Rotten Little Girls

The answer to this question is as complex as the reasons for joining the feminist movement are diverse. There is no denying that my place and time on this planet have afforded me more opportunity that the vast majority of people who ever walked the earth could imagine. And I am aware that there are millions of people out there who have so much more to be upset about than I do. But I do not see my feminism in comparison to them or in spite of them. My feminism is one part a spectrum that includes the experiences of women all over, no matter how different we may appear to be at first.

My grandmother was a housewife most of her life, but unlike the sanguine image neoconservatives like to paint, she lived in a constant state of heightened anxiety because her husband was a womanizing alcoholic with a bad temper. After years of physically abusing the entire family, he left, never to be seen again. My grandmother was left with the repercussions of multiple treatments of electric shock therapy that she underwent to handle the nervous breakdowns that were a result of the abuse. Social services took her youngest son away because they declared her unfit to raise a child given her psychiatric history and lack of a paying job (my aunt wound up adopting him back).

My mother came out of this situation deeply scarred but still strong and independent. She moved out to work full time, live on her own and attend college at night to pursue the accounting degree her father refused to pay for because she was female. She was harassed as one of the only women in her accounting classes by students and professors alike. But she went on. After marrying and having children, she was always the steady rock of the family. She was a strong role model for me because she was a reliable source of strength and love for the family.

But on the inside, she was often in turmoil. As a result of her childhood, she saw any admittance of vulnerability or hurt as a sign of weakness that could be exploited. She was so afraid of ending up helpless like her mother. Even though electric shock treatments have since gone out of vogue, she still has an understandable fear and resentment towards the psychiatric and psychological fields. To even admit needing help would be bad enough but it would be unfathomable to ever place herself in the dependent position that a patient is in with a doctor because she has witnessed closely how that can be abused. So, instead she suffers within.

At times, she self-medicates with alcohol and in her inebriated moments, she identifies with her abusive father because identifying with her mother would be too painful. But what is most remarkable about her situation is that it is not unique. Her fear of displaying fragility is in many ways emblematic of the inner struggle many second-wavers faced. So frightened to turn into their mothers, they often run to the next extreme and hurt themselves and loved ones in the process by identifying with the overly aggressive men our patriarchal society has created.

Beyond my family, my feminism has been strongly shaped by my tumultuous adolescence. I, like many of my generation, grew up walking the unsteady tightrope of cultural contradictions. The “be sexy but not sexual” mantra leaves little room for girls to develop healthy sexual identities and the best of us often become either Ophelia‘s, withdrawn from life and shadows of our younger, more dynamic selves, or starving perfect daughters, trying to do it all but never feeling truly successful.

I tried to safely discover my innocent budding sexuality in a culture that has so perverted sex that the only options are still defined by the same virgin/whore dichotomy of yore. I watched all my male friends make a weekly group sport of finding girls, getting them as intoxicated as possible and ‘running trains’ on them (taking turns having sex with them), while their “good” girlfriends waited at home for them to come back. I watched them congratulate each other on their sexual conquests and degrade any girl who had the misfortune of thinking one of them was kind of cute.

The girls were ostracized while the boys had their egos inflated. I saw the way it heightened their sense of “manhood”. And I noticed the homoeroticness that was always on display as they shared their sexuality primarily with each other, through females –while homophobia pervaded their words and actions. In the meantime, if I so much as made out with two different guys during the same week, I was scorned and scolded by all of them (“you used to be such a nice girl but you’re going down the toilet”) because apparently all my male friends had a right to tell me what to do and at times, even threatened (“I’ll break your arm if you ever date a black guy”) and nothing is worse than a young woman exploring her body because that’s what boys do, not good girls.

It was all normal and I did not have a feminist awareness of what was going on but I always felt that something was off. For a while, I always wondered why I spent so much time around my guy friends when it was apparent how toxic they were for me. But I realize now that it was largely because all my girl friends became all about their boyfriends (the ones they had or the ones they wanted). Many lost all of their own friends (and lives generally) because they became the shadow of the guys they dated. And when they weren’t with them, they just wanted to talk about them.

Others viewed getting married and having children before graduating high school great because that was they could feel good about themselves. I witnessed many enter severely abusive relationships and was in a couple of mildly abusive ones myself. But no one cared because the boys encouraged each other to keep the girls in place. I was told I should spend my time doing my hair and cleaning up after the guys when I preferred reading and–shocker–NOT being their personal maid.

Fortunately, I moved on to college and made more enlightened friends to spend time with. I also had my consciousness raised in various ways. And the more I learned about the world, the more I realized how poorly it has treated women. Fortunately, I also met a plethora of feminists who gave me hope that we can make real change if we work together at dismantling the patriarchy. There’s a lot to be pissed off about, but there’s a lot to hope for also.

And that is why I became a feminist.