this, this, this. this. I have young memories too. i grew up in rural northern new york, and when i got to middle school, we started playing against schools on “indian reservations.” the level of cognitive dissonance was intense. the more questions i asked, the less sense any of it made. i remember riding the school bus home, confused by the brand new schools and the casinos. the word "reservation". i remember asking my parents and being told indians were lazy alcoholics with a poor work ethic.
it hasn’t been until this past decade that i’ve started to see how so much of what I feel traces back here for me too - the dissociation, the performance, the dismissal of the real problem, the willful ignorance of our very foundation. i thought my marriage had nothing to do with any of this. turns out it has everything to do with it.
adrienne maree brown was my doorway, which then opened me to Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, and others.
thank you for continuing to talk about this. I'm not stopping either. it’s life-affirming to be in the presence of white people willing to face what’s actually ours. all of this history is alive in what we continue to choose to ignore, overlook, and stay inside of in our relationships. it is ALL DIRECTLY CONNECTED.
yes. all of this. it’s a connected web of fuckery. that image of you on the bus trying to make sense of reservations, casinos, the word itself really came alive for me. that confusion makes sense. that’s what’s honest. then the lies get layered over the top and everybody acts like the distortion is reality.
and the marriage piece, yes! people want to act like this history lives “back there” somewhere, when really it keeps showing up in the architecture of our relationships, what gets dismissed, what gets normalized, what gets performed over.
really glad we’re in this together. this can feel isolating as hell sometimes, and it means a lot to feel the we of it. 🖤
Amen!! We find out a lot abt "how the Indians lived" , but I remember nothing abt were they were now or even how they got there in the first place!!It was all presented as past history (as in, nothing to look at here folks, now move along, move along...) as if there were no more tribesmen alive at that time. I have gaps in my academic learning that have resulted in an odd bank of knowledge and a weird driving desire to see what's next. Thank you , this article is great:!
yes, exactly, Jill. it all gets presented as safely sealed-off history, like the violence is over, the people are gone, and there’s nothing living to account for. and i really feel that part about having gaps in your academic learning alongside this strange bank of knowledge and the drive to keep looking further. i think a lot of us were piecing things together from fragments because the full story was never actually offered.
As with so many of your pieces, this has landed deeply in my body, Alexandra -- drawing out so many memories and hums of recognition.
I remember being at a birthday party for the child of a woman my father was dating. I want to say I was maybe 14 at the time. The party may have been Disney Princess themed, or it could have been Pocahontas themed, as that was the most recent Disney release in the genre. However the case, Pocahontas came up.
I was raised in the '80s in a relatively progressive county in Virginia that didn't hide the horrors of its "founding" from children and regularly engaged educators from local indigenous tribes to balance out what the schoolbooks didn't name. I meticulously schooled a group of adults at that birthday party on oh-so-many reasons that the film, Disney, the corporate machine (likely not my exact words then, but leaning in that direction) were corrupt, inaccurate, zombifying, racist, sexist, and a betrayal of the history of the lands we were currently standing on. I can remember their faces vividly, and that moment helped cement the awareness for me that I would rarely find myself among allies.
I'm working to make my way back to the courage and conviction that blazed within me for so many years. Your writing inspires a lot in the re-membering. Thank you.
oof, yes, Marilyn Jean. that image of you at 14 schooling a room full of adults at a birthday party is incredible. i can see their faces too. and i know exactly what you mean about a moment like that cementing the awareness that allies were going to be rare. there’s something so specific about realizing, that young, that your clarity is not the problem and still feeling the social cost of it land anyway.
and this part really got me: i’m working to make my way back to the courage and conviction that blazed within me for so many years. yessss. that. i think so many of us are trying to find our way back to the part that knew before the world got its hands on us.
really glad this met you there and stirred some re-membering. and i love knowing there was a 14-year-old you out there absolutely wrecking the disney fantasy at a birthday party. iconic, honestly.
I am proud of myself that I stayed with every single little blip I felt in my body that poked inside; “but that just sounds kind of mean, we don’t have to be mean” and then it hit me that THAT’S the conditioning. That simply being direct and honest is “mean” for girls/women and we aren’t allowed it.
Unraveling behaving like this is going to take the rest of my life and I still won’t be done. But you know what’s going to help me tonight? Florence and Sofia!! ;)
fuck yessss, Kellye! 🙌🏼 that’s exactly the conditioning. the fact that directness registers as “mean” so fast, especially in the body, says so much about how early the training gets installed. and i really love that you stayed with every little blip instead of rushing to explain it away. that’s the work right there.
also, “unraveling behaving like this is going to take the rest of my life and i still won’t be done” feels deeply true. and honestly, florence and sofia sound like excellent medicine for tonight. oh! and if Florence plays ‘King’, think of me. 😉
You had me at dark, underground industrial techno... ☺️ Haha!
At one of my rare appearances in Sunday school, when I was maybe 7, I asked the teacher what the donations we put in the collection plate were for. She told me they were "for God". I was SUPER excited about this! I pictured the pastor going out back and holding up all this money and a ray of light coming down and the money floating away. But then I thought...but why does God need money? So I asked. And I asked how they give the money to God because I wanted to know, (and was my ray of light hypothesis true because if so, awesome!). I asked, couldn't God just make money if he needed it? Why did he ask all of us for money?
I was told to sit in the hall. I was no longer allowed to participate in Sunday school for the day, I could only listen from the doorway. I sat out there the whole rest of the day wondering what the fuck I'd done wrong.
What's especially fucked up is if she'd just told me the truth, they use the money for the church and to help poor people, I would have been happy and satisfied with that answer. Why lie? And why blame me for being more astute than she expected??
All of this that you're saying. It all resonates with me in ways I have difficulty articulating. I went through all this same song and dance, doubting my words, worrying about my phrasing, being told I was bringing up unpleasant things when I was just trying to discuss important topics in the relationship. I spent years tiptoeing around a man who was resentful that he suddenly had to become an adult in the relationship after I got sick and he took out his anger on me in so many ways. I was never allowed to express to him how much I suffered because somehow his suffering was always worse, when all he was doing was EXACTLY what I had been doing before I got sick! (Working long hours, doing housework, cooking, shopping, budgeting, taking care of a spouse who couldn't (or wouldn't) pull their weight.) I always felt like I was savvy, but the more I look over my relationship history the more I see the same patterns over and over, and I keep wondering, am I doing this shit to myself?? Why didn't I see this sooner? Why couldn't I understand it? 🤷🏻♀️ But then I get mad at myself for blaming myself. 😂
this is such a vivid example of the whole thing, Tiffany. that sunday school story is incredible. the ray of light taking the money straight to god is honestly adorable, and also your question was completely logical. of course a child would ask that. and yes, exactly, if she had just answered you plainly, there would have been no issue. but that’s the thing, right? so many adults would rather punish the question than admit the answer was sloppy, dishonest, or built on authority they didn’t want examined.
and this part too, yes. the way women get trained to think maybe i’m doing this to myself, maybe i should have seen it sooner, maybe i phrased it wrong, maybe i made it worse. that whole loop is such a mindfuck. then getting mad at yourself for blaming yourself. i know that one well.
i’m really glad the piece made contact. and also, “dark, underground industrial techno” knowing exactly where to find its people. 😂
👏🏻👏🏻 thank you for this. I wish I could be in the room(s) to witness and learn from your clarity.
As a 73 yr old semi retired psychotherapist, I get where you are headed, and my heart is bursting with joy at your courage. Anyone who rejects you socially didn’t deserve to be in your circle in the first place. Wow, just wow. Keep writing. Keep teaching. 💞
thank you so much, Teyani. this was such a beautiful comment. and that line about seeing where i’m headed really made contact. it felt like a mirror, and i could feel the bigness of what you were naming there. i feel some of that too, and i’m trying to let myself go at the pace my nervous system can actually integrate and build capacity for. so thank you for reflecting that back to me. and who knows, maybe someday we will be in a room together.
I was 10 years old when I started being ‘difficult’. Growing up in the Netherlands, my questions did not start on ‘Indians’, but on castles. I wanted to know why the nobility did not settle for wooden shacks like everybody else, but wanted big, stone castles. It was my language for ‘how did hierarchy and feudality came about’. And then there were my questions about what on earth made my ancestors think that it was all right to colonize Indonesia, on the other side of the globe.
Yeah, i was difficult and a nuisance. But it took me decades before i could connect it with feminism.
yes. exactly, M Roza. the question changes shape depending on where you’re standing, but the pattern is the same. castles, hierarchy, colonization, indonesia. a child trying to understand why domination gets treated like normal architecture. and “difficult and a nuisance” is such familiar social punishment for a child who won’t leave the story alone.
and you are so right. it can take decades to realize those questions were never random. once you start connecting everything, it’s like holy shit. 😳
A little later (when i was 11 or 12) my parents dragged us to a beat mass, in an attempt to keep us safely within the faith. The theme of the mass was environmental issues, pollution, extinction. There was a luttle exhibition too, in the back of the church. It shook me to the core. Ever since i have been aware of the damage we humans inflict on earth and nature. But it also took me decades that this too was connected to feminism and my questions about colonization and dominance.
Alexandra, thank you for this potent magic! Hearing another's experiences helps unlock my own; many forgotten due to the pain of not being seen and honored for who I was.
Little me decided I had had it with dresses, and quite happily chose to wear anything else. I recall feeling so powerful chosing my own clothes for the day. My mother's response was "Why don't you want to wear dresses anymore? You used to be such a nice little girl." This from a very kind, loving person who didn't realize she was such a clear channel for patriarchy. This was just one of the links in the chain of my Good Girl training that progressively boxed me into that container of Nice. Everyone's stories here are the hammers helping me break those links!
oh, this is beautiful, CSumner. that line from your mother, ‘you used to be such a nice little girl.’ whew. that is such a clear delivery system for the whole thing. tenderness wrapped around conditioning. love braided with containment. and yes, exactly, so many mothers were carrying patriarchy straight into us without even knowing they were doing it.
and i really love this image: everyone’s stories here are the hammers helping me break those links. yes. that’s exactly what this kind of sharing can do. not just recognition, but impact. pressure and breakage.
also i really felt that part about the dresses. i did the same. so many fights, so many tears, all because little us knew exactly what we did and did not want on our bodies.
deeeeep resonance. i was “ornery,” according to my mom; a terrible adjective to describe a little human. i get “no one’s ever asked that question before,” or “this has never happened before.” …well great! i’m asking, and it’s happening NOW ❤️🔥 thank you for normalizing the act of disruption!
oof, yes. “ornery” is such a nasty little containment word for a child with a mind of her own. and that line, “well great. i’m asking, and it’s happening now,” is perfect. that’s the whole thing. the script only works if nobody interrupts it long enough to name what’s unfolding in real time.
really glad this resonated. here’s to all the socialized girls who got handed a character flaw for refusing to go along.
Ah yes, we are the Living Reproach. It is intensely painful, and impossible to mask as I age. Frankly, I don’t even want to mask it, and am accepting my status as “terrifying.” It sure is hampering my HR career, though, where I can no longer shut up about what is happening, and don’t even get me started on all this patriarchy bullshit in the workplace and how the HR leader is always made to be the wife/mom who absorbs all the male dysfunction and blame while daily providing free psychoanalysis to the CEO… anyway, love your writing, and when I read it, I feel like I am speaking to myself :-D
ahhh, “living reproach” is such a brutal and accurate phrase, Carnelian. and yes to all of this, especially the part about HR getting cast as wife/mom to the institution. absorbing dysfunction, metabolizing male mess, doing unpaid emotional cleanup, and somehow being expected to call it leadership. that’s such a cursed role.
also really felt the “impossible to mask as i age” part. same. at a certain point the cost of masking starts to feel more grotesque than the consequences of being seen. here’s to being terrifying!
really glad the writing feels like company. that means a lot.
Every other sentence of this I want to write on paper and put on my fridge! You have found the exact language for so many situations I see that I have sometimes been able to only partially describe—down to the minutia: the pauses before bringing something up, the room assessments, the pretzling to find the way for something to land in a way that is “receivable”. All that f***ing invisible, background, calculation labor.
Imagine what femmes could do together, the worlds we could create, if all that energy were put towards….creating it and being what we want and who we actually are!
(Also, the term “feminist killjoy” comes to mind—Sara Ahmed).
yes, Vanessa. all of that invisible background calculation labor. the pauses, the room assessments, the pretzeling to make something “receivable.” that’s exactly the shit i wanted to name.
and honestly, i love the idea of my words written on paper on your fridge. that delights me more than it probably should. 😏
and yes to this too. imagine what femmes could make together if all that energy got pulled out of managing reception and put toward creation instead. lights out patriarchy.
also, i haven’t read feminist killjoy yet, but it’s on hold for me at the library right now and i’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on it when it becomes available.
A few of your sentences will join this one on my fridge: "She is not withdrawn. She is alarmingly present. Like a tuning fork, her truth shatters hypocrisy. Others in her presence are released into what is true in themselves, or flee." -Marion Woodman. Another friend said she wants to use your "dating profile" as a daily affirmation. I love that! Glad to have recently found your writing!
oh wow. to be sitting anywhere near marion woodman on someone’s fridge is a hell of a thing. i love that.
and honestly, the capitalist gremlin in me is now seeing a full line of magnets, affirmation cards, and a deeply unwell t-shirt collection. “difficult bitch” really does have merch potential. any interest in running an etsy shop? 🤣
and if you do end up putting one of my lines on your fridge, please tell me which one. i genuinely want to know.
glad you found me too. appreciate you reading and sharing with people in your life.
Yep, been there, labeled that at a similar age, browbeaten into compliance. The Deep South teaches this to its little white grrrls and tries to break them. Now, having seen what that compliance has cost me, I am done. No more. And the stories about Motherless have me ready to burn it all down.
i really feel this: seeing what compliance has cost you and reaching the point of no more. that kind of clarity is hard-won.
and yep, the motherless stories are beyond vile. they make the phrase burn it all down feel less like metaphor and more like a perfectly reasonable response. 🔥
Alexandra you have described every single relationship I’ve ever had, with exception of my cats. Audrey Lorde set me on fire. What you described is why I created a whole healing framework to pull myself out of the abyss:
“This is one of the oldest tricks in the culture. Name the violence and become the disturbance. Trace the pattern and become the problem. Refuse the anesthesia of polite silence and somebody will accuse you of ruining the moment.”
ahhh, yes. with the sacred exception of cats. deeply anti-patriarchy creatures, which is exactly why patriarchy hates them.
and that line of yours, “i created a whole healing framework to pull myself out of the abyss”, made contact for me. sometimes the only way through is to build what you needed with your own bare hands.
really glad this piece met you there. and i love knowing you turned that fire into framework. 🔥
Agreed. I kept asking questions that got me standing on the outside looking in of life, scratching my head, wondering why no one else was connecting the dots and lining it up with what was supposed to be our foundational principles and values.
So I decided to create my own world as that framework. It set me free. Became what I was always seeking, safety and a soft place for my nervous system to land.
When I read your posts and stories I see myself on a similar path, back to our most authentic versions of ourselves. 🌻
I love your dating profile. It kind of tempts me to write my own personalised version, even though i also don’t participate in the app marketplace. I think it could be a good exercise nonetheless. (A while ago, i saw a little clip of Kasia Urbaniak prompting women to cast themselves as the super-villain in their own life stories. What would you do, she was asking, freed of the self-imposed requirement to be nice? My inner answers to that prompt were illuminating too). PS Dig the soundtrack, and that you included it.
i love this connection. the “villain” prompt feels adjacent to the dating profile because both ask what becomes possible when you stop arranging your language around being chosen.
and thank you for noticing the DJ set at the end. i was not joking when i said i have an intense devotion to techno. it is central in my life in many ways. 🤩
YES. I don’t have an intense devotion to techno, but I do have an intense devotion to music that is great within whatever genre. I enjoyed writing to this set, and if you have other recommendations or playlists to share, I’ll take them.
PS I did playfully write myself a dating profile. I’m not sure it’s the ‘final word’ on who I am or at least how I want to be known, but it was fun to do and felt transgressively permissive.
this, this, this. this. I have young memories too. i grew up in rural northern new york, and when i got to middle school, we started playing against schools on “indian reservations.” the level of cognitive dissonance was intense. the more questions i asked, the less sense any of it made. i remember riding the school bus home, confused by the brand new schools and the casinos. the word "reservation". i remember asking my parents and being told indians were lazy alcoholics with a poor work ethic.
it hasn’t been until this past decade that i’ve started to see how so much of what I feel traces back here for me too - the dissociation, the performance, the dismissal of the real problem, the willful ignorance of our very foundation. i thought my marriage had nothing to do with any of this. turns out it has everything to do with it.
adrienne maree brown was my doorway, which then opened me to Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, and others.
thank you for continuing to talk about this. I'm not stopping either. it’s life-affirming to be in the presence of white people willing to face what’s actually ours. all of this history is alive in what we continue to choose to ignore, overlook, and stay inside of in our relationships. it is ALL DIRECTLY CONNECTED.
yes. all of this. it’s a connected web of fuckery. that image of you on the bus trying to make sense of reservations, casinos, the word itself really came alive for me. that confusion makes sense. that’s what’s honest. then the lies get layered over the top and everybody acts like the distortion is reality.
and the marriage piece, yes! people want to act like this history lives “back there” somewhere, when really it keeps showing up in the architecture of our relationships, what gets dismissed, what gets normalized, what gets performed over.
really glad we’re in this together. this can feel isolating as hell sometimes, and it means a lot to feel the we of it. 🖤
Amen!! We find out a lot abt "how the Indians lived" , but I remember nothing abt were they were now or even how they got there in the first place!!It was all presented as past history (as in, nothing to look at here folks, now move along, move along...) as if there were no more tribesmen alive at that time. I have gaps in my academic learning that have resulted in an odd bank of knowledge and a weird driving desire to see what's next. Thank you , this article is great:!
yes, exactly, Jill. it all gets presented as safely sealed-off history, like the violence is over, the people are gone, and there’s nothing living to account for. and i really feel that part about having gaps in your academic learning alongside this strange bank of knowledge and the drive to keep looking further. i think a lot of us were piecing things together from fragments because the full story was never actually offered.
thank you for reading and for this.
As with so many of your pieces, this has landed deeply in my body, Alexandra -- drawing out so many memories and hums of recognition.
I remember being at a birthday party for the child of a woman my father was dating. I want to say I was maybe 14 at the time. The party may have been Disney Princess themed, or it could have been Pocahontas themed, as that was the most recent Disney release in the genre. However the case, Pocahontas came up.
I was raised in the '80s in a relatively progressive county in Virginia that didn't hide the horrors of its "founding" from children and regularly engaged educators from local indigenous tribes to balance out what the schoolbooks didn't name. I meticulously schooled a group of adults at that birthday party on oh-so-many reasons that the film, Disney, the corporate machine (likely not my exact words then, but leaning in that direction) were corrupt, inaccurate, zombifying, racist, sexist, and a betrayal of the history of the lands we were currently standing on. I can remember their faces vividly, and that moment helped cement the awareness for me that I would rarely find myself among allies.
I'm working to make my way back to the courage and conviction that blazed within me for so many years. Your writing inspires a lot in the re-membering. Thank you.
oof, yes, Marilyn Jean. that image of you at 14 schooling a room full of adults at a birthday party is incredible. i can see their faces too. and i know exactly what you mean about a moment like that cementing the awareness that allies were going to be rare. there’s something so specific about realizing, that young, that your clarity is not the problem and still feeling the social cost of it land anyway.
and this part really got me: i’m working to make my way back to the courage and conviction that blazed within me for so many years. yessss. that. i think so many of us are trying to find our way back to the part that knew before the world got its hands on us.
really glad this met you there and stirred some re-membering. and i love knowing there was a 14-year-old you out there absolutely wrecking the disney fantasy at a birthday party. iconic, honestly.
I am proud of myself that I stayed with every single little blip I felt in my body that poked inside; “but that just sounds kind of mean, we don’t have to be mean” and then it hit me that THAT’S the conditioning. That simply being direct and honest is “mean” for girls/women and we aren’t allowed it.
Unraveling behaving like this is going to take the rest of my life and I still won’t be done. But you know what’s going to help me tonight? Florence and Sofia!! ;)
fuck yessss, Kellye! 🙌🏼 that’s exactly the conditioning. the fact that directness registers as “mean” so fast, especially in the body, says so much about how early the training gets installed. and i really love that you stayed with every little blip instead of rushing to explain it away. that’s the work right there.
also, “unraveling behaving like this is going to take the rest of my life and i still won’t be done” feels deeply true. and honestly, florence and sofia sound like excellent medicine for tonight. oh! and if Florence plays ‘King’, think of me. 😉
You had me at dark, underground industrial techno... ☺️ Haha!
At one of my rare appearances in Sunday school, when I was maybe 7, I asked the teacher what the donations we put in the collection plate were for. She told me they were "for God". I was SUPER excited about this! I pictured the pastor going out back and holding up all this money and a ray of light coming down and the money floating away. But then I thought...but why does God need money? So I asked. And I asked how they give the money to God because I wanted to know, (and was my ray of light hypothesis true because if so, awesome!). I asked, couldn't God just make money if he needed it? Why did he ask all of us for money?
I was told to sit in the hall. I was no longer allowed to participate in Sunday school for the day, I could only listen from the doorway. I sat out there the whole rest of the day wondering what the fuck I'd done wrong.
What's especially fucked up is if she'd just told me the truth, they use the money for the church and to help poor people, I would have been happy and satisfied with that answer. Why lie? And why blame me for being more astute than she expected??
All of this that you're saying. It all resonates with me in ways I have difficulty articulating. I went through all this same song and dance, doubting my words, worrying about my phrasing, being told I was bringing up unpleasant things when I was just trying to discuss important topics in the relationship. I spent years tiptoeing around a man who was resentful that he suddenly had to become an adult in the relationship after I got sick and he took out his anger on me in so many ways. I was never allowed to express to him how much I suffered because somehow his suffering was always worse, when all he was doing was EXACTLY what I had been doing before I got sick! (Working long hours, doing housework, cooking, shopping, budgeting, taking care of a spouse who couldn't (or wouldn't) pull their weight.) I always felt like I was savvy, but the more I look over my relationship history the more I see the same patterns over and over, and I keep wondering, am I doing this shit to myself?? Why didn't I see this sooner? Why couldn't I understand it? 🤷🏻♀️ But then I get mad at myself for blaming myself. 😂
this is such a vivid example of the whole thing, Tiffany. that sunday school story is incredible. the ray of light taking the money straight to god is honestly adorable, and also your question was completely logical. of course a child would ask that. and yes, exactly, if she had just answered you plainly, there would have been no issue. but that’s the thing, right? so many adults would rather punish the question than admit the answer was sloppy, dishonest, or built on authority they didn’t want examined.
and this part too, yes. the way women get trained to think maybe i’m doing this to myself, maybe i should have seen it sooner, maybe i phrased it wrong, maybe i made it worse. that whole loop is such a mindfuck. then getting mad at yourself for blaming yourself. i know that one well.
i’m really glad the piece made contact. and also, “dark, underground industrial techno” knowing exactly where to find its people. 😂
I really love your ray of light imagery.
I was a very imaginative child. :p
👏🏻👏🏻 thank you for this. I wish I could be in the room(s) to witness and learn from your clarity.
As a 73 yr old semi retired psychotherapist, I get where you are headed, and my heart is bursting with joy at your courage. Anyone who rejects you socially didn’t deserve to be in your circle in the first place. Wow, just wow. Keep writing. Keep teaching. 💞
thank you so much, Teyani. this was such a beautiful comment. and that line about seeing where i’m headed really made contact. it felt like a mirror, and i could feel the bigness of what you were naming there. i feel some of that too, and i’m trying to let myself go at the pace my nervous system can actually integrate and build capacity for. so thank you for reflecting that back to me. and who knows, maybe someday we will be in a room together.
I was 10 years old when I started being ‘difficult’. Growing up in the Netherlands, my questions did not start on ‘Indians’, but on castles. I wanted to know why the nobility did not settle for wooden shacks like everybody else, but wanted big, stone castles. It was my language for ‘how did hierarchy and feudality came about’. And then there were my questions about what on earth made my ancestors think that it was all right to colonize Indonesia, on the other side of the globe.
Yeah, i was difficult and a nuisance. But it took me decades before i could connect it with feminism.
yes. exactly, M Roza. the question changes shape depending on where you’re standing, but the pattern is the same. castles, hierarchy, colonization, indonesia. a child trying to understand why domination gets treated like normal architecture. and “difficult and a nuisance” is such familiar social punishment for a child who won’t leave the story alone.
and you are so right. it can take decades to realize those questions were never random. once you start connecting everything, it’s like holy shit. 😳
A little later (when i was 11 or 12) my parents dragged us to a beat mass, in an attempt to keep us safely within the faith. The theme of the mass was environmental issues, pollution, extinction. There was a luttle exhibition too, in the back of the church. It shook me to the core. Ever since i have been aware of the damage we humans inflict on earth and nature. But it also took me decades that this too was connected to feminism and my questions about colonization and dominance.
Alexandra, thank you for this potent magic! Hearing another's experiences helps unlock my own; many forgotten due to the pain of not being seen and honored for who I was.
Little me decided I had had it with dresses, and quite happily chose to wear anything else. I recall feeling so powerful chosing my own clothes for the day. My mother's response was "Why don't you want to wear dresses anymore? You used to be such a nice little girl." This from a very kind, loving person who didn't realize she was such a clear channel for patriarchy. This was just one of the links in the chain of my Good Girl training that progressively boxed me into that container of Nice. Everyone's stories here are the hammers helping me break those links!
oh, this is beautiful, CSumner. that line from your mother, ‘you used to be such a nice little girl.’ whew. that is such a clear delivery system for the whole thing. tenderness wrapped around conditioning. love braided with containment. and yes, exactly, so many mothers were carrying patriarchy straight into us without even knowing they were doing it.
and i really love this image: everyone’s stories here are the hammers helping me break those links. yes. that’s exactly what this kind of sharing can do. not just recognition, but impact. pressure and breakage.
also i really felt that part about the dresses. i did the same. so many fights, so many tears, all because little us knew exactly what we did and did not want on our bodies.
deeeeep resonance. i was “ornery,” according to my mom; a terrible adjective to describe a little human. i get “no one’s ever asked that question before,” or “this has never happened before.” …well great! i’m asking, and it’s happening NOW ❤️🔥 thank you for normalizing the act of disruption!
oof, yes. “ornery” is such a nasty little containment word for a child with a mind of her own. and that line, “well great. i’m asking, and it’s happening now,” is perfect. that’s the whole thing. the script only works if nobody interrupts it long enough to name what’s unfolding in real time.
really glad this resonated. here’s to all the socialized girls who got handed a character flaw for refusing to go along.
Ah yes, we are the Living Reproach. It is intensely painful, and impossible to mask as I age. Frankly, I don’t even want to mask it, and am accepting my status as “terrifying.” It sure is hampering my HR career, though, where I can no longer shut up about what is happening, and don’t even get me started on all this patriarchy bullshit in the workplace and how the HR leader is always made to be the wife/mom who absorbs all the male dysfunction and blame while daily providing free psychoanalysis to the CEO… anyway, love your writing, and when I read it, I feel like I am speaking to myself :-D
ahhh, “living reproach” is such a brutal and accurate phrase, Carnelian. and yes to all of this, especially the part about HR getting cast as wife/mom to the institution. absorbing dysfunction, metabolizing male mess, doing unpaid emotional cleanup, and somehow being expected to call it leadership. that’s such a cursed role.
also really felt the “impossible to mask as i age” part. same. at a certain point the cost of masking starts to feel more grotesque than the consequences of being seen. here’s to being terrifying!
really glad the writing feels like company. that means a lot.
Your dating profile is hot
apparently structural analysis has entered its seduction era.
😂 it’s about damn time
Every other sentence of this I want to write on paper and put on my fridge! You have found the exact language for so many situations I see that I have sometimes been able to only partially describe—down to the minutia: the pauses before bringing something up, the room assessments, the pretzling to find the way for something to land in a way that is “receivable”. All that f***ing invisible, background, calculation labor.
Imagine what femmes could do together, the worlds we could create, if all that energy were put towards….creating it and being what we want and who we actually are!
(Also, the term “feminist killjoy” comes to mind—Sara Ahmed).
yes, Vanessa. all of that invisible background calculation labor. the pauses, the room assessments, the pretzeling to make something “receivable.” that’s exactly the shit i wanted to name.
and honestly, i love the idea of my words written on paper on your fridge. that delights me more than it probably should. 😏
and yes to this too. imagine what femmes could make together if all that energy got pulled out of managing reception and put toward creation instead. lights out patriarchy.
also, i haven’t read feminist killjoy yet, but it’s on hold for me at the library right now and i’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on it when it becomes available.
A few of your sentences will join this one on my fridge: "She is not withdrawn. She is alarmingly present. Like a tuning fork, her truth shatters hypocrisy. Others in her presence are released into what is true in themselves, or flee." -Marion Woodman. Another friend said she wants to use your "dating profile" as a daily affirmation. I love that! Glad to have recently found your writing!
oh wow. to be sitting anywhere near marion woodman on someone’s fridge is a hell of a thing. i love that.
and honestly, the capitalist gremlin in me is now seeing a full line of magnets, affirmation cards, and a deeply unwell t-shirt collection. “difficult bitch” really does have merch potential. any interest in running an etsy shop? 🤣
and if you do end up putting one of my lines on your fridge, please tell me which one. i genuinely want to know.
glad you found me too. appreciate you reading and sharing with people in your life.
Hmmm, I suspect there is a way to get your messages and insights onto t-shirts in a less capitalist way. And that it is needed.
I will share sentences!
it was honestly a joke. the thought of making merch makes me want to peel my face off. haha
i very much like the idea of sharing sentences. so thank you.
Yep, been there, labeled that at a similar age, browbeaten into compliance. The Deep South teaches this to its little white grrrls and tries to break them. Now, having seen what that compliance has cost me, I am done. No more. And the stories about Motherless have me ready to burn it all down.
i really feel this: seeing what compliance has cost you and reaching the point of no more. that kind of clarity is hard-won.
and yep, the motherless stories are beyond vile. they make the phrase burn it all down feel less like metaphor and more like a perfectly reasonable response. 🔥
appreciate you reading and sharing, El.
Alexandra you have described every single relationship I’ve ever had, with exception of my cats. Audrey Lorde set me on fire. What you described is why I created a whole healing framework to pull myself out of the abyss:
“This is one of the oldest tricks in the culture. Name the violence and become the disturbance. Trace the pattern and become the problem. Refuse the anesthesia of polite silence and somebody will accuse you of ruining the moment.”
ahhh, yes. with the sacred exception of cats. deeply anti-patriarchy creatures, which is exactly why patriarchy hates them.
and that line of yours, “i created a whole healing framework to pull myself out of the abyss”, made contact for me. sometimes the only way through is to build what you needed with your own bare hands.
really glad this piece met you there. and i love knowing you turned that fire into framework. 🔥
Agreed. I kept asking questions that got me standing on the outside looking in of life, scratching my head, wondering why no one else was connecting the dots and lining it up with what was supposed to be our foundational principles and values.
So I decided to create my own world as that framework. It set me free. Became what I was always seeking, safety and a soft place for my nervous system to land.
When I read your posts and stories I see myself on a similar path, back to our most authentic versions of ourselves. 🌻
beautifully said.
This hits home. Thank you Alexandra.
you’re so welcome, Lena. thank you for reading. 🖤
I love your dating profile. It kind of tempts me to write my own personalised version, even though i also don’t participate in the app marketplace. I think it could be a good exercise nonetheless. (A while ago, i saw a little clip of Kasia Urbaniak prompting women to cast themselves as the super-villain in their own life stories. What would you do, she was asking, freed of the self-imposed requirement to be nice? My inner answers to that prompt were illuminating too). PS Dig the soundtrack, and that you included it.
i love this connection. the “villain” prompt feels adjacent to the dating profile because both ask what becomes possible when you stop arranging your language around being chosen.
and thank you for noticing the DJ set at the end. i was not joking when i said i have an intense devotion to techno. it is central in my life in many ways. 🤩
YES. I don’t have an intense devotion to techno, but I do have an intense devotion to music that is great within whatever genre. I enjoyed writing to this set, and if you have other recommendations or playlists to share, I’ll take them.
PS I did playfully write myself a dating profile. I’m not sure it’s the ‘final word’ on who I am or at least how I want to be known, but it was fun to do and felt transgressively permissive.
Oof I am exhausted in a white privileged way