Musings
Sometimes the most constricting thing for women is not what men expect of us but what we expect of ourselves. I do not mean to diminsh the impact of patriarchal expectations but sometimes the enforcement of those expectations shifts from male shoulders to our already over burdened backs. In the Mira Nair film "The Namesake" Mo, a Bengali-British woman says to her Bengali-American husband, Gogol, regarding a job opportunity at the Sorbonne "Don't worry, I turned it down. I'm going to be a good Bengali housewife and make samosas on Thursdays." He looks at he in surprise as if to say, but that's not what I want from you. There are of course the small non-verbal ways in which that expectation was communicated. However what was most obvious was the ways in which Mo, expected this of herself.
I know this conundrum. I have dated men and women who appreciated my intelligence and independence and yet I found myself imprisoned by these relationships, in large part because I had not deconstructed my own notion of who I was SUPPOSED to be in the relationship. Being constrained by ones notions of self can contain issues of identity such as gender, ethnicity, calss, etc. but can also address experiental identities such as survivor, artist, hipster which if we grow attached to can mke it difficult for us to live a truly expressive life. I asked Judith Butler once in a conversation about identity politics what she wanted if she didn't want an identity. Her response was "I want a life."
Having a whole, full life may depend on relaxing notions of identity and recognizing the oft forgotten aspect of intersectionality which is fluidity. We are rarely the same thing all the time. Instead we are many things at many times and uniquely ourselves all the time.
x-posted to my personal LJ
I know this conundrum. I have dated men and women who appreciated my intelligence and independence and yet I found myself imprisoned by these relationships, in large part because I had not deconstructed my own notion of who I was SUPPOSED to be in the relationship. Being constrained by ones notions of self can contain issues of identity such as gender, ethnicity, calss, etc. but can also address experiental identities such as survivor, artist, hipster which if we grow attached to can mke it difficult for us to live a truly expressive life. I asked Judith Butler once in a conversation about identity politics what she wanted if she didn't want an identity. Her response was "I want a life."
Having a whole, full life may depend on relaxing notions of identity and recognizing the oft forgotten aspect of intersectionality which is fluidity. We are rarely the same thing all the time. Instead we are many things at many times and uniquely ourselves all the time.
x-posted to my personal LJ