I have a lot of words this morning

[geozine]

The things I contemplate the most these days (apart from Mass Effect, money, and how long I can put off my homework) have to do with sexism, feminism, and communication.

Comments

[liaku]

I'm glad you're working on the caustic/bitter thing re: sexism. It was starting to show a lot on tumblr, and shit man, you make your friends worry about you.

I think the struggle as a woman in today's society is overcoming the bitterness, because it sucks to be put down upon your whole life. You're expected to do nothing and everything, and you're expected to do it with zero support for zero reward, and then you're expected to do it while having shaved legs. It's really easy to get pissed off and hurt and worse yet broken, but I think that's what the ugly parts of society wants from us. It's good to be vigilant imo, and it's always good to check yourself, but going in circles ain't furthering no cost, yeah? It's really hard, but I think really important, to prove everyone wrong and succeed at all costs, keep your head held high and such.

You mentioned to me once that you sucked at communication. I think you're just not very practiced at it. PArt of me thinks it's because you're not used to getting any benefits from it? Especially if that's how a open argument with your sister goes. You clam up at the sight of confrontation, you know? I find it really challenging to open the table for discussion with you even, it's like I have to just charge in and break all the china in the china shop just to get an open non-diplomatic, non-stripped down, non-cleaned up for a public audience response, even if it's just you and me.

Half the time when I see the serious stuff you reblog on tumblr, I'm surprised it's you. I know the last time we were close was, like, that summer before freshman year when it was cafes and restaurants and metal gear solid 24/7, but you always seemed strong back then--lot of great opinions, lot of great discussions, lot of dumb discussions too, but those were some of the best! And I don't think it was just because I hadn't known you for so long, I really worry that you've changed for the worse in your time at UMCP.

Yeah, I don't want to come off as horribly condescending or any shit like that. And I'm sorry this entire comment is kinda negative, because holy shit fuck I am so GLAD to see you making posts like this, because as weary as you sound here, I think it's the most positive I've heard you sound in literally years.

So yeah, keep at it. I'm here for you if you ever want to talk, or grab lunch, or play mass effect.

P.S. You should read homestuck. :)

[geozine]

Thanks *HUGS* I really needed that. <3

I think one of the reasons it might be hard to open discussions with me is that I try very hard not to offend people because I am very easily offended and I don't respond well to criticism. After thinking about the whole sexism thing for a long time I realized that it is THE REASON for almost all of my problems. I don't respond well to criticism because I grew up and lived my entire life up to this point having internalized the idea that masculinity=strength and femininity=other less awesome stuff. Obviously then, if you want to be well and truly awesome, it would seem logical to compete with men rather than women. So that's what I did. But what I didn't really consciously consider was that I had created a lose-lose scenario for myself.

In a sexist's mind, and in the mind of society at large, a female has to be twice as good at anything to be seen as equally capable as a male. But even if a woman becomes good enough to be seen as equally capable, she's still a step below a man at the same skill level, simply because she has girly bits and that in itself is a power detractor.

So what happens is that I place unreasonably high expectations on myself so my perceived skill levels can compete with those of the males, and when I meet or exceed those expectations, I can't even give myself credit for succeeding because technically, I didn't accomplish anything. I'm still losing the game because I'm a woman. So out of that comes an overzealous defensiveness of whatever accomplishments I feel like I can actually claim as my own and a completely savage competitiveness which dictates that I physically maul anybody who tries to tell me I'm "not good enough". Similarly, I also learned to view EVERYONE as my competition...which means everyone is potentially my enemy. Which is also very bad and builds on the issues with taking criticism and makes more issues having to do with difficulty trusting people to respect me or view me as an equal.

So come college I'm still playing my life by somebody else's rules and I've developed a strong sense that no matter how good I get at anything, it won't be enough for me to feel like a success. I think it's because I can't get good enough grades or be good enough at violin or whatever but really it's because I'm a woman with a sexist viewpoint trying to compete in a man's world. But I don't know that so what do I do? I switch into a technically difficult major that is famously gender-biased and I go at it like a demon with something to prove.

But the belief driving all of that fuckery for the past fifteen or so years was wrong, and so is most of what I learned to be/do/think because of it. It made me tired and angry and bitter. And everyone has their limit. Now I think I'm stronger than I've given myself credit for. Frankly I'm surprised I lasted in the pressure-cooker this long before starting to lose my shit.

It might seem to tie everything up too neatly, and if I didn't feel so much better knowing this now, then I might think I was making things up. But I'm not. I know because I do feel consistently better being able to tell myself that I'm not a worse or weaker person for being a woman. If I had believed that for the past fifteen years, then I feel like it wouldn't make me feel so much better now. I know it sounds kinda like BS because really how can a person not know what she actually thinks for most of her life. I really don't know. But this is truth as far as I can tell.

Anyway, knowing what was going on is nice. It'll take a little longer to get rid of all the bullshit it wrought over the years. I AM bitter about that, but I think I'm less bitter than I was before. Every so often I get feminist rage because...well, it's pretty natural given the circumstances and the fact that all this is fairly new to me. Some of my "feminism/sexism" reblogs are rage and bitterness reblogs. But they're also reminders about what I'm supposed to be dealing with and what I should think about and be aware of.

So yeah. All that. Sorry for the wall of text. As I keep thinking about all this I'll get better at having balanced social interactions with humans.

I'll read Homestuck when the semester is over and I'm bored enough to start on Act I again. XD

*HUGS*

[liaku]

It takes a lot of personal confidence and security to accept criticism, and you seem to be in kinda an extreme flux like an early mid-life crisis right now, so I get why you'd want to stay clear of shitfests. But really, you have every right to be confident and secure in yourself. You're smart, pretty, educated, the only real thing you need to work besides self-confidence is communication skills, and hey, practice makes perfect, right?

You are a million times stronger than you give yourself credit for. You strength is the sum of your own good traits. It's got shit to do with what anybody--be it me, or your friends, or men, or women, or a retarded puppy--thinks of you. I swear, the moment you kick the thought not good enough to I'm pretty fucking awesome, the angriness and bitterness and exhaustion with dealing with all that bs will go away.

...You definitely want to work on stopping the erryone is mai enemy thing. I can tell you where it comes from, read a study on it waaaay back. It's from back when there was only one woman in each business firm (like quota style hiring, or just a niche spot, idrk the details), so every woman saw all the others are direct competition, because welp they were. Plus, they did have to be a million times better than a dude to get a promotion. And I think that sort of catty behavior has just become expected from woman--most businesswomen are portrayed as EXTRA cutthroat, for example. I think America's changing very quickly about that though; women have become great at supporting each other in the work environment.

Look, this is a totally bizarro suggestion and I feel crazy just saying it, but maybe stop referring to yourself as a woman. Like, ignore the gender thing altogether. Which isn't to say get rid of your gender identity (sorry, but r00d question: is it even woman?), but just don't worry about it? Sexism is a fucking shackle, and the simplest way to free yourself from it is to just ignore the label. Be whoever/whatever the fuck you want to be.

Honestly, the way I see it, you've had a epiphany and this is your chance to remake yourself. I say make yourself someone better. Idk what "better" means to you, but I think you can. /voteofconfidence

Re: *HUGS*

[geozine]

Haha. It's obviously all pretty crazy stuff. I don't usually like to refer to myself as a woman or a girl because I guess I always thought it was limiting to be one. I'd rather just be a person. The feelings that go with "woman" and "girl" don't always reflect how I feel, and neither do words like "man" or "boy". I imagine it's the same for a lot of people. It should be impossible for a person's identity to always reflect one side of a binary every day all the time. We really shouldn't have to pigeonhole how people feel based on whether we call them a man or a woman. But people will. I think I call myself a woman in these superlong essays because I'm trying to strip the word of its traditional meaning. I know enough about who I am and what I'm like to know that "woman" is not an adequate word for my identity. I figure if I keep using it it'll lose most of it's meaning to me and just turn into a kind of vague word which refers more to some kind of club that I happen to be in, rather than to a supposed summation of myself. I do this not because people are never going to stop calling me a woman, but because I don't want to go through life with the habit of presuming that whether someone is called a man or a woman is deterministic of their intrinsic identity. Identity is more complicated than that. And if I can't believe that I, myself, am not defined by the words used to refer to me, then I certainly can't do it for anybody else. I'm trying to learn to view everyone as just a person, no matter what they're called.

As for my gender identity idk. I think about it sometimes and then I decide it's not worth thinking about because putting words to it seems dumb. tbh I feel like anybody who puts words to it is either oversimplifying, or doesn't really care to be too accurate. If I had to describe it it would probably look something like a skinny power ranger...or The Truth from FMA only less creepy...
Huh. You know now it makes a lot of sense why I tend to like characters whose faces you never see.