Heidi Liane, 27, London, (orig. New Jersey, USA)
As I look for solidarity with women, I recognize that in solidarity there must be difference. Not all women will agree, and I embrace this. What I do find is solidarity must be accounted for when an innately misogynist world encourages and manipulates women into breaking or even forming that solidarity.
Two great powers of women are expression and intuition. We have an ability to express ourselves in ways that most men struggle with. We see the peripheral picture and break it down without being bogged down by a specific moment or point. Our ability to express ourselves can sometimes be stilted, or some women even reject it, succumbing to the masculine worlds mocking of emotion.
I read recently some of the hypothesis of why womens menstrual cycles sync after spending time together. The most prevalent response was over ridden in HIStorical analysis. Apparently, during cave times women would spend their time in the den while the men went and hunted the food (already a vastly unproven statement). In order to prevent men from straying from their woman (monogamy since cave times?) nature had the womens menstrual cycles coincide so that one woman would not be out of commission to reproduce giving the others an unfair advantage. Apparently, in cave days, women did not ovulate during menstruation AND people didnt have sex during their period! I had never realized how much puritan values flourished in 5,000bc! One of the less prevalent hypothesis suggested that women perhaps coincided for solidarity during a time where hormonally they might want or need more support from their sisters. Interestingly, my partner had never heard of the second option but had read numerous factual things on the first hypothesis.
But this does lead me to another important point, competition. It is hard to know how much nurture and how much nature is involved in female competition, but I do recognize it as a hurdle for the solidarity movement. Ill take the divide and conquer approach. The masculine world has divided women, having us compete amongst each other, through isolation, competition, and objectification.
The capitalist structure has recently evolved to a system where two incomes are expected in a family household. Meaning, womens working role is no longer solely the houseworker, but also a wage slave. People continue to argue about the pros and cons of women being in the paid work force, but I feel most loose the point. For example, many women of my mothers generation tend to blame this transition on the feminist movement. I beg to differ. The feminist movement did and does not request or desire to be part of the mans world. What we want is there to stop being a mans world. I, for example, desire a world where children are supported and nurtured by the people that decide to take on the parental role. In my future, feminist world, society would support any person through paid leave from work in order to raise and nurture a growing citizen within the community.
As womens seclusion to the home has lessened, another form has grown. Isolation continues through the competitive framework that holds women at odds with each other instead of with the system. We compete for jobs, men, status, and recognition feeling that there is not room for all of us. I believe whole-heartedly this is not true, or perhaps it does not need to be true. There is enough space for us but in order for us to have that space men will be forced to let go of some of theirs.
Objectification. From birth we are objects. We are told how beautiful we are (or not). Our features are emphasized. As we get older we only become more objectified. Girls as young as 6 years old suffer from body issues, yet we dont really know what a body looks like. Most girls start turning around in shame in the changing rooms at school, yet each summer we must face these bodies in the changing rooms of GAP as we try on our summer bikinis. We must burn our bodies brown and red or take bleach to the skin. We shed ourselves of our hair, we mask our blemishes with foundations and powders. And we look at other girls and fear we are missing what they have. We yearn to be the object of desire, to hear that we are the most beautiful woman, that we are the most perfect formation, we are the best. We want to be doted on because we cannot dote on ourselves. So, when we see a man doting, we want him. And some women will take him. Ultimately this will never be satisfying. For in order to understand love, one must love herself.
Men prey on this. Men prey on our intuition, our ability to feel and express. They fear it so they aim to challenge it. Society rejects this intuition; women reject their own intuition. Women go mad from their inability to understand and embrace this power.
My father did this to my mother. My father would present small lies to my mother. He would hold back information from my mother. He would reject her suspicions, her intuitions. My mother became more and more angry and depressed as a result. She could not trust her own feelings and began to distrust everything and everyone. Her paranoia was intuition being rejected. With every roll of my fathers eyes and every time he walked out of the room refusing to confront the emotional situation, my mother became more depressed.
Then he found another women, or perhaps lots of other women. He found them on the Internet. He found them in far off places. He was able to recreate himself and his story. He told them of his wicked wife, his torturous marriage. The pathetic, helpless man that fears his wifes wrath. But, he did not tell them of his rolling eyes, he did not tell them of the moments my mother pulled him out of bed and fed him, or the amount of times she was just right, and he was just wrong. They save him. They empathize with him, because thats one strength of women; empathy. I feel bad for these women. I imagine that they have had terrible experiences with men in the past and have lost their sense of self worth. They feel they can only regain it through taking somebody elses. That it is a competition: Who can be the prize, who can be the best nurturer, the most sacrificial, the most beautiful, the most loved?
I have friends that would often become the mistress. Their lives were so wrapped up in somebody elses approval they never thought to gain their own approval of their selves. Its never black and white. I know.
But there is a movement. A feminist movement. Its been lost for a while, but it is being re-found. Its being. Its permeating the workplace. The new generations anger levels are rising. We are realizing we are just as angry as our mothers were. But now we are angry that the job wasnt finished. But, I have to say, I think we are ready to finish the job! As much as I have been reared since childhood to fear my own body, my intuition, my emotions I have been equally reared to want more, expect more, to be more than what society sees of me. We must join this movement and not compete for the one answer, the one job, the one man, the one look. We must embrace each other and our vast differences and we must aspire to gain the self esteem we see in each other, not feel we must steal it.
The Feminist Liberation Movement Lives On!
