What's the use?
I’m having a feminist existential crisis. What is with this stupidity that seems to plauge the women of my generation? I can’t seem to figure out if it is intentional or if it is some kind of haunting disease that is incurably passed on from one ditz to the next. Is it some kind of intentional game, some game they play to win the hearts of oafish men who would like to believe that we are as dumb as the girls on TV? And if so, does this charade actually work? Is their sex so easily fooled into believing that these women are nothng more than a low cut shirt and a short skirt? I want so badly to believe that it is intentional, that it is some form of ancient witchcraft to fog the minds of men so that we may have our way… but I severely doubt it. Watching these girls prance around, toss their hair and say idiotic things like “loves it!” and “that’s soooo sexy” makes me want to rexamine myself- am I really of their kind? How did I end up so different?
I remember a conversation that I had with a certain 8th grader while trying to pry her away from MTV episodes of the Real World.. I sat down on the couch next to her, and as her eyes were glued to the screen, mine were glued to a book. The girl said nothing of the book, only that it made me “look smart.” Her mother sugggested that I take her to the library and pick out some books for her, so that she could read instead of watching so much tv. The idea of going to a library didn’t warrant even a cringe from her (a cringe, I suppose, would’ve insinuated that she had been to the library before and did not like it), rather she stood there with a blank look of disgust on her face.
When I was in 8th grade, I was reading Rushdie, Kerouac, Wolfe, Fitzgerald. The way I see my little cousins ignoring the family at dinner because thye are engrossed in their game-boys was the same way I used to act when I had a good book. I remember my father asking me all the time when we were at restaurants “what book is it this week, jess?” And I would simply hold it up to show him the cover, annoyed at his insistance in having a conversation with me while I was so clearly trying to get lost amongst the pages. What was it that drew me to literature? I really have no idea. Even now, when my life seems exceedingly hectic and fast paced, I retreat to my corner and pick a book off the shelf, and as if I were being counciled by an old friend, things fall into place. Nothing else works.
I don’t really know why I turned out this way, I never really gave it much thought until recently after a few awful encounters with women of my generation. I asked my friend rachel about it. She’s a vibrant, brilliantly intellegent woman who can argue with you about politics while kicking your ass at soccer. She too has noticed this frightening lack of intellect in our sex. “ How do they get like that?” I asked her. She responded with another question “what makes strong women?” I read a quote off her wall by Beauvoir “One is not born but becomes a woman” We sat and thought about it for a while, neither of us knowing what to say.
At her soccer game earlier that day, I sat in the bleachers and overheard some of the other teams talking. The teams were co-ed, and the way the men talked about “having to have the women” made it seem like a horrible handicap. Clearly they weren’t watching the game because Rachel was the best one out there. But what astonished me was that there were girls sitting with the boys, taking their abuse, and some of them even agreeing. As the game went on, I felt my face flush with anger as I heard the girls giggle at the boys’ brutish comments on how they would never tackle a girl on the field. I heard the girls flirtatiously ask about the rules of the game, as if they had never seen it played before. It made me want to turn around, grab one of them and shake them, saying that amazing line from I heart Huckabees “ wake up pretty girl, the joke is on you”. Girls like that are worse than anti-feminists: they perpetuate a lie every single day, in the classroom, on the sidelines, in the bedroom. It makes me sick to think that some people may see me as too boldly overstepping my “role”, my role which is supposidly to be like the rest of them, whose idea of international relations is buying a Gucci bag. Seriously.
I think about it, and I think about it, and I think that maybe it’s lack of knowledge. As if, somehow, somehwere along the line, someone forgot to tell these women that they don’t have to take the abuse of society, they don’t have to fit the mold of beauty (that same disgusting mold which even occasionally drives me to skip meals) and idiocy. It occurred to me one day when I was explaining to one of my little cousins that I was a feminist. “What’s a feminist?” she asked me. She must’ve been 13 at the time. I stared at her, completely dumbstruck. At first I thought she was kidding, but then she asked me again. When I explained to her that a feminist is someone (man or woman) who believes that women are equal to men and should be treated as such (equally, but not necessarily the same), she asked me why I was a feminist.
It’s a question I get a lot, actually. And it’s usually followed by some comment like “you’re not butch enough to be a feminist.” Or “ what’s a pretty girl like you so worried about anyway?” They don’t get that it is because of the way I look that I am the way I am. They don't understand that if I don't fight for myself, if I don't stand up and show that I am actually more than what I appear, no one will. It is my only way of earning the respect of others, but at the same time, the respect of myself. How is it consistent to go through life feeling as if I am an equal, believing in my equality but allowing others to treat me as a subordinate?
I was raised with a twin brother, I know all about the conscious and unconcious discrimination against my sex, because I was raised with it. I am still in awe of the way my parents raised us, and yes, we fulfilled some stereotypes: my brother is far better at math than I am, but my appreciation of languages out-does his. We broke stereotypes too, however: he is a sensitive musician, I am more athletic. My parents did a wonderful job of letting me believe that sexual discrimination was a thing of the past, and they honestly told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. But now, looking back, I know that every parent must feel a certain amount of cognitive dissonance when they say “you can be whatever you want to be.” When their son says that he wants to be president, it is a distinct possibility that one day he could be, but when their daughter declares her dream to be president, they accept it with a pat on the head and a nod, knowing full well that she will most likely be married at 27 and have no ambitions for entering the political realm.
I remember being 15 years old and arguing with my parents about politics. My mother told me not to argue, “it’s not ladylike” and I snapped back “who ever said anything about being a lady?!” From that day on, she has insisted that I go into politics.
But the point of this very long rant about my sex and our seemingly inherent depreciation in intellect is not about me. The point is that I often find myself questioning: what is it that I’m fighting so much for? Or better yet: for whom? The airheaded women of my generation and my daughters generation will never understand. And so the everso popular existential question arises: if you are in a cage, but know nothing of its bars, nor the outside world, are you free? Is ignorance really bliss? I remember talking to an escaped slave (www.iabolish.org) who spoke at my highschool a few years ago. He said that while he was a slave, there was no concept of freedom in his mind. The word did not exist to him, and so he did not know what he lacked.
Perhaps that is what we women are, slaves who are hopelessly addicted to our captors (the facist beauty standards, the misogynist pop-culture, the “roles” of good, moral women who don’t want their children to grow up to be rapists, murderers or –gasp- gays.) We are addicted and glued to our captors the way that 8th grader was glued to the tv screen, we fulfill our duties as “woman” and in return, we get a nice slap on the butt and some crude comment. But it’s the only attention we get, and so it makes us feel worthy. A simple Pavlovian method of submission from the day we’re born to the day we die, drooling over any kind of attention we get, that we are begging to get, from the other sex. Some of us have escaped the endless cycle. I don’t know how, but we got out.
I want to free my sisters, and educate them, but I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of the game. I’m tired of their counter-productive, self-fulfilling prophecies of idiocy and failure. Count me out. Why am I fighting for women who don’t even know what they’re missing, who mock me and won't know what to do with the equality when it is handed to them?
I remember a conversation that I had with a certain 8th grader while trying to pry her away from MTV episodes of the Real World.. I sat down on the couch next to her, and as her eyes were glued to the screen, mine were glued to a book. The girl said nothing of the book, only that it made me “look smart.” Her mother sugggested that I take her to the library and pick out some books for her, so that she could read instead of watching so much tv. The idea of going to a library didn’t warrant even a cringe from her (a cringe, I suppose, would’ve insinuated that she had been to the library before and did not like it), rather she stood there with a blank look of disgust on her face.
When I was in 8th grade, I was reading Rushdie, Kerouac, Wolfe, Fitzgerald. The way I see my little cousins ignoring the family at dinner because thye are engrossed in their game-boys was the same way I used to act when I had a good book. I remember my father asking me all the time when we were at restaurants “what book is it this week, jess?” And I would simply hold it up to show him the cover, annoyed at his insistance in having a conversation with me while I was so clearly trying to get lost amongst the pages. What was it that drew me to literature? I really have no idea. Even now, when my life seems exceedingly hectic and fast paced, I retreat to my corner and pick a book off the shelf, and as if I were being counciled by an old friend, things fall into place. Nothing else works.
I don’t really know why I turned out this way, I never really gave it much thought until recently after a few awful encounters with women of my generation. I asked my friend rachel about it. She’s a vibrant, brilliantly intellegent woman who can argue with you about politics while kicking your ass at soccer. She too has noticed this frightening lack of intellect in our sex. “ How do they get like that?” I asked her. She responded with another question “what makes strong women?” I read a quote off her wall by Beauvoir “One is not born but becomes a woman” We sat and thought about it for a while, neither of us knowing what to say.
At her soccer game earlier that day, I sat in the bleachers and overheard some of the other teams talking. The teams were co-ed, and the way the men talked about “having to have the women” made it seem like a horrible handicap. Clearly they weren’t watching the game because Rachel was the best one out there. But what astonished me was that there were girls sitting with the boys, taking their abuse, and some of them even agreeing. As the game went on, I felt my face flush with anger as I heard the girls giggle at the boys’ brutish comments on how they would never tackle a girl on the field. I heard the girls flirtatiously ask about the rules of the game, as if they had never seen it played before. It made me want to turn around, grab one of them and shake them, saying that amazing line from I heart Huckabees “ wake up pretty girl, the joke is on you”. Girls like that are worse than anti-feminists: they perpetuate a lie every single day, in the classroom, on the sidelines, in the bedroom. It makes me sick to think that some people may see me as too boldly overstepping my “role”, my role which is supposidly to be like the rest of them, whose idea of international relations is buying a Gucci bag. Seriously.
I think about it, and I think about it, and I think that maybe it’s lack of knowledge. As if, somehow, somehwere along the line, someone forgot to tell these women that they don’t have to take the abuse of society, they don’t have to fit the mold of beauty (that same disgusting mold which even occasionally drives me to skip meals) and idiocy. It occurred to me one day when I was explaining to one of my little cousins that I was a feminist. “What’s a feminist?” she asked me. She must’ve been 13 at the time. I stared at her, completely dumbstruck. At first I thought she was kidding, but then she asked me again. When I explained to her that a feminist is someone (man or woman) who believes that women are equal to men and should be treated as such (equally, but not necessarily the same), she asked me why I was a feminist.
It’s a question I get a lot, actually. And it’s usually followed by some comment like “you’re not butch enough to be a feminist.” Or “ what’s a pretty girl like you so worried about anyway?” They don’t get that it is because of the way I look that I am the way I am. They don't understand that if I don't fight for myself, if I don't stand up and show that I am actually more than what I appear, no one will. It is my only way of earning the respect of others, but at the same time, the respect of myself. How is it consistent to go through life feeling as if I am an equal, believing in my equality but allowing others to treat me as a subordinate?
I was raised with a twin brother, I know all about the conscious and unconcious discrimination against my sex, because I was raised with it. I am still in awe of the way my parents raised us, and yes, we fulfilled some stereotypes: my brother is far better at math than I am, but my appreciation of languages out-does his. We broke stereotypes too, however: he is a sensitive musician, I am more athletic. My parents did a wonderful job of letting me believe that sexual discrimination was a thing of the past, and they honestly told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. But now, looking back, I know that every parent must feel a certain amount of cognitive dissonance when they say “you can be whatever you want to be.” When their son says that he wants to be president, it is a distinct possibility that one day he could be, but when their daughter declares her dream to be president, they accept it with a pat on the head and a nod, knowing full well that she will most likely be married at 27 and have no ambitions for entering the political realm.
I remember being 15 years old and arguing with my parents about politics. My mother told me not to argue, “it’s not ladylike” and I snapped back “who ever said anything about being a lady?!” From that day on, she has insisted that I go into politics.
But the point of this very long rant about my sex and our seemingly inherent depreciation in intellect is not about me. The point is that I often find myself questioning: what is it that I’m fighting so much for? Or better yet: for whom? The airheaded women of my generation and my daughters generation will never understand. And so the everso popular existential question arises: if you are in a cage, but know nothing of its bars, nor the outside world, are you free? Is ignorance really bliss? I remember talking to an escaped slave (www.iabolish.org) who spoke at my highschool a few years ago. He said that while he was a slave, there was no concept of freedom in his mind. The word did not exist to him, and so he did not know what he lacked.
Perhaps that is what we women are, slaves who are hopelessly addicted to our captors (the facist beauty standards, the misogynist pop-culture, the “roles” of good, moral women who don’t want their children to grow up to be rapists, murderers or –gasp- gays.) We are addicted and glued to our captors the way that 8th grader was glued to the tv screen, we fulfill our duties as “woman” and in return, we get a nice slap on the butt and some crude comment. But it’s the only attention we get, and so it makes us feel worthy. A simple Pavlovian method of submission from the day we’re born to the day we die, drooling over any kind of attention we get, that we are begging to get, from the other sex. Some of us have escaped the endless cycle. I don’t know how, but we got out.
I want to free my sisters, and educate them, but I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of the game. I’m tired of their counter-productive, self-fulfilling prophecies of idiocy and failure. Count me out. Why am I fighting for women who don’t even know what they’re missing, who mock me and won't know what to do with the equality when it is handed to them?
posted by Jessica @ 10:14 PM
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