In terms of my spending energy "railing ineffectively" or "being upset" by the state of the world around me-- well, I agree that it's important to pick your battles when it comes to action. I think that a certain amount of time "railing" against social conditions is a necessary part of becoming conscious and aware of them so that change can happen-- if you got to the point where you were fully aware of them and they were old hat, I imagine the amount of fire and anger would bank down to a low burn.
But the point I was trying to make in talking about the blinders, and in the experiment overall, was that I believe I spend very little conscious energy on either of those things. While I have been noticing and thinking about feminism more actively lately, and I do get pretty pissed off about some things (like the fact that all of my female clients have been raped at some point, where none of the male ones have*), I try to focus that anger into productive work (writing fiction and counseling my clients with an eye towards helping them question and break through ways gender is limiting them).
So (and I realize my phrasing may not have made this clear), when I speak about spending energy on insisting on being myself, it's a relatively unconscious and automatic insistence. It's a matter of the near-unnoticed mental caveat-- "This author just said 'woman is made for man,' and that doesn't fit my truth, and that feels like a rejection of me and a denial of my reality, but I will just put that fact aside for the moment in order to enjoy the book." "This person just refused to walk through the door I was holding open for him, and I feel rebuffed, but I will ignore that feeling because I know it's not worth my time and he might have meant it well." It takes work to "let things slip off," because it means repressing my first reaction. And if that first reaction weren't there, it would mean I wasn't connected with other people or the world at all, and that doesn't seem worthwhile.
The other way that things don't slip off is that the mental images formed by the world around me create my mental schema for how things "should be." Take kissing. I have a thousand images from books, movies, TV, comics, news, and watching other people of how to kiss, how it should look. When I go to kiss someone, all of those images are present in my mind, and (unless I very consciously try not to) they influence how I hold my body, whether I close my eyes or open them, where I feel comfortable kissing someone, etc, etc, etc. And almost all of those images are very, very, very gendered. I can consciously question them-- but unless I do (and even if I do), they're going to be in my unconscious, telling me "UR DOIN IT WRONG." That's what I mean by it taking energy.
*Note to the Universe: I do not want my male clients to be raped, thank you very much, they have enough to deal with as it is. I just wish that some of my female clients could share the not-being-raped experience.
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branchandroot
Re: Your Mileage May Vary(tm)
Date: 2009-08-12 08:02 pm (UTC)In terms of my spending energy "railing ineffectively" or "being upset" by the state of the world around me-- well, I agree that it's important to pick your battles when it comes to action. I think that a certain amount of time "railing" against social conditions is a necessary part of becoming conscious and aware of them so that change can happen-- if you got to the point where you were fully aware of them and they were old hat, I imagine the amount of fire and anger would bank down to a low burn.
But the point I was trying to make in talking about the blinders, and in the experiment overall, was that I believe I spend very little conscious energy on either of those things. While I have been noticing and thinking about feminism more actively lately, and I do get pretty pissed off about some things (like the fact that all of my female clients have been raped at some point, where none of the male ones have*), I try to focus that anger into productive work (writing fiction and counseling my clients with an eye towards helping them question and break through ways gender is limiting them).
So (and I realize my phrasing may not have made this clear), when I speak about spending energy on insisting on being myself, it's a relatively unconscious and automatic insistence. It's a matter of the near-unnoticed mental caveat-- "This author just said 'woman is made for man,' and that doesn't fit my truth, and that feels like a rejection of me and a denial of my reality, but I will just put that fact aside for the moment in order to enjoy the book." "This person just refused to walk through the door I was holding open for him, and I feel rebuffed, but I will ignore that feeling because I know it's not worth my time and he might have meant it well." It takes work to "let things slip off," because it means repressing my first reaction. And if that first reaction weren't there, it would mean I wasn't connected with other people or the world at all, and that doesn't seem worthwhile.
The other way that things don't slip off is that the mental images formed by the world around me create my mental schema for how things "should be." Take kissing. I have a thousand images from books, movies, TV, comics, news, and watching other people of how to kiss, how it should look. When I go to kiss someone, all of those images are present in my mind, and (unless I very consciously try not to) they influence how I hold my body, whether I close my eyes or open them, where I feel comfortable kissing someone, etc, etc, etc. And almost all of those images are very, very, very gendered. I can consciously question them-- but unless I do (and even if I do), they're going to be in my unconscious, telling me "UR DOIN IT WRONG." That's what I mean by it taking energy.
*Note to the Universe: I do not want my male clients to be raped, thank you very much, they have enough to deal with as it is. I just wish that some of my female clients could share the not-being-raped experience.