Types of words I felt like saying today in class as we talked about gender neutrality in certain language contexts:
Oh well, you know, it irritated me. It made me frustrated. It made Sisyphean tears spring to my eyes. I don't want to rehash the whole thing here, but it was this thing about how our readings were primarily referring to "offenders" in the masculine and "victims" in the feminine. There's no clear cut answer on this, so every generalization can always be proved false, but I get a little tetchy when we try to gender neutralize things that are very gendered.
When we did the second circle round, the question was about what we learned from the previous round (which was how talking about the topic made us feel). When it came to me, I passed. I passed the talking stick on because I just didn't have anything nice to say (isn't there some lesson about that?). ("I learned that I'm tired of men feeling sorry for themselves. Boo-farking-hoo." Which would have vastly underserved the whole discussion. Sometimes, sometimes, I know when to shut up.) Mostly I just wanted to GTF out of that circle and out of that room.
It did not feel like a place of safety for me right at that time.
There was part of me that felt incredibly arrogant in my unwillingness to "learn" anything. Maybe it was incapacity? Maybe I'm too entrenched in my position? Too defensive? Maybe. I wasn't exactly being radical. So maybe I'm going to hang on a little bit to my unwillingness in that situation. I can co-operate on lots of things but I can't compromise on some.
Maybe the most meaningful thing I heard was something a colleague said: blame comes on strong when there's a lot of pain.
So yeah. The inequality women face--and I'm not talking about poor me, white, privileged, educated, upper-middle-class (in spite of my vast student debt), heterosexual, mainstream (mostly) me, I'm talking about the vast class of women who face way worse than me, but with whom I stand in solidarity because harm to them harms us all--is really painful for me. It's not debilitating pain, usually, though I feel despair at times. It's angry pain. It's I'm-so-damned-tired-of-this pain. It's I-keep-taking-responsibility-for-myself-now-it's-your-turn pain. It's real pain.
It's real.
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2 comments:
It is particularly difficult for me to voice my opinion, voluntarily involve myself into a discussion when I know in advance that what I have to say will make people feel uncomfortable. It is so easy to get angry, say something you may regret and become volcanic in the group. I think it takes strength to abstain your opinion and I commend you for it. But how many times have I walked away from something, replay the conversation in my mind and privately say the things I wanted to say? Then regret not voicing my opinions. All too often. Except in the course of our marriage.
Yeah. You were right to be angry. Granted, this particular topic is not something I had given a lot of thought until recently (when I was paid to do so). So while I don't share your pain and frustration on a profoundly personal level, I commend you for feeling so strongly about it. I sometimes wish I shared this passion.
And I agree with the wise comment made previously -- it took strength to abstain.
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