Friends!  I want you to know that I am moving my blog.  This will be my last post at Xanga, at least for now.  I need a new creative space; this one is feeling a little stale to me.  I am very excited to tell you that my new blog will be up and running shortly--it already exists, I just haven't posted anything to it yet.  I'm a little sad to be moving, but I'm also hopeful that a new space will inspire me to write more and write more often.  I hope to see you at the new space, http://bodygoddess.blogspot.com, very soon!  Love to you, C.

Empowering Gender/Gendering Empowerment

This has been the hardest section of this three part series to articulate.  In the past year, I have developed a little ball of righteous anger in the pit of my stomach.  Sue Monk Kidd insists that anger is only productive insofar as it is a step toward a collaborative conversation among men and women about the ways in which gender affects relationships.  [Sidenote: In my limited experience, I find that genderqueer and transgender persons are breaking down barriers by challenging gender binaries with their very existence.  The prospect excites and intrigues me: a world beyond traditional gender delineations, these binaries that I find so stifling…could it really be true?!]  My personal righteous anger is directed primarily at the men who have attempted to diminish my humanity—the men who have violated me in many different ways.  My anger is also directed toward my father, who refuses to see me as a grown woman whose respect he must earn and who, through constantly ignoring and dismissing me, manages to fuel my disdain for men more than even those who violated me in big ways.  I can forgive their single incidents in a way that I cannot forgive my father.  To forgive my father, I must forgive him each time we talk, but to remain in conversation with him, I cannot explain the ways in which his behavior is hurtful.  It is a catch-22 and an ongoing conflict that stems from his socialization (as a self-righteous, self-important, ever entitled hetero white man) and the ways in which I (an indignant, fiery, intelligent young woman) rejected his advice and example in my own social development.

The disparities between the ways women and men are socialized, in my experience, create great gaps in communication when trying to articulate experiences and when entering social scenarios between genders.  The assumptions we bring into our interactions with one another derive from the expectations we have encountered during our socialization (from childhood through adulthood).  For example, many of the men…you know what, let’s just take one example.  Let’s talk about a man I will call Archie, a man who manipulated me in heinous ways.  I only choose him because he is a clear archetype and the gender delineation will be much easier.  He sexually harassed me and locked me into a relationship with a very clear power dynamic—he believed he held all the power, and because I was young and naïve, I let him.  When he told me the things he wanted to do “with” (really TO) me, I didn’t know how to react.  When he told me not to tell anyone, I didn’t—for fear he would inflict self-harm for which I would later be blamed.  I genuinely believe that he was socialized to think that he bore no responsibility toward me in that situation, that he was entitled to control and manipulate me.  That is not to say that he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong.  He did.  He just didn’t believe that I mattered or that he bore any responsibility for the way his words and actions affected my socialization as a young woman.  I, of course, felt very conflicted about my responsibilities to him—on several levels.  I felt responsible because I cared about him and worried about his professed mental illness (stories which I believe to this very day—that was undoubtedly real).  I also had a skewed view of strength; I gotta be tough to be a girl, and that meant I had to silently shoulder the burden of what he was telling me, both the emotionally intimate things and the perverse things, which I believed I could make him stop.  Men are socialized (speaking in sweeping generalizations) to be physically strong, but emotional strength for men is silently bearing emotional burdens.  I think the vulnerability with which Archie expressed his anguish and his diminishing physical (masculine) strength as he aged made me feel like I was so emotionally strong that I could handle everything that was happening.  When he told me I was strong and brave, naturally I believed him (because it’s TRUE!!!!).  Little did I know the kind of internal strength I would need as his misdeeds came to light and my worldview crumbled.   It was an awful moment when I realized that I could not automatically respect or trust persons in positions of authority, that the church was not always a haven or a happy, welcoming family.  It was damaging to realize that people in positions of power and privilege are not always the towers of strength they are perceived to be. 

Archie is just one example.  It is horrifying to think that by age 23, I had been violated at the hands of men emotionally, physically, and sexually—I had been victimized in every way that I swore I never would.  I remember begging to watch a movie on TV, starring Dolly Parton, my idol, and only being granted permission if I promised to watch it with Mom and discuss it afterword.  It was about a woman who was physically abused, and when Mom and I discussed the movie, my seven-year-old self told my mother how bad it was to let men hurt you or say mean things to you.  You should always tell someone and get help if someone is trying to hurt you in any way.  When my fifteen year old self told my biological father of a violent incident with my stepfather, my mother told me I was ruining our family, and I dropped it.  My stepfather apologized to me the same week and sometime later convinced my mother that the violent incident never occurred, even though my mother was in the room when it happened.  I was socialized with these conflicting messages—be tough, stand up for yourself, but not if you’re standing up against your mother’s husband. It makes me wonder how to teach young people that moral values are not relative; it is always important to stand up for yourself and to not let people hurt you.

Because white, hetero men are socialized in a white, hetero man’s world, it is easy for them to be socialized to overlook the humanity of marginalized groups (though not ALL hetero white men overlook those on the margins).  They are brought into a social system geared toward their success, a society which says: work hard (or even not-so-hard anymore), and everything will work to your advantage.  They do not have to struggle to gain rights or privileges based on their color, gender, or sexual orientation, so it is not imperative for them to know or to empathize with the struggles of others.  It’s not always malicious, but men can ignore and objectify women/persons of color/other marginalized groups quite easily, especially when we on the margins let them.  Sometimes, through some encounter or experience, hetero white men are willing or even eager to engage those who have experiences of marginalized persons, and that, to me, is the goal: to create a community of empathy, dialogue, and mutual understanding. I've met many men who fit this description, though I have met many more who do not.  I believe that young boys who grow up with conscientious mommies and daddies who teach their children about the true meaning of strength, how to show respect for others, and the value of listening and dialoguing, are much too rare and very lucky.  That is how we can begin to empower both genders—by socializing boys and girls alike to see the uniqueness and strength of both genders as well as the inherent benefits and challenges of different social locations.

Empowering gender, finding ways of validating both women and men to create positive change in their communities, is a great goal.  I think my righteous anger is my current step toward finding a collegiality in my life.  Furthermore, as I have been thinking back to the specific men who all too often represent men as a whole in my mind, I think about their ideas of strength versus the idea of strength I now hold…ironically, my current idea of strength has come about as a result of my interactions with them.  This is where gendered empowerment has created an internal conflict for me.  All my life, I’ve had conflicting understandings of strength and power: You gotta be tough to be a girl, but men are stronger than women.  My life has shaken out the controversy for me.  The majority of the men who have defined masculinity for me have been cruel and conniving at worst, duplicitous and disrespectful at best…okay, wonderful at best of the best, those sweet and precious few, but most of the men I’ve known well have fit the malevolent descriptions.  Anyhoo.  I cannot help but wonder what idea of empowerment these men have, what kind of lessons they teach their daughters.  To me, nothing about their strength was very empowering—they did nothing to create egalitarian situations in which we could both feel respected.  They took what they wanted from me—physically, emotionally, intellectually—and left me to sort it out.  Lately, I have found the phrase “man up” extremely ironic, since it refers to being tough like a man.  I’ve instead taken to saying “woman up,” because that is usually the kind of strength a situation calls for, which is to say, the strength I’ve found.  It’s a strength that manifests itself in both self-preservation and community preservation, fostering respectful relationships, and cultivating a spirit of resilience and resistance in the face of brutish force and blatant disrespect.  I’ve learned how to speak my mind, how to gather my inner pieces and rebuild when needed, and how to move forward with self-reliance. The world could use less "man-up" and more "woman-up." 

Oh my mama told me/’Cause she said she learned the hard way/She say she wanna spare the children/She said ‘Don’t give or sell your soul away’/’Cause all that you have is your soul.—“All That You Have is Your Soul,” Emmylou Harris (written by Tracy Chapman)

Everyone knows I fly my feminist flag proudly.  I love, love, love being a woman.  I cannot remember a time when I wanted to be a boy, even though I grew up as something of a tomboy.  It always seemed like the best of both worlds to be a girl with some stereotypically masculine qualities.  Out of necessity to hold onto some sacred ordering of the cosmos, my metaphysics have evolved to incorporate femininity in a realm usually ruled by masculinity.  I’m madly in love with the Goddess, the sacred feminine, the womb that is ever creating and rebirthing the cosmos.  I’m even considering getting a little tattoo over my heart, a triple goddess that symbolizes transcendence and powerful femininity, the journeys on which I have found myself, and the birth/death/rebirth cycle that is inherent in the universe (and in my life) in myriad ways.  Actually, I’ve been reading a book that my housemate recommended in preparation for the tattoo, to make sure this is what I really want.  The book is the one listed above, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Mermaid Chair and The Secret Life of Bees (neither of which have I read, though my mother has been strongly encouraging me to read the latter).  At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but while I’m not done with it, I have begun to really get into it, and I have some preliminary observations.  It’s challenged my assumptions about my own upbringing generally and my understanding of my relationship with my mother specifically.  It has caused me to re-examine my development and growth as a person, a woman, and yes, a lesbian.  In retracing my journey to this point, I’ve had to reckon with some really powerful incidents of violation of my personhood and how the violations by men in my life affected my socialization as a woman.  This week has been a frenetic one, probably the result of so much intellectual and emotional energy, and it’s been a tough process to compose my thoughts.  So I’ve broken this little mini-essay into three installations, which I am tentatively calling “Inherent Power,” “Empowering the Empowerer,” and “Empowering Gender/Gendering Empowerment.”

Inherent Power
I grew up surrounded by women.  My mother had many women friends, generally around 10+ years her senior (ironic, considering she used to stay on my case for having so many older friends myself).  The men I saw in her life—our lives—were generally on the periphery, including my dad.  The exception was probably my maternal grandpa, who grew up in a time when women were homemakers, between the first and second women’s liberation movements.  His experiences of being husband and father, while I can’t speak to the totality of his experience, were primarily within the bounds of more traditionally delineated gender roles.  When his wife, my grandmother, did work, it was as a cafeteria lady.  She cooked all day, came home, and cooked all over again.  (She’s the best cook ever…of course, she did have quintuple bypass surgery, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with all the down-home family meals over the years….)  I guess that must have been around the Gloria Steinem women’s lib years.  Twenty to thirty years after the second women’s movement, during my childhood in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, my experience of my grandfather’s nurturing was that he believed I could do anything and everything I wanted to do.  I like to believe he was liberated, too, although he was never too thrilled with the idea of me as a pastor, for reasons he’s never really explained to me.

I grew up stubborn.  Perhaps this is my dad in me, because I really don’t see my mother as stubborn.  Rigid, maybe, but more than willing in many cases to kowtow to the men in her life.  Her father, the aforementioned grandfather, is her barometer for success.  [She has always wanted to be considered a success in his eyes, and in his eyes, I am one of her greatest accomplishments.  She is the epitome of “The Favored Daughter,” as Sue Monk Kidd describes this archetype in Dissident Daughter.  It’s a little unfortunate, when I think about the fact that she tried so hard to follow in his footsteps career-wise but gained his admiration most by giving him a baby granddaughter named for his other daughter, my aunt Becky, who died while pregnant with a baby of her own.  I wish it wasn’t her traditional maternal role that garnered so much attention from the man she most admired.  But I digress.  Where was I?  Oh, yes, my obstinate childhood.]  Growing up, my mother never got onto me for questioning her reasoning, and she learned early that if she told me “no,” there had better be a good reason backing that answer, or we were gonna tangle.  I got in plenty of trouble for deliberately disobeying rules I deemed ridiculous and of course for the occasional backtalk…and “because I said so” was never a sufficient answer.  But I don’t remember getting in trouble for challenging a rule beyond the surface reasoning.  What I do remember was feeling able to question, able to challenge assumptions and rules.  Mom and I collaborated, to a great degree.  We had an understanding.  And I’ll say this right now: I never got a spanking twice for the same thing.  We were both fast learners.  One of the things Mom always said, and I learned quickly, is, “You gotta be tough to be a girl.”  And tough I was.

Here’s the thing, though.  I think she meant, “You gotta be tough to be a girl, because you can’t be dependent on men for encouragement/validation/self-esteem.  It’s a man’s world, and to get anywhere, you have be independent and strong.”  What I heard, or at least what I came to hear is, “You are inherently powerful because you are a girl.  Girls are by nature fierce and strong, and don’t let anyone, especially men, tell you otherwise.”  I’ve been so lucky.  Sue Monk Kidd’s experience has been my mother’s experience: listen to your father/husband/grown son for advice, marry, be a dependent but call it partnership, and for God’s sake don’t rock the boat by asserting yourself too much.  Women are as good as men, if they are in their place: the kitchen, the home, secretaries, teachers, you know the stereotypes.  I’ve never felt that way.  Moreover, I’ve been able to validate my own lived experience to the extent that when my own father says, “I’ll never take you seriously because you’re young and a woman” (and no, he wasn’t being ironic…he really doesn’t take me seriously even though as the youngest of his children by 20 years, I graduated from college before either of my siblings and am the only one with a masters…or the courage to move myself all over the world chasing dreams—neither of which does he really value), I can immediately dismiss his opinion as irrelevant.  It has no power over me.  I know I’m smart; I don’t need my dad or any other man to tell me so to make it true.  I’m inherently strong, powerful, and courageous.  My mama told me so.  She inadvertently (or at least only quasi-intentionally) allowed me to believe in my own self worth to the exclusion of any contradictory opinion. 

As I think of it, though, I follow in her footsteps, because if my grandfather had dismissed me, I might have taken him seriously.  His opinion means the world to me, too.  So any other man who is as gentle and wonderful as my Pappaw is a-ok in my book.  Because I made my life among women, however, such worthy male opinions are few and far between in my life.

i just read this really fun article on one of the feminist websites i frequent.  it seems like a fun little exercise to list some things that are overrated.  i am trying to be a little ironic and maybe controversial, so please don't be offended if this list applies to you/you disagree.  and feel free to post here, on your own blogs, or in email form a list of your own.  i'd love to hear from ya--it would certainly be an interesting conversation!  okay, here goes:

overrated:
1. middle aged white men.
2. mind-altering substances.
3. chastity/monogamy.
4. the bible.


underrated:
1. manners.
2. women of color.
3. hov lanes/subways/bicycles/walking.
4. the american south.