a lifelong romance
A feminist geek group I am part of made a "what's your superpower" campaign, designed to encourage women and girl geeks to pat themselves on the back and own some of their awesomeness. Which is cool. But for me, it just made me feel isolated. I am not in a place to do this right now - not without it making me hate myself so much, second guess good things, and/or without just FAKING IT.
So I watched that go on for some time - but today decided to write about it - unsure if I'd just be left the one weirdo, or perhaps get scolded for my" unfeminist ways" - but in minutes there were several replies from people who felt the same way :)
and people talked about insecurity, about depression - it was so meaningful, and rang true.
So I want to write this thing here too:
"You don't love yourself enough" is very commonly used for victim blaming - if you don't love yourself, how is anybody else going to love you, how do you expect to get a job, how can you stand in front of an audience? If you don't love yourself enough to protect yourself from harm, from assault, to take care of your health, to ask for help - what do you expect?
The world teaches us not to love ourselves, and it's likely to be even worse for people who are disempowered -
we can be loved even if we are not so good at loving ourselves - a lot who I love a lot don't love themselves, or not enough
So I watched that go on for some time - but today decided to write about it - unsure if I'd just be left the one weirdo, or perhaps get scolded for my" unfeminist ways" - but in minutes there were several replies from people who felt the same way :)
and people talked about insecurity, about depression - it was so meaningful, and rang true.
So I want to write this thing here too:
"You don't love yourself enough" is very commonly used for victim blaming - if you don't love yourself, how is anybody else going to love you, how do you expect to get a job, how can you stand in front of an audience? If you don't love yourself enough to protect yourself from harm, from assault, to take care of your health, to ask for help - what do you expect?
The world teaches us not to love ourselves, and it's likely to be even worse for people who are disempowered -
we can be loved even if we are not so good at loving ourselves - a lot who I love a lot don't love themselves, or not enough