I saw a post on social media earlier this week that went something like “Girl’s don’t mature faster than boys, girls are punished at a much earlier age for behavior that boys are excused for well into adulthood.”
Holy hell, if this article didn’t epitomize that theory for me. Everything seems clearer to me now about the way women are socialzed, especially those who experience explicit oppression, and now I’m pretty ticked off.
The example used about “all bears in the north are white” illuminated this in the most clarity for me, and although in the article it was framed as the product if a culture that emphasizes shared experience rooted in reality, it reminded me a lot of those word games I used to trick my friends with in elementary school. They went something like, “If Johnny buys green paint and paints his white house green, what color is The White House?” “Green.” “Johnny’s not the president.” “...What?” Oh, that shit made me laugh. Good times. Looking back now, that playful bit of verbal manipulation doesn’t seem as harmless as it did then. It feels like it embodies a certain trend of American culture; if you are an independent critical thinker, you must give an answer immediately, you must be sure of it, and that gives you the authority to tell those who can’t or what answer what the truth is, regardless of whether or not your assertion is grounded in logic, reality, or any combination of the two.
“Thinking for themselves violates their conceptions of what is proper for a woman.” I winced at that line. I also cringed at the story of the new mother who simply could not leave her own mother for fear of not knowing what to do to care for the baby she had literally carried and delivered. It is amazing to me that language is powerful enough to trap women in the delusion that their own innate maternal compulsions are simply not valuable enough to be truly listened to, let alone acknowledged to exist at all, when compared to outside directives from perceived ‘authorities’. I love my mother, but if she tried to tell me how to raise my own baby, I’d probably bite her.
The ideas about the knowledge of one’s self routed in the transmission of language also fascinated me. On a little tangent, us illustrators have a little holiday every year on February 1st called Hourly Comic Day. The celebration is in the name; every hour, we make one comic about what we are doing, thinking, feeling, eating, working on, talking to, and just generally how we are experiencing our lives that day. I adore this day. It’s a chance for me to see my peers as people, in a sense, even if they are not right in front of me, for the comics’ sole focus is the illustrator. Artists often disappear into their art; the product is where the value lies, not the producer, in the eyes of the consumer. But in these wonderfully thoughtful, intimate comics, the subject of the product /is/ the producer, and all the consumer’s attention and appreciation is funneled to them. Drawing is definitely a language I use to communicate, and the way others use it to convey their experiences of their own self is just great. They draw their wardrobes, hairstyles, piercings, surroundings, and expressions with a level of self-awareness that is sometimes comical but never not earnest. It is, all in all, a 24-hour introspection of ourselves, and it’s so enjoyable and enlightening we cannot help but share it with everyone in our circle who wishes to know us as we know ourselves.
It’s nothing short of abuse to rob someone of their ability to know themselves. If one doesn’t know themself, one cannot express themself, and if one cannot express themself, one essentially cannot exist.
I like that last point a lot - someone who is socialized to be silent feels, to some degree, like they don't exist, but also like they exist too much. Knowing yourself is so important, which is probably why it's a Delphic maxim, ha.
ReplyDeleteI love comic day! If only I could draw. The surrender of self you write about as an alarming, sad characteristic of silent women is something that caught my eye, too. You used the term "self-awareness," and I think that's a good way of putting it. I know you well enough, Casey, to know that this is not (if it ever was) a problem for you as it was for the women the authors described. What interests me is how self-awareness develops, especially in educational settings. If you're a dualist, and surrender all authority to authorities, then you have some self-awareness--mostly of your own lack of agency. But as you begin to find friends with whom you share certain ideas about the world (something Belenky et. al. described as characteristic of received knowers),then a self in connection with others comes as a comfort. But it doesn't necessarily lead to agency. The dilemma for some women, according to the authors, is that this connection is more valuable than separating oneself from others by voicing beliefs that may be at odds with the group. I wonder if anyone in the class finds this dilemma familiar, and what happened that helped you to go to another level of self-awareness, one that helped you to value your voice as different from others?
ReplyDelete