"Feminine" (cross-posted from the real journal)

[kimberkit]

I'd always hated the word "feminine." To me, it meant "weak"; when I thought of "feminine" women, I thought of women like Blanche, in A Streetcar Named Desire. I thought of the oppressed, tortured female: The Handmaid's Tale, The Color Purple, Beloved. I wished, very desperately, for people to stop focusing on women's plights and instead start treating women like human beings.

The usual role models I got for this were people like Rosalind, of Shakespeare's As You Like It. Rosalind, incidentally, was a cross-dresser; she found her ability to speak because she could speak as a boy, to her lover. Or, I had role models like Tamora Pierce's character Alana, in Lady Knight -- again, a clever woman who could fight, taking on a traditionally masculine role. Yet while both of theses characters demonstrated great strength of character and great ingenuity, they also made me feel just the tiniest bit intimidated.

What if I didn't want to express being a woman by being able to fight like a male, or being able to cross-dress and give coarse advice like a male? Was there any construction of a feminine role that didn't automatically either degrade women or feel like it had to usurp the masculine role before being respected?

And here, I can hear people asking me, "well, why shouldn't women be able to be fighters, or do anything else they want, for that matter?" Well, they should be able to, if they want. The Israeli army recruits women just as well as men. But you know, I really don't think women actually want to take on the role of being soldiers and Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Xena the Warrior Princess. Those are nice role models, but they don't make me feel as if I know what a real life woman actually should act like, in the ideal world. Men are expected to be soldiers - they might actually be able to use a model like Hercules. Women aren't, and creating a female Hercules doesn't fill a very satisfying role inside, somehow.

~ ~ ~

ginnunggap pointed out that perhaps if I didn't construct women's playing of a supportive role as being "weak," I might have a more satisfying answer to some of this issue.

For example, Penelope, of The Odyssey, was every bit as clever as Odysseus was. In fact, she probably showed more strength of character than her fickle husband -- because Odysseus, in his travels, had quite a rest stop with the seductress on the island. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope held off suitors, by pretending to weave her mourning veil, while unraveling it every night. And Penelope was faithful.

If I remember my fairy tales correctly -- not the Disney versions of them -- then I remember that Cinderella played out her subservient role, but used her own talents and a tie to her dead mother to ask for help out of her situation. She proved stronger than her weak father, who allowed his child to be abused. And yes, she went to marry the prince, but she did it on her own terms.

I remember that Beauty, of Beauty and the Beast, was the girl who decided to accept her fate when her father stole the Beast's rose. She went forward and decided she'd face death in order to protect her father. When the Beast came to her door covered in blood, she sent him away; but she loved him, and saw inside the heart of the Beast where no one else would.

~ ~ ~

I guess the challenge, in the U.S., where women can speak as well as men can, and where women basically have broken the glass ceiling, is to still find whether we fit this supportive and clever role anymore. We're really not tortured in the histrionic sense that Atwood proposed, when she wrote the Handmaid's Tale. We have jobs, equal voting rights, mostly-equal pay, etc. We don't always get treated with the same respect in the field of math, but women who make it don't usally get actively cut down anymore.

But if anything, we're a little lost, because now the culture values androgeny. Open up a magazine and you find sexless boys and girls, not full-figured ones. We like movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, and Hilary Swank. (Although Swank did a brilliant job in Boys Don't Cry).

~ ~ ~

I want to be a wife, and I want to support my husband. That's not at all fashionable, these days, but it's true. I don't want to make nothing of myself -- I have a brain between my ears, and I have a good job -- but I want to embrace the supportive role. I want to be a mother, I want to find the same fierce internal strength that Penelope did, and I want it without necessarily having to feel as if I'm betraying the women's movement these days, which wants to do battle over everything. I want to embrace the feminine without feeling as if I'm undermining the work of women before me to get equal rights.

[[last paragraph edited out -- see real journal]]

Comments

[addienfaemne.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly the same way.

You rock.

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

thanks for saying so, Jessica :) It makes me feel happy to see people commenting

[geeveecatullus.livejournal.com]

I've always had a hard time being a girl / woman or even wanting to be one ...
I don't want to be a man either, though ...
I just want the best of both worlds.
Myself I am also quite androgynous with breasts so I am quite glad that this is more prominently featured these days :)

I don't like the woman's movement much, it has kind of outlived its purpose for me ...
All this political correctness and gender mainstreaming of documents like manuals drive me crazy.
It is time to get past this.
And why is being a wife betraying anything?
Should it not all be about choices?
Just because I can choose not to fit the role, why should someone who wants to be obliged also to not fit this role because they can?

I believe in doing everything I want regardless of what the gender dictates and what is expected by either traditionalists or feminists or anyone in between.


(p.s I love Hilary Swank)

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

see, but "I can do anything I want" doesn't mean you don't feel the social sting when you do something really untraditional. Like, oh, say, date multiple people.

[geeveecatullus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is something I have a hard time grasping (the social sting).
I grew up pretty much an outcast who never fit in anyway (starting at such small things like not speaking dialect while everyone else did) and after a while it just did not matter anymore.
If you can't fight them ignore them as much as possible, I guess.

[choirbean.livejournal.com]

I've wondered from time to time about being a stay-at-home dad. I have no idea if I would actually do this, as right now I don't really have patience for kids. At the same time, something about the idea appeals to me. But I'm frightened by the incredible stigma attached to men who stay at home, raise kids, clean, cook, and live with a wife as a sole breadwinner. There was an article about this a few months back in the North Jersey Record (I wish I had a link). Basically, it talked about the stigma and the logistical issues: the stigma sting isn't just felt by the men: some of the wives in the article confessed to having "invented" careers for their husbands when asked.

Logistically, the men have a difficult time setting up playdates with other parents, since most stay-at-home parents are still female, and a playdate with the kids means hours of chatting time alone with some other parent - the appearance of infidelity is enough to scare people off of this idea.

All of this is enough to basically scare me away from being a stay-at-home dad (in my theoretical future, with a theoretical wife and theoretical kids, and a theoretical career that I could leave behind in order to stay in my theoretical house).

Gender roles don't make a lot of sense to begin with, and trying to define yourself in light of them can be really difficult. Hypocritically, I'd give this advice: I wouldn't worry too much about trying to define yourself as "woman" - just define yourself as yourself. Whatever you make yourself into, it'll be "woman" by default anyway ;-)

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

fair enough. You'd be a good stay-at-home dad, btw, I think, although it's often the case that both parents need to work in this economy

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

I really feel like femininity lead me astray in some fundamental ways, so keep that in mind.

The biggest problem with femininity is that it's not really consensual.

Well, wait, back up. Femininity refers to two things at the same time. First is one's self concept. One might have a feminine or masculine self-concept, and one might not, but either way you can (to a first approximation) create a personal identity for yourself that has meaning and that works and looks like whatever you want it to look like. The second form of the feminine is the social role, how you look and are perceived by other people, and that's the part that's not really consensual. People may or may not validate your femininity, but it's pretty unlikely that anyone's going to value it for what you value it for in exactly the way you do.

This in itself wouldn't be such a problem, except that there are all these messages from the larger culture that maybe you're not quite feminine enough, but if you just do this or that thing you will be. If that thing is contrary to your feminine self-concept, you suddenly find yourself divided between protecting your self-concept and retaining your validation from outside. Dating multiple people is a good example of this. It's perfectly easy to imagine a feminine self-concept that is perfectly harmonious with dating multiple people, but really tough to find external validation for that self-concept. Being divided this way for too long can really take a toll.

All of the above is true for masculinity as well, but femininity poses a particular problems because a feminine self-concept often contains one or more of passivity, enduring, self-deprivation, restraint, stasis, and finally self-abnegation. If those end up in your self-concept, the division I talked about makes you vulnerable to having your autonomy undermined. Society offers you a trade: give up some of your ability to define yourself and we'll validate you. In general, though, society always wants more and never gets you the final validation.

So that's the trap that social roles (of any sort) have in them.

As for your particular situation, I think it's important to figure out what "supportive role" means for you. Because a lot of people will have a lot of different ideas about it, in particular potential partners. I myself am not sure what you have in mind.