(no subject)
In recent months I've read three things which, connected together, gave me the fear.
The first was in bell hooks' autobiography, Bone Black:
"She was sent to bed without dinner. She was told to stop crying, to make no sound or she would be whipped more. No one could talk to her and she could talk to no one. She could hear him telling the mama that the girl had too much spirit, thst she had to learn to mind, that that spirit had to be broken."
The second was hooks' description of the indoctrination of slaves through trauma and terror, in Ain't I A Woman?. "The prideful, arrogant, and independent spirit of the African people had to be broken so that they would conform to the white colonizers' notion of proper slave demeanour." Rape, torture, and murder were all used, and children were not spared, aboard the slave ships and on the plantation. hooks writes that it was especially important to brutalise female slaves because of their close contact with the family and children.
Now the original African cultures from which the slaves were kidnapped were not exactly paragons of feminism, but slaves also absorbed ideas from White culture about women, such as what was "women's work". The idea that they might also have absorbed the idea of breaking a woman's spirit - quite possibly as a form of defence, to avoid vicious, unpredictable punishments - gives me the heartbreak.
And then I read this:
"Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds; the better deal. They see that the streets are cold and that the women on them are tired, sick and bruised... They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men... Right wing women are not wrong... Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. ...They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female-animal, not human; they do what they have to do to survive."
That's Andrea Dworkin in Right-Wing Women, as quoted at womensspace.org.
Put all three things together and I just want to hide my female face in my hands and never look out at the world again.
The first was in bell hooks' autobiography, Bone Black:
"She was sent to bed without dinner. She was told to stop crying, to make no sound or she would be whipped more. No one could talk to her and she could talk to no one. She could hear him telling the mama that the girl had too much spirit, thst she had to learn to mind, that that spirit had to be broken."
The second was hooks' description of the indoctrination of slaves through trauma and terror, in Ain't I A Woman?. "The prideful, arrogant, and independent spirit of the African people had to be broken so that they would conform to the white colonizers' notion of proper slave demeanour." Rape, torture, and murder were all used, and children were not spared, aboard the slave ships and on the plantation. hooks writes that it was especially important to brutalise female slaves because of their close contact with the family and children.
Now the original African cultures from which the slaves were kidnapped were not exactly paragons of feminism, but slaves also absorbed ideas from White culture about women, such as what was "women's work". The idea that they might also have absorbed the idea of breaking a woman's spirit - quite possibly as a form of defence, to avoid vicious, unpredictable punishments - gives me the heartbreak.
And then I read this:
"Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds; the better deal. They see that the streets are cold and that the women on them are tired, sick and bruised... They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men... Right wing women are not wrong... Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. ...They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female-animal, not human; they do what they have to do to survive."
That's Andrea Dworkin in Right-Wing Women, as quoted at womensspace.org.
Put all three things together and I just want to hide my female face in my hands and never look out at the world again.