This Fruitful Darkness

I made a comment on a distant, male friend’s Facebook post the other day, about how triggering Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony has been for a lot of women, and maybe he should cool it with the, “finally Kavanaugh gets to speak,” talk for fear of sending the women in his life the wrong message. A message that might sound something like, “Sit down and shut up. Let the man talk.” A message that has been carefully crafted and cultivated and spun out to women for ages. After I realized my comments weren’t landing and nothing productive was happening, I apologized for interjecting myself.

Immediately after my apology, another older, white man hopped on and told me, in way too many words and far too little punctuation (paraphrased here) that women need to grow tougher skin so they can handle a man’s differing opinion without melting down like a school girl…that’s the difference between adults and school girls. To which I replied, “Maybe you should take your own advice and not be so sensitive towards my different opinion. Thank you for man-splaining to me how opinions work. Women have HAD to, been FORCED into having a tough skin for far too long…You can go fuck yourself.”

But, to me…because this is not the first time a man has been condescending to me, treated me as a little girl who needs to have things explained to her (without invitation), and this is not the first time a man has told me, whoa whoa whoa, settle down…the most disheartening thing was what a woman wrote me next. She said, “Wow, please stop being a part of the reason I’m ashamed of being a woman. You’re comments are just ugly.”

I drag you through this dramatic commentary to highlight a couple of things I want to talk about:

There are storylines, belittling and dehumanizing storylines, about women that have been fabricated, passed down, inherited, and downloaded into our human psyches. (The one highlighted here is that a woman’s emotions and sensitivity and even opinions make them weak…irrational…crazy…bitches.)

and…

Women fucking believe them.

Here’s the thing…I have been sexually abused 3 times. That already is enough, it is already too much. But the daily bullshit women have to deal with is enough to drive a person mad. I cannot count the times men in bars have told me I should smile, that I look prettier when I smile. Or the times I’ve been inappropriately touched on the small of my back, or had a man take my hand and hold it without asking. The time I was cornered in the back of a bar by a drunk man who just wanted to stare at me. The times I’ve been catcalled or stared down by men in cars…sometimes in my own backyard. The times I’ve giggled out of nervousness because a man has made inappropriate jokes to me or just wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. As a teenager, hearing adult men in my church talk and consult with each other about my loss of innocence. A boy in high school who  spoke to my dad about his intentions in wanting to marry me, never once talking to me about it. The years and years and years that I stuffed down my feelings to protect men around me, from myself. And the mansplaining, good goddess, the mansplaining.

And for good measure, I’ll just add a few examples from friends of mine. Two friends had stories about Home Depot; the first, an employee assumed that she and her son were picking up supplies for a “project with dad”…they were not. The other friend was rudely approached by an employee, talked down to, and treated as a child…she had not asked for any help. Another friend was called a cunt because she wouldn’t let a guy take her very limited space on the bleachers at a college game. Another friend said gamers use the word ‘rape’ as slang when winning/losing. I had one friend DM me saying that when she was a young teenager a doctor told her during an examination of her throat that she was going to make some man very happy one day, because her gag reflex wasn’t super strong (fuck that man.)

Just know…this is a (very) SHORT list, a sampling, of the quiet, sneaky underbelly of misogyny that we have to deal with all the time.

And the reason we women can get entrapped by these storylines is that there is a fear and deep feeling of instability and insecurity that builds and walks with a person who has experienced such things. And an encoding, an engraining of identity, develops when a person is told over and over again that her worth begins and stops at her <looks/ virginity/ marital status/ vagina/ charm/ accessibility/ lack of difficulty>.

I know too many strong, smart, beautiful, capable women (I include myself in this) that have carved, and whittled, and shaved, and sanded themselves down until they fit perfectly inside the crook of a man’s arm. And I know too many men who, from fear of losing such a thing of beauty, have used any means necessary to manipulate and dovetail her back into his arms.

It’s important to recognize that we all woke up on this earth, unknowingly, plugged into a matrix, into a system of human-made cultures, worldview, and policy that strongly benefit white, heterosexual, cisgender men…especially, in my opinion, if you are person brought up in a fundamental religious system. Whether you’re still in it or have left it, whether you are woke or still asleep, whether you are male or female, if this is part of your upbringing, you have at minimum the involuntary echoes of misogyny reverberating throughout your consciousness…it’s been steeped in our blood…and it’s important that we all be deprogramming right now.

In my deprogramming, I’m finding, that I am fucking angry. And behind that anger is a lot of fear. But let me tell you, anger feels a hell of a lot better than fear. I would rather rage than cower. It is difficult for a woman, for me, to control my anger, to lay it down because I once hid all of it. I once was a shell of this person writing these words. And deep down, below the anger, I am terrified. Terrified. To go back. WE are terrified of being shoved back into the corner, back into the darkness, back into the shadow of ourselves.

“Women have spent millennia being polite, even in the face of overwhelming pain and trauma. So many women have spent their lives trying to figure out the right way to behave in order to be taken seriously. The right way to be forceful without being disliked. the right way to protect themselves in a world that often shows how little they are valued.” – Emma Gray, Huffpost Senior Reporter

So this is what I’m saying.

MEN, it’s okay, and good!, for the women in your life to be angry and out of control right now. We walk into this world everyday afraid. Afraid to look in a man’s eyes, to smile at him, always considering our speech, demeanor and attire, for fear that we, at a very fundamental level, make things worse (another storyline handed us) …and for many of us, we’ve hit our breaking point. We have broken open. We have used up all of our energy restraining and containing, and now we can only BE as we are. Listen for us screaming, writing, dancing, singing, painting out our pain. As my husband so beautifully put it, “If I can’t hear the pain and anger and hurt and exhaustion and strength and perseverance in the air, then I’m not listening.”

Give us a minute to share our rage and gather our things, to gather ourselves after we’ve just been torn apart…again. And be patient. It’s taken me a long time, 33 years, to find my words…and they don’t come over night and they don’t come easily. They are dripping in trauma.

To all my SISTERS out there, if this world right now makes you angry…BE FUCKING ANGRY. Be out of control. Talk and blunder and babble and make mistakes until you figure out what it is you need to say! Exercise those muscles that have atrophied or been systematically stripped from you. Talk to the men in your life about your experiences. Educate them. Stand your ground. When you feel icky about something, talk about it, even if you fuck it up.  Our sensitivity and care is our super power, and it is most epically needed in our world right now. This is your permission slip to wake up, stand up, fuck up, especially if you’ve never been given permission before.

Remember…there is fruit in our darkness.

All my deepest love,

Lisa