-- wow, that was beautifully written. And it could be a textbook for teaching structure-- the two halves are perfectly balanced. AoI is more subtle, and absolutely brilliant. When I read them in my 20s, I thought HoM was better, and AoI was just the pathetic story of a man who was too weak to go after what he wanted. At nearly 50, it read entirely differently. But they are both depressing, so you're forewarned. And talk about women supporting patriarchy-- read them, and then tell me which gender is oppressing which, because you could sure as hell argue it either way. Beautifully written, worth reading, but depressing.
Yesterday we went to the university library and visited the archives. I could never devote my life to archival research, but in the short run, it might serve a useful purpose for me. The archivist was ... oh, the term is demeaning, but still... he was adorable. We were all politely yawning behind our hands at the tedious boredom of it all (only one box on the table at a time, only one folder out of the box at a time, ask for permission, ask for permission, ask for permission, etc). But the archivist was practically dancing around in his excitement about his special collections. I find human beings endlessly fascinating. And btw, the latest way of taking notes: instead of copying or typing while you're examining the materials, you bring your digital camera and take a picture. No lie. How cool is that? After you ask permission, of course.
Anyway. A few observations before I leave theory behind-- I wish I could say forever, but I fear it will be with me for at least the next couple of years till I'm done with school. I'm still thinking about feminism, of course, and it occurred to me that what I'm arguing with myself about isn't whether or not feminism is valid (because it is), but how it should be practiced. I was reminded of something that happened in the first theory class I took, which was back in June. Of course I'd heard about the biological vs. cultural definition of gender, I'd even had arguments about it, but it was the first time I'd studied it as an academic discipline. The professor was going on, for about the third class period in a row, about how there is no significance to our cultural definitions of what gender should be, it is all just a construction. And I had another one of those little moments, where the fog lifts and you get it. Geeze, this is two posts in a row about something like that, which will lead you to think I have these moments all the time, which is not true-- this was six months ago. Anyway. For a moment, it was like this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. All those expectations of what women should be like-- chatty, maternal, good cook, homemaker, endlessly involved in their friends lives, interested in clothes and makeup and jewelry -- and which I am manifestly not, disappeared. It was like floating.
Whoa.
So it's not that I don't get it. I do. But it was followed almost immediately by a feeling of betrayal-- that if I leave cultural femininity behind, I am betraying my sisters. this is difficult to explain. bear with me here for a minute. Because feminine values are not valued in our culture-- the ones I listed, and a lot more (vulnerability, interdependence, cooperation, to name a few). So while I completely support the banishing of cultural expectations that are imposed on anyone about almost anything, I can't support the denigration of feminine values. I'm learning to separate those two out. In fact, that's what this post is about. Me trying to figure out how to let go of all those years of feeling like a failure, while at the same time not devaluing the feminine.
Because feminism often feels to me not like male-bashing but like female-bashing. Broadly speaking, it often feels like we feminists want men to be feminine and women to be masculine. And to an extent, I agree-- to the extent that each of us needs to balance out within ourselves our own unique mix of masculine and feminine aspects. And given the nature of our culture, that sometimes means that women need to over-emphasize masculine traits (like valuing the individual over community (to be blunt: acting out of self-interest), or being strong and opinionated) and vice versa in order to compensate for cultural programming.
But even as I say that, I still staunchly stand by the importance of femininity. Even though I'm not a very feminine person. You mess with my sisters, you mess with me. It's a funny mix where we are right now, isn't it? Because women are still discriminated against in ways that have much to do with the way our culture is organized. I'll even go along with using the term patriarchy, as long as we're clear that a) patriarchy isn't just about men being in charge, and b) women can (and often are) just as patriarchal as men. Because how are we going to undermine patriarchy if women are all trying to be patriarchal? Being a biological female doesn't excuse being ruthless or cruel, or using unethical means to get what you want, or ignoring the importance of people in your push to own power-- all of which are things that I associate with patriarchy (not masculinity), and all are things that I've heard feminists justify as being OK if it's done by a woman with feminist goals.
I'm boring myself again. I was going to skip the reading report for October because I hadn't "read anything" until it occurred to me that I could report on some of the academic reading I've had to do. Because everyone should read House of Mirth and Age of Innocence (both by Edith Wharton). Oh, lord, should they. Wharton is such an incredible writer. HoM is earlier, and the writing is more sort-of in-your-face so you notice it-- wow, that was beautifully written. And it could be a textbook for teaching structure-- the two halves are perfectly balanced. AoI is more subtle, and absolutely brilliant. When I read them in my 20s, I thought HoM was better, and AoI was just the pathetic story of a man who was too weak to go after what he wanted. At nearly 50, it read entirely differently. But they are both depressing, so you're forewarned. And talk about women supporting patriarchy-- read them, and then tell me which gender is oppressing which, because you could sure as hell argue it either way. Beautifully written, worth reading, but depressing.
Monday, September 27, 2010
GS: the dead horse again
you will be able to tell, perhaps, that I am ambivalent about posting this. It was written yesterday morning about events that happened a week ago and have been simmering in my brain ever since, and I'm pre-dating it by two days so I hope it will disappear. I can't tell you how much I wish I never brought this up. but I did, so I'm finishing it up, and since I never manage to get everything I want to say across in the first try, there might even be another one. I hate feeling stupid. (so, one might reasonably ask, why the hell did I go back to school? because let me tell you, it is one non-stop stupid party.)
Yesterday, our theory professor told us about our first paper, which she wants in two parts. She does not want them elegantly connected into one paper, she wants two distinct parts. I was reminded of that (for absolutely no reason) while I was trying to type this out, so in that spirit, here are a bunch of disconnected bits that all revolve around the same basic idea.
1. Can I just clarify (again) that I consider myself a feminist. I vote feminist, for one thing. I argue as a feminist-- being in class the last month has reminded me how often I do. But having been outside of academia for 25 years, I have to say that academic feminism makes me wonder. In part, because I feel betrayed by it. by the time I had a family and a job and a busy life and was faced by a number of difficult decisions about what my priorities were, feminism was very little help to me. Life is complicated. You can't always have it be all about me, me, me. I got tired of going around all the time being enraged about situations that weren't bugging anybody else. But that's what it seemed like my feminist background was telling me--because of male domination of women for the past millennium or two, you deserve to have everything your way, and if the men in your life have to pay the price for it, well, they deserve it. I just got tired of it. I live in the gray area. There are no black and whites here. So even though I still consider myself a feminist, I find myself rolling my eyes at a lot of feminist rhetoric.
2. My literary theory class is a three hour seminar that meets once a week. we're spending a week on each of the major groups of theories. So last week, we talked about feminism (which is now officially feminisms, plural, because there are so many different kinds). The debate is far too complex for me to even begin to summarize it here. At the heart of it is "essentialism" vs. "constructionism" --which is the old nature vs. nurture issue dressed up in academic language. If you're an essentialist, you believe there is something "essential" or elemental or built-in or fundamental about being male or female; if you're a constructionist, you believe that gender identities are constructed by the culture, there is nothing, no character trait, no behavior, that is inherently male or female. (and put like that, constructionism sounds pretty reasonable, now that I type it out. Maybe I should just bag this whole thing.) It doesn't take long to realize that in an academic arena, it is important to be constructionist. There is a long history of misogynist or just plain old misguided theories about women and "their place" that make it important in the academic world to be constructionist-- so important that our professor had a note of dread in her voice when she noted that one author we read exhibited a "creeping sense of essentialism." I get that. In an academic environment, I can probably even go along with it.
3. The problem is, I don't really believe that. Or at the very least, I'm only willing to accept it as a tentative conclusion. I don't believe that there is some universal way of being female, but I do believe that women are different than men in ways that go beyond cultural conditioning. (and that is not to say that I define being female only as a way of being different than male, as if being male were the gold standard and being female just a variation of it.)(See? there's all these hidden arguments going on all the time.) I feel some kind of affinity for other women that I don't feel for men. The fact that I can't list exactly what it is that is essential about it doesn't mean I don't experience that. You can't bully me into not having my experiences, my perceptions. I've learned that one-- that's what growing up fundamentalist and figuring out how to leave it will do for you. (and yes, I do realize that my perceptions are created by the culture, the hegemony, whatever you want to call it.)(we did marxism this week.)
4. but here's the thing: none of us, essentialist or constructionist, can prove their point. None of us can get outside of our culture, outside of our way of thinking, and say for sure that they are Right. Even when we're interpreting other cultures, we're still doing it from inside our own. It seems to me that these stands, these positions, have more to do with an agenda than they do with anything relevant to what's going on in my life. In other words, I've discovered that I don't really care about the essentialist vs. constructionist argument because there's no way to really know. Even though I've been participating in it (in the early posts on this topic, without really knowing it) in this blog.
5. But here are a couple of small points that we talked about in class last week. One: our professor said that contemporary feminism, or 3rd wave feminism, or neo-feminism, or whatever you want to call it, is not about opposing masculine power, it's about opposing a particular type of power which requires the denigration of others. YES. That is exactly what I think of when I think of my own brand of feminism. It sounds a lot like what Starhawk called "power over" back in the 80s (as opposed to "power from within"). But then she (our prof) talked about the search for an androgynous ideal--which is where I start to roll my eyes, because so often feminists define the androgynous ideal as male. (which is what I was trying to get at in this post, but maybe not very well). I'm not interested in being male. I think I am more comfortable with what our professor called French feminism-- which comes down to believing that life and experience are "irreducibly heterogeneous"-- a term I love. (is that the difference? women's brains are irreducibly heterogeneous, while men's are monolithic? hmmmm.) Every time I've made a statement like that in this blog, I've discovered within a week or less that it was a dumb thing to say, so take that with about a pound of salt, please. I'm just riffing.
Yesterday, our theory professor told us about our first paper, which she wants in two parts. She does not want them elegantly connected into one paper, she wants two distinct parts. I was reminded of that (for absolutely no reason) while I was trying to type this out, so in that spirit, here are a bunch of disconnected bits that all revolve around the same basic idea.
1. Can I just clarify (again) that I consider myself a feminist. I vote feminist, for one thing. I argue as a feminist-- being in class the last month has reminded me how often I do. But having been outside of academia for 25 years, I have to say that academic feminism makes me wonder. In part, because I feel betrayed by it. by the time I had a family and a job and a busy life and was faced by a number of difficult decisions about what my priorities were, feminism was very little help to me. Life is complicated. You can't always have it be all about me, me, me. I got tired of going around all the time being enraged about situations that weren't bugging anybody else. But that's what it seemed like my feminist background was telling me--because of male domination of women for the past millennium or two, you deserve to have everything your way, and if the men in your life have to pay the price for it, well, they deserve it. I just got tired of it. I live in the gray area. There are no black and whites here. So even though I still consider myself a feminist, I find myself rolling my eyes at a lot of feminist rhetoric.
2. My literary theory class is a three hour seminar that meets once a week. we're spending a week on each of the major groups of theories. So last week, we talked about feminism (which is now officially feminisms, plural, because there are so many different kinds). The debate is far too complex for me to even begin to summarize it here. At the heart of it is "essentialism" vs. "constructionism" --which is the old nature vs. nurture issue dressed up in academic language. If you're an essentialist, you believe there is something "essential" or elemental or built-in or fundamental about being male or female; if you're a constructionist, you believe that gender identities are constructed by the culture, there is nothing, no character trait, no behavior, that is inherently male or female. (and put like that, constructionism sounds pretty reasonable, now that I type it out. Maybe I should just bag this whole thing.) It doesn't take long to realize that in an academic arena, it is important to be constructionist. There is a long history of misogynist or just plain old misguided theories about women and "their place" that make it important in the academic world to be constructionist-- so important that our professor had a note of dread in her voice when she noted that one author we read exhibited a "creeping sense of essentialism." I get that. In an academic environment, I can probably even go along with it.
3. The problem is, I don't really believe that. Or at the very least, I'm only willing to accept it as a tentative conclusion. I don't believe that there is some universal way of being female, but I do believe that women are different than men in ways that go beyond cultural conditioning. (and that is not to say that I define being female only as a way of being different than male, as if being male were the gold standard and being female just a variation of it.)(See? there's all these hidden arguments going on all the time.) I feel some kind of affinity for other women that I don't feel for men. The fact that I can't list exactly what it is that is essential about it doesn't mean I don't experience that. You can't bully me into not having my experiences, my perceptions. I've learned that one-- that's what growing up fundamentalist and figuring out how to leave it will do for you. (and yes, I do realize that my perceptions are created by the culture, the hegemony, whatever you want to call it.)(we did marxism this week.)
4. but here's the thing: none of us, essentialist or constructionist, can prove their point. None of us can get outside of our culture, outside of our way of thinking, and say for sure that they are Right. Even when we're interpreting other cultures, we're still doing it from inside our own. It seems to me that these stands, these positions, have more to do with an agenda than they do with anything relevant to what's going on in my life. In other words, I've discovered that I don't really care about the essentialist vs. constructionist argument because there's no way to really know. Even though I've been participating in it (in the early posts on this topic, without really knowing it) in this blog.
5. But here are a couple of small points that we talked about in class last week. One: our professor said that contemporary feminism, or 3rd wave feminism, or neo-feminism, or whatever you want to call it, is not about opposing masculine power, it's about opposing a particular type of power which requires the denigration of others. YES. That is exactly what I think of when I think of my own brand of feminism. It sounds a lot like what Starhawk called "power over" back in the 80s (as opposed to "power from within"). But then she (our prof) talked about the search for an androgynous ideal--which is where I start to roll my eyes, because so often feminists define the androgynous ideal as male. (which is what I was trying to get at in this post, but maybe not very well). I'm not interested in being male. I think I am more comfortable with what our professor called French feminism-- which comes down to believing that life and experience are "irreducibly heterogeneous"-- a term I love. (is that the difference? women's brains are irreducibly heterogeneous, while men's are monolithic? hmmmm.) Every time I've made a statement like that in this blog, I've discovered within a week or less that it was a dumb thing to say, so take that with about a pound of salt, please. I'm just riffing.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
GS: let me try this again
I've mentioned before that being a mom doesn't come easily to me. At work or around other adults, I often find myself being maternal-- keeping track of people, or trying to help, or taking care of things. But toddlers? pre-schoolers? infants? I just don't have the patience. I did not feel a huge wave of maternal bliss the first time I held my daughter in my arms. I felt a wave of terror, of complete and utter inadequacy. I did not cherish The Baby Days. I was utterly and completely relieved to leave my daughter four hours a day with a wonderful woman running an in-home daycare so that I could keep my job on a part-time basis. The older she got, the more I enjoyed her. Her teenage years had their definite moments of angst, but I'd take a teenager any day over an infant. Heck, I'd take a whole house full of teenagers over an infant.
You get the idea. June Cleaver I am not. There are a number of consequences of this: for one thing, I am enormously proud of myself for sticking it out. It didn't come naturally to me, but I kept at it because it was more important to me than anything else ever had been. I still remember the day when my daughter was 3 and we were sitting in the cab of the little Nissan pickup I drove back then, and we looked at each other and it was like we really saw each other for the first time. I remember giving this little nod and thinking, Okay, then. I can do this. We're all right. I don't take credit for the amazing person she has turned out to be (she is now 20, and she has done that all by herself), but I do take some credit for not screwing it up. (I'm leaving my son out of this for now since he is still at home and just turned 13, but he is a similarly awesome kid).
So on the first day of class of "Progressive Voices" (Four American Women Writers of the Progressive Era), when the professor had us go around the room and each introduce ourselves and tell "something interesting" about ourselves, the only thing that came to mind was my kids. My kids are far and away the most interesting thing about me. This is the bare truth. I am by nature an observer. I am not interesting. I watch people and I think about them. I don't do crafts or hobbies or sports, I haven't had an interesting career, I don't have any big accomplishments in my life to brag about. Except that I survived my kids' childhoods (I'm still surviving my son's, of course, but he's out of the bitty kid stage, anyway). (And honest to pete, it didn't occur to me until the next day that the fact that I've had a blog for seven years would be something interesting. Never crossed my mind.)
But you can imagine the reaction that I got in a roomful of students in a feminist literary criticism class when I said that the most interesting thing about me is my kids. It just isn't done. We're women, hear us roar. We don't find our fulfillment in other people, we find it in ourselves and our own accomplishments. And on the one hand, I get that. I've been a feminist for practically my entire life (I should write a post about my childhood moments of feminism someday). I took a class in feminist literary criticism in 1983 before any of the other students in this class were even born. But on the other hand, it pissed me off. I could almost see their eyes rolling, their inward groans of embarrassment for me, the immediate conclusions that were jumped to with eager leaps. But you know, I'm not embarrassed that I'm proud I've turned myself into a good mom. I suppose I could have gone into a long-winded explanation of what I meant when I said the most interesting thing about me is my kids, but damn it, I shouldn't have to.
This isn't done yet. Just more of the continuing conversation.
You get the idea. June Cleaver I am not. There are a number of consequences of this: for one thing, I am enormously proud of myself for sticking it out. It didn't come naturally to me, but I kept at it because it was more important to me than anything else ever had been. I still remember the day when my daughter was 3 and we were sitting in the cab of the little Nissan pickup I drove back then, and we looked at each other and it was like we really saw each other for the first time. I remember giving this little nod and thinking, Okay, then. I can do this. We're all right. I don't take credit for the amazing person she has turned out to be (she is now 20, and she has done that all by herself), but I do take some credit for not screwing it up. (I'm leaving my son out of this for now since he is still at home and just turned 13, but he is a similarly awesome kid).
So on the first day of class of "Progressive Voices" (Four American Women Writers of the Progressive Era), when the professor had us go around the room and each introduce ourselves and tell "something interesting" about ourselves, the only thing that came to mind was my kids. My kids are far and away the most interesting thing about me. This is the bare truth. I am by nature an observer. I am not interesting. I watch people and I think about them. I don't do crafts or hobbies or sports, I haven't had an interesting career, I don't have any big accomplishments in my life to brag about. Except that I survived my kids' childhoods (I'm still surviving my son's, of course, but he's out of the bitty kid stage, anyway). (And honest to pete, it didn't occur to me until the next day that the fact that I've had a blog for seven years would be something interesting. Never crossed my mind.)
But you can imagine the reaction that I got in a roomful of students in a feminist literary criticism class when I said that the most interesting thing about me is my kids. It just isn't done. We're women, hear us roar. We don't find our fulfillment in other people, we find it in ourselves and our own accomplishments. And on the one hand, I get that. I've been a feminist for practically my entire life (I should write a post about my childhood moments of feminism someday). I took a class in feminist literary criticism in 1983 before any of the other students in this class were even born. But on the other hand, it pissed me off. I could almost see their eyes rolling, their inward groans of embarrassment for me, the immediate conclusions that were jumped to with eager leaps. But you know, I'm not embarrassed that I'm proud I've turned myself into a good mom. I suppose I could have gone into a long-winded explanation of what I meant when I said the most interesting thing about me is my kids, but damn it, I shouldn't have to.
This isn't done yet. Just more of the continuing conversation.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
in which aunt BeaN beats a dead horse
I actually woke up thinking about this this a.m., so I'm going to type it out so I can get it out of my head. But I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to make my point.
So. Try this. Let's say you tell a group of older women that women in their twenties are more attractive to men than women in their fifties. You lay out the biological reasons why this is (supposedly) true: women in their twenties are potential producers of children, so on average they are more attractive because their ability to attract men ensures the survival of the species. After most of your group of older women cringe inwardly and think, "Oh, God, I know, I know" (kidding), there are the following reactions. One goes out and gets plastic surgery and starves herself into oblivion and manages to look ten or fifteen years younger than she is. One goes out and finds a dozen gorgeous 50-year-olds and a dozen unattractive 25-year-olds, lines them up, and says, "SEE? It's not true." Another takes the opposite tack and searches (to the ends of the earth) for the five men on the planet who think older women are more attractive than younger women. (kidding! kidding!) One finds a 50-year-old woman who is having a baby and says, "See? Your point about the biology is wrong." But one of them says, "So what? Maybe it's true, but I'm happier now than I was when I was 25, I take better care of myself, and I like the way I look. Big deal." And she ignores the whole thing and walks out.
So which one has done the most to subvert the cultural bias about women's attractiveness? The last one, of course. At the very least, she's the happiest and most content of the lot. The others are all consciously or unconsciously shoring up the idea that it matters whether or not older or younger women are more attractive. And that's how this argument (the one from the previous post) feels to me. We feminists, when we argue so vociferously that there is no biological basis for the cultural differences between the genders, are unconsciously shoring up the idea that those differences are important, that it matters that men are (or are not) stronger or taller than women beyond the bare statement of the fact. OK, so (usually) men are stronger than women. That has no bearing on anything outside of a situation where physical strength makes a difference. Like when I need help to lift a cooler full of drinks and ice into the back of my car. :-)
??? let me know what you think. I'm pretty sure there's a hole in my logic here somewhere but it's escaping me at the moment.
So. Try this. Let's say you tell a group of older women that women in their twenties are more attractive to men than women in their fifties. You lay out the biological reasons why this is (supposedly) true: women in their twenties are potential producers of children, so on average they are more attractive because their ability to attract men ensures the survival of the species. After most of your group of older women cringe inwardly and think, "Oh, God, I know, I know" (kidding), there are the following reactions. One goes out and gets plastic surgery and starves herself into oblivion and manages to look ten or fifteen years younger than she is. One goes out and finds a dozen gorgeous 50-year-olds and a dozen unattractive 25-year-olds, lines them up, and says, "SEE? It's not true." Another takes the opposite tack and searches (to the ends of the earth) for the five men on the planet who think older women are more attractive than younger women. (kidding! kidding!) One finds a 50-year-old woman who is having a baby and says, "See? Your point about the biology is wrong." But one of them says, "So what? Maybe it's true, but I'm happier now than I was when I was 25, I take better care of myself, and I like the way I look. Big deal." And she ignores the whole thing and walks out.
So which one has done the most to subvert the cultural bias about women's attractiveness? The last one, of course. At the very least, she's the happiest and most content of the lot. The others are all consciously or unconsciously shoring up the idea that it matters whether or not older or younger women are more attractive. And that's how this argument (the one from the previous post) feels to me. We feminists, when we argue so vociferously that there is no biological basis for the cultural differences between the genders, are unconsciously shoring up the idea that those differences are important, that it matters that men are (or are not) stronger or taller than women beyond the bare statement of the fact. OK, so (usually) men are stronger than women. That has no bearing on anything outside of a situation where physical strength makes a difference. Like when I need help to lift a cooler full of drinks and ice into the back of my car. :-)
??? let me know what you think. I'm pretty sure there's a hole in my logic here somewhere but it's escaping me at the moment.
Friday, August 20, 2010
in which Aunt BeaN tries to dig herself out of a hole
I'm a middle-of-the-road sort of liberal, but I live in one of the most conservative areas of the conservative heartland. An area where if you're even willing to have the word liberal used in your general vicinity, folks are pretty sure you're plotting with the United Nations to take over the world. Around here, it is more common than not to be anti-government, anti-Democrat and especially anti-Obama, anti-choice, pro-gun and whatever other similar adjectives you can think of to string along there (though not necessarily Republican-- there was a lot of support for Ron Paul around here during the last election). I've lived here for 18 years. I have a lot of experience with being a liberal who lives in the midst of conservatives. We moved here from an area that was drowning in universities-- I heard once that the town where we lived had the second highest per capita number of PhDs in the country. So we were in the middle of the sort of academic liberalism that thrives in that kind of community, and we were part of it. But when you move out of that environment and into the hinterlands, you discover that a lot of the stuff that makes complete sense in an academic environment doesn't make any sense at all to those who haven't been indoctrinated to think that way. (Although I detest many of the things that Ann Coulter says, she has a point about liberal academia that I don't think you get while you're in the midst of it, because you're so caught up in how right it is, how things should be. Or at least I was. I guess I shouldn't speak for anybody else.)
So anyway. The point I'm trying to make here is that there are things that have become commonplace to say among feminists/liberals that just don't play in the rest of the world. And when you say them, you leave yourself wide open for a Glenn Beck follower or an Ann Coulter devotee to make mincemeat out of you. and I think this is one of them. If you say "There is no biological basis for gender differences," all they have to do is point out that women have wombs and men have Y chromosomes, and many physical characteristics (like strength and height and muscle mass) have definite bell curves that tend toward one gender or the other--all of which are things that are going to have an effect on behavior. Not to mention the fairly well documented evidence for what happens when you pump lab rats full of testosterone or estrogen, each of which is more prominent in one gender or the other.
So if you want to say that "the genetic state of being male (or female) has so many infinitely different ways of being expressed in any individual person's life that there's really no point in trying to define a set of biologically based gender traits," you've made a good, valid observation and one that is worth thinking about. Your conservative friend might disagree with you but you could have a really interesting conversation about it. But that's a different thing than saying that gender traits have no basis in biology.
Does that make sense? I'm honestly not sure about this issue, and I am fascinated by it. Let me know what you think. You can always comment anonymously, or you can e-mail me or call if you don't feel comfortable posting. I think there is going to be a follow-up to this sometime in the next couple of days because I didn't say everything I started out wanting to say, but I think this is all for now.
So anyway. The point I'm trying to make here is that there are things that have become commonplace to say among feminists/liberals that just don't play in the rest of the world. And when you say them, you leave yourself wide open for a Glenn Beck follower or an Ann Coulter devotee to make mincemeat out of you. and I think this is one of them. If you say "There is no biological basis for gender differences," all they have to do is point out that women have wombs and men have Y chromosomes, and many physical characteristics (like strength and height and muscle mass) have definite bell curves that tend toward one gender or the other--all of which are things that are going to have an effect on behavior. Not to mention the fairly well documented evidence for what happens when you pump lab rats full of testosterone or estrogen, each of which is more prominent in one gender or the other.
So if you want to say that "the genetic state of being male (or female) has so many infinitely different ways of being expressed in any individual person's life that there's really no point in trying to define a set of biologically based gender traits," you've made a good, valid observation and one that is worth thinking about. Your conservative friend might disagree with you but you could have a really interesting conversation about it. But that's a different thing than saying that gender traits have no basis in biology.
Does that make sense? I'm honestly not sure about this issue, and I am fascinated by it. Let me know what you think. You can always comment anonymously, or you can e-mail me or call if you don't feel comfortable posting. I think there is going to be a follow-up to this sometime in the next couple of days because I didn't say everything I started out wanting to say, but I think this is all for now.
feminism, the ongoing adventures
So I wrote those posts about feminism* earlier this year, and then wasn't happy with them because they didn't seem like quite what I wanted to say, but I never really figured out how to fix them, so I just moved on. But on one of my many trips this summer, it occurred to me that the problem I was having was that I wanted to write one post about feminism and have it say everything I wanted to say. In hindsight, that is silly, because it's a huge, complex topic with many different ways that it impacts my life and the way I think. It has to be an ongoing conversation, and it will be, not the least because I'm taking two classes this fall that will involve feminist literary criticism. So I decided to put those posts back in place (two of them had been moved), create a label for posts on feminism, and turn it into an ongoing discussion.
But I hadn't gotten around to either doing that or saying that when the issue of gender morality turned up on LucyMarch.com today. I plunged in and stated my case badly and probably in a way that was offensive to some, so I'm feeling the need to say more. So .... I'm working on the next installment in the conversation, which is just one more of what is sure to be many. it should be up later tonight or tomorrow.
and a postscript, as long as I'm talking about blognews. At one point I had decided to move literary stuff-- including my grad school adventures-- to another blog. But over the summer, I've decided that I don't have the energy to manage two blogs, so I bagged that idea. Plus there wouldn't be much left over to post about here, since I'm betting that being in school this fall is going to take up most of my energy. So just in case you caught that post (which is now deleted), NEVER MIND.
* and btw, when you click on one of the labels, you get the posts that have been tagged with that label in reverse order (in other words, most recent first). So if you want to read them in order, you have to start at the bottom and read up, so to speak. I've tried to figure out how to change this, but according to blogger's help center, there's no way around this at present.
But I hadn't gotten around to either doing that or saying that when the issue of gender morality turned up on LucyMarch.com today. I plunged in and stated my case badly and probably in a way that was offensive to some, so I'm feeling the need to say more. So .... I'm working on the next installment in the conversation, which is just one more of what is sure to be many. it should be up later tonight or tomorrow.
and a postscript, as long as I'm talking about blognews. At one point I had decided to move literary stuff-- including my grad school adventures-- to another blog. But over the summer, I've decided that I don't have the energy to manage two blogs, so I bagged that idea. Plus there wouldn't be much left over to post about here, since I'm betting that being in school this fall is going to take up most of my energy. So just in case you caught that post (which is now deleted), NEVER MIND.
* and btw, when you click on one of the labels, you get the posts that have been tagged with that label in reverse order (in other words, most recent first). So if you want to read them in order, you have to start at the bottom and read up, so to speak. I've tried to figure out how to change this, but according to blogger's help center, there's no way around this at present.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
feminism revisited, um, again
I remembered where I was going with yesterday's post before it got hijacked by my little rant. (Can you hijack your own post? probably not. but anyway, read yesterday's post first.) With another day's perspective, I'm thinking maybe I should save this until we've gotten to the part of the semester where we're actually reading feminist and cultural studies stuff, so that I don't end up reacting to what I think they're saying instead of what they actually said. But here's the gist of it. I certainly don't disagree with either field (feminism or cultural studies). But I resent that they've marginalized (*borrows their terminology with a glare*) what I loved about the study of literature. I'm --of course-- more aware of this than the other students because the last time I was in the classroom, 25 years ago, we were still doing it the old way. The professor would assign us something to read, and we would read it. And then he/she would give us the historical, biographical, and critical ideas that he/she felt were relevant to understanding the text. And then we would talk about our reaction to it and how the historical / bio / critical ideas changed or didn't change what we thought. It was fascinating and wonderful and I loved it. There were problems with it, of course. You could start with what got assigned to read. It was late enough in the twentieth century that we were no longer just reading "dead white males" as they say, but we were still either reading the traditional canon or reading something different in reaction to it.
But apparently this is no longer allowed. Or if you do it, you have to be somewhat sheepish about it, acknowledging that you know you aren't doing it right. It seems that anything that you can come up with to say about how you want to discuss literature is going to get shot down as unacceptable. You want to talk about the historical contexts? New Critics say no. You want to talk about Pope and Dryden? feminists say that you're accepting patriarchal ideas about what is worth reading. You want to talk about what Hemingway meant in "Hills Like White Elephants"? well, there's any number of reasons you can't do that. So at the end of the day, if you're going to keep all these theorists happy, you're just going to sit and glare at each other and not talk about literature at all.
I do understand that if we don't question our assumptions, we end up supporting classist, racist, sexist, homophobic, commodity-frenzied ideas that we don't really mean to support. but good grief. the pendulum swing seems to have gone a little too far the other way.
Friday, May 28, 2010
feminism revisited
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about feminism. OK, I just went back and checked it was three months ago. Where the hell does the time go?
Anyway. As I said, I wrote that post, and it was fine, and it said what I wanted to say on that day, but it didn't say nearly enough and it didn't feel right. A week later, I wrote the comment that is attached to it, which helped, but it still just didn't seem right. It's such a complicated issue. But every time I re-read it, it sounded OK-- there isn't anything there that I disagree with. I just couldn't figure out what was bugging me. And then I forgot about it. I've been busy.
But I'm taking this literary criticism class, where feminism is a major theme, and taking the class means driving and driving and driving, and finally a couple of days ago while I was in about my fourteenth hour of being behind the wheel this week, I figured out why that post had been bothering me so much. Because I really am still a feminist. The tools that feminism gave me are still a fundamental part of who I am. But the circular reasoning that goes along with it drives me nuts. I'm going to try to explain this but apologies in advance, because I'm having a hard time explaining it to myself let alone get it typed out.
I've heard it said that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out, but if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it, the frog will boil to death. I have no idea whether or not that's true and there's no way I'm going to test it out, but it does illustrate a point. Growing up as a female in the 60s and 70s was a bit like being a frog in that cold pot of water that gradually heats up as you move from childhood into puberty and adulthood so that you don't realize that the life has gone out of you until it's too late. There were so many little things that were limiting for girls at the time: dress codes and stated restrictions on what sports and activities you could be involved in and unstated restrictions on what career you could go into or what kinds of opinions and attitudes you could have. Ways that men were allowed to intimidate and bully women to get what they wanted; ways that women bullied and intimidated other women to keep each other in line. But for the most part it was all just background, it wasn't something you thought about as long as the men in your life were fairly nice. It was just the way things were. The women's movement of the 70s changed all that. They made us see all the little things that had just been part of the background before. It wasn't until feminism gave me the tools to recognize the ways I restricted myself to fit into someone else's mold that I became aware enough of those restrictions to learn to effectively manage my own life-- I figured out how to jump out of the pot. Or at least became aware that I could jump out of the pot if I needed to.
And that still is the way that feminism is useful to me. I use it all the time. It's a major part of the lens through which I view life. (how many metaphors can I get going here? wait, maybe I can work in a mirror and an egg)(I've been reading Northrop Frye.)
But here are the things that still bug me about it. Back in the day, you could really get off on seeing women as victims. Here were poor, innocent, pure women, who were all about love and kindness, who had been held back and oppressed by evil power-hungry militaristic men. But that isn't the way it was where I grew up--and maybe this is more obvious if you're from the South-- it was often women who were the ones enforcing all the restrictions and even making them stricter than the men in our lives cared about. way stricter, for that matter. I know that's a complicated topic, but because of that, I don't see the point of blaming men. Both genders were there. I think it took all of us to build the society we had/have, even if in many of the ways that feminists like to harp on, it was a society that benefited men.
Again, complicated topic. I can think of twenty things I could say here on both sides of the argument, but it's a blog post, not a dissertation. I can remember having this argument in college with the professor, who was a traditional 70s/80s feminist, vs. almost everyone in the class. The professor wanted us to believe that women are practically always the innocent victims of a powerful patriarchy that is run by and benefits men, forced to go along with it because of their concern for the safety and welfare of their children. And I, and most of the young women in that class, just didn't agree. If you're going to see women as purely victims in the creation of culture, it somehow makes them subhuman. Women are HALF of the population. either we're half-responsible for what we've created, or we're relegated to some sort of childlike status that excuses us from responsibility. Not buying it.
Wow, that wasn't really what I was going to say, but there it is. And now I can't remember what I was originally going to say. so maybe this will get edited some more. In fact, knowing the way I usually do this, it will probably get edited a lot. work in progress. Let me know if you have input.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
feminism
Last fall when I went back to school at a relatively large university, I re-encountered feminism for the first time in more than 15 years. I'd sort of forgotten about it. We live in the Northern Rockies-- meaning Idaho, Montana, Wyoming-- where feminists don't exactly abound, and where feminist ideology-- even the good stuff-- is made to seem like shrieking shrewishness.
So it was with exasperation, amusement and (not the least, by any means) relief that I found that on campus, feminism is still alive and well. In many ways, feminism is an old friend of mine. I said in my early posts in this blog that it was bumping up against the inconsistencies in fundamentalist theology that led to my departure from evangelicalism, and that is true. But it would be no less true to say that it was feminism that gave me the strength to actually depart. A long-smoldering anger at the limited role allowed women in right-wing churches was definitely a major player. Women are relegated to roles where their prodigious talents are used for things like planning potlucks and redecorating the church parlor. Then the (male) establishment rolls their eyes when women get petty and catty over the only things they are allowed to take an interest in. They believe that the pettiness and cattiness prove their point-- that women are unsuited for leadership roles-- instead of seeing that maybe they have the cause and effect reversed. Having subsequently been involved in a number of churches that have women actively involved in all levels of leadership, I think it is clear that in the absence of arbitrarily defined gender roles, pettiness is pretty equally distributed between men and women. I don't know of a church with women in leadership roles that hasn't benefited from their strong, vibrant presence.
BUT. (You knew there would be a "but.") On the other hand, feminism, at least the way I understand it now, has reached a point where it seems blatantly self-defeating. This post has been kicking around in my head for several months now and the reason I've been avoiding writing it is because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to explain this. I'm so out of the loop on academic-speak that I probably won't be able to say it in a way that says what I want it to say. But I'm going to give it a shot because I've been thinking about this a lot recently (in fact, this train of thought is what led to the previous post about being a follower). So here goes.
Here is how I am still a feminist. We live in a culture that values masculinity over femininity. I'm not talking about valuing men over women, I'm talking about valuing strength over vulnerability, individualism over community, leading over following, power over subtlety. I'm a feminist because I think we are in desperate need of a better balance between the two gender poles, both within ourselves and in our culture. It is almost a cliche' to say we each must find within ourselves the point of balance between our masculine and feminine selves, but it's true. Are you really a strong person if you're afraid to be vulnerable? Are you really a good leader if you don't occasionally know when to shut up and follow? And conversely, if you always just go along with what other people want, never standing up for yourself, are you anything but a victim? and will anyone ever know the real you?
For each of us, within our own unique selves, the balance between masculinity and femininity is different. and I'm convinced that if we were each to find that point of balance within ourselves, our culture would become more balanced as well. And in that sense, I am still very strongly feminist. I value feminine values. They are often what makes life sweet, what makes it bearable to be around other people--nurturing, connection, acquiescence, gentleness, kindness.
But here is why I am no longer a feminist: the so-called "feminists" seem to value femininity least of all. To listen to some of them, you would think their goal is for all women and minorities to become top-of-the-food-chain, powerful, wealthy, driven WASPs. Their critique of culture only makes sense if you adopt the very values that represent what they're critiquing: that political power and materialist wealth are the criteria for success. Maybe you've heard a feminist go on and on about the statistics of "women's oppression": that even 40 years after the women's movement of the 70s, women lag behind in income and political power. But in order for that to be a problem, you have to buy that income and political power are the defining characteristics of success. And I don't buy that. Are women more free to do what they want to do today than they were 40 years ago? I think so. And even more importantly: is that true for women and men? If that's true (and I hope it is), that would be a better measure of the success of feminism. We're not there yet, and sometimes it seems like we're moving backwards, but progress is being made.
I thought about calling this post "Why I am no longer a feminist," but I could just as easily have called it "Why I am still a feminist." Both would be accurate.
AB
p.s. just for the record, I am still pro-choice. I've said that elsewhere in this blog but it seems worth repeating here.
Friday, February 12, 2010
the art of following
I'm not a leader. It took me awhile to figure that out when I was in my twenties and thirties, because back then, we all thought everyone could be whatever they wanted to be. In the 80s, I was all about feminism: women taking back their power and women being just the same as men. In my mind, not being a leader meant being weak and insignificant. In the 90s, I was in one of those women's spirituality groups where we were all supposed to share the leadership equally. Each week, we traded the leadership role. It went as you might predict-- when some women were leading, the meeting went well. When others were leading, the meeting ground down into pettiness. I think I was somewhere in the middle. I can do a decent job of leading a discussion, and I'm pretty good at reading group dynamics. But making decisions, taking responsibility for the direction of the group-- definitely not a skill of mine. And being able to inspire other people to follow, the most valuable leadership skill of all imo, is something I lack entirely. In that particular women's group, we were supposed to keep trading the leadership role around so that all of us could develop our leadership skills, and I do see the point of that. Some things get better with practice, and if that is one of the goals of the group, then it makes a lot of sense. But I also came out of that group thinking that there are some people who will always be better at it than others. And lucky for the rest of us, there are some people who are natural leaders, and we should all be damn grateful for that.
Even now that I understand that about myself, though, I still find myself taking leadership roles sometimes. I was on a committee a couple of years ago where even my limited leadership skills were more than anyone else had. I avoided taking over during our first several meetings because I didn't want to seem like I was... well, taking over, you know? And because I know I'm not the best at it. but eventually I stepped in and took charge, because the meetings were degenerating into pointless, meandering discussions that just went around in circles. We weren't exactly making waves with me in charge, but it was better than before.
So maybe since I've been on both sides of the fence, so to speak, I'm a little more aware of what it takes to be a good follower. There's an art to it, and it's one that is often ignored or devalued. A good follower listens, pays attention, tries to understand, and does his/her best to be supportive of the group and of the leader. You offer your opinion, and then you accept the decision of the group. And the most difficult follower skill of all: you have to be able to figure out for yourself when you need to speak up and when you need to just go along and be supportive, even if you don't agree.
OK, I'm waving my magic wand to come up with a simple example here. Let's say you're on a committee that's planning your child's senior class trip. There are twelve parents on the committee, and fortunately the one who is the chair of the committee is a good leader (which isn't always the case). There will be at least four or five opinions about the destination of the trip. Everyone, including you, expresses their opinion. Then you either vote or someone decides. If it's not the destination you wanted, you let it go and turn your attention to planning for the chosen place. That's easy. They can only go one place, they can't go to all of them.
But what if the group has chosen an activity for the trip that wouldn't be appropriate for all the students? Say, going to see a play that is about mature themes. Your child would be fine with it, but you know your child's best friend would be shocked and offended. So you speak up. We need an alternate activity for the kids who don't want to go to the play, or we need to choose a different play. The other parents downplay the problem and try to move on. Do you stick to your guns, or do you just give in, thinking (as the other parents do) that it will be good for the more sheltered kids to be exposed to some new and different experiences? It would depend-- on the play, the community values of the place where you live, the availability of other options, and how strongly you feel about it.
That to me is the hardest thing about being a good follower. I picked an innocuous example (and it's totally fictitious, by the way, my kids' high school doesn't do a senior trip). But it can actually be quite difficult to figure this out. When do I refuse to give in, because I know that either a) there will be consequences that aren't being taken into consideration, or b) I just won't be able to live with it as it stands? and how far do you push it? and when is it time to just throw in the towel and decide you can't participate anymore?
I'm a follower. I know how difficult it is to be a leader, to be the one that takes responsibility for decisions, and I don't like doing it. So I value someone that does. I admire and respect people who are willing to take that on their shoulders, and I'm willing to be supportive and encouraging. But you have to feel like the leader is understanding and respectful of his/her followers, too. That you're not just being ignored and shunted to the side. At least sometimes, the leader has to be willing to put his/her own interests aside in favor of the best interests of the group.
I'm being vague here and it's intentional. sorry about that. :-) but I still think it's an interesting topic.
AB
Even now that I understand that about myself, though, I still find myself taking leadership roles sometimes. I was on a committee a couple of years ago where even my limited leadership skills were more than anyone else had. I avoided taking over during our first several meetings because I didn't want to seem like I was... well, taking over, you know? And because I know I'm not the best at it. but eventually I stepped in and took charge, because the meetings were degenerating into pointless, meandering discussions that just went around in circles. We weren't exactly making waves with me in charge, but it was better than before.
So maybe since I've been on both sides of the fence, so to speak, I'm a little more aware of what it takes to be a good follower. There's an art to it, and it's one that is often ignored or devalued. A good follower listens, pays attention, tries to understand, and does his/her best to be supportive of the group and of the leader. You offer your opinion, and then you accept the decision of the group. And the most difficult follower skill of all: you have to be able to figure out for yourself when you need to speak up and when you need to just go along and be supportive, even if you don't agree.
OK, I'm waving my magic wand to come up with a simple example here. Let's say you're on a committee that's planning your child's senior class trip. There are twelve parents on the committee, and fortunately the one who is the chair of the committee is a good leader (which isn't always the case). There will be at least four or five opinions about the destination of the trip. Everyone, including you, expresses their opinion. Then you either vote or someone decides. If it's not the destination you wanted, you let it go and turn your attention to planning for the chosen place. That's easy. They can only go one place, they can't go to all of them.
But what if the group has chosen an activity for the trip that wouldn't be appropriate for all the students? Say, going to see a play that is about mature themes. Your child would be fine with it, but you know your child's best friend would be shocked and offended. So you speak up. We need an alternate activity for the kids who don't want to go to the play, or we need to choose a different play. The other parents downplay the problem and try to move on. Do you stick to your guns, or do you just give in, thinking (as the other parents do) that it will be good for the more sheltered kids to be exposed to some new and different experiences? It would depend-- on the play, the community values of the place where you live, the availability of other options, and how strongly you feel about it.
That to me is the hardest thing about being a good follower. I picked an innocuous example (and it's totally fictitious, by the way, my kids' high school doesn't do a senior trip). But it can actually be quite difficult to figure this out. When do I refuse to give in, because I know that either a) there will be consequences that aren't being taken into consideration, or b) I just won't be able to live with it as it stands? and how far do you push it? and when is it time to just throw in the towel and decide you can't participate anymore?
I'm a follower. I know how difficult it is to be a leader, to be the one that takes responsibility for decisions, and I don't like doing it. So I value someone that does. I admire and respect people who are willing to take that on their shoulders, and I'm willing to be supportive and encouraging. But you have to feel like the leader is understanding and respectful of his/her followers, too. That you're not just being ignored and shunted to the side. At least sometimes, the leader has to be willing to put his/her own interests aside in favor of the best interests of the group.
I'm being vague here and it's intentional. sorry about that. :-) but I still think it's an interesting topic.
AB
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