I've been keeping myself occupied these last weeks drawing deep internal breaths and figuring out where I wish my life to go from here -- well, letting it sort of gel at the back of my mind. While it's gelling I've been spending some time reading and relaxing as well as drawing up a list with goals I wish to set for myself and projects I'd like to complete.
I'm not sure when I'll get to all these things but right now that's not the point. I've been letting these things come up from inside me and I've grabbed a pen to write them down as they did. I'll weed things out and figure out which ones to tackle first at a later date. For right now, I'm needing the mental rebooting time. And believe me, I'm enjoying it!
I've been reading a book called "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir. You can find part of the book here. It's pretty fascinating. I am really, really enjoying it so far. It's nice to read something that opens the doors to your mind and really makes you think!
As I'm reading it, I'm laughing at myself. I've never embraced the word feminist, feeling that it was much ado about nothing -- a bunch of women that felt disenfranchised (much like teenagers do when they group up because they want to be different, not grasping that they are doing what everyone else does) and who took the feeling of being excluded out on everyone else. Heck, I didn't have time for the snot-nosed whining of the poor poor pitiful me variety. I always said instead that I was an equalist. Meaning, of course, that I believed in equal pay for equal work and all that jazz but that I enjoyed feeling female and being treated with the respect due me. I relished the idea that we weren't the same in all the ways that mattered and that I'd never felt pushed aside or devalued for any of my thoughts or ideas by any of the men I spent my time with.
But these days I'm wondering if I'm just a little slow to catch up.
Over the years there have been many times I've felt my resentment build against societal mores, roles designed to put women into simple, easy little niches of behavior. Hypocrisies of thought and deed. While it is so easy to blame men for all the issues, I cannot in good faith do so. On some of those occasions I would recognize that these attitudes were not only engendered by men but encouraged by other women. It has been my experience that if a woman made no bones about the fact that she slept with whomever she chose, some of the very first people to round on her with teeth bared, calling her names like slut, would be other women. Ah, but we women are hard on each other.
I wonder how much of my feeling about being "Othered" (de Beauvoir's word) came from my own inability to feel like my opinions, my feelings, my thoughts......mySELF....would not be accepted? Were not as valuable as those of others around me? In other words, how much of this was external and how much internal? Who can say, really?
I have a lot of issues that I could touch upon and probably will as I read through the book, but right offhand my biggest one is this: I am disgusted with the focus on sex. Not just the "act" of sex but the desire for it, the search for it, and the things done on its behalf. My respect for men has lessened considerably through the years because of what appears to be their enslavement to it in particular, when quite simply it is nothing but one of many great pleasures in life. I scorn a man for his apparent inability to consider my brain as independent of my body, yet I am vaguely injured when he does. Ah, I am a hypocritical creature, aren't I?
I'm not objective in this, though; far from it. I'm very aware that much of the disgust I carry is due to my own medical troubles and because this issue helped implode my marriage. I am also upset that my own natural desire for sex has been poisoned by my medical trials, and this resentment makes me jealous of those who can -- and do -- enjoy it without thought and take it for granted.
Obviously I have many things to work through but unlike a few years ago, I am now confident that I will. I am looking so forward to continuing to ponder the book and exploring my reactions to it!
((Song: "I Am Woman" by Helen Reddy. Lyrics here:
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/helen-reddy/i-am-woman.html ))
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