Holding trauma against us

Here's the way it works: women experience trauma at a mammothly huger rate than men in this country, because of the normalcy of daily violence, aggression, hatred, and de-humanization of women. Not to mention the daily instances or rape and murder of women, and, the ever-present fear of being insulted, dehumanized, raped, and/or murdered. Many of us have grown up in households in which women are loathed, for instance. We are dehumanized on a daily basis. Our brothers have all the fun, we get to clean up and are told that we are fractions of who our brothers are.

Then we grow up. No one does an 'intervention' and prepares us for the fast-pace of this culture, no one apologizes for your past treatment and for what you are going to experience on a daily basis for the rest of your life.

We are expected to perform as well as everybody else. If we don't, we are told that we are inherently inferior to the men around us, who have experienced familial and societal love and encouragement, remember, while we were daily insulted and threatened. No one acknowledges that the trauma we went through would prevent any other creature from getting as far as we have. Prisoners of war, natural disaster survivors, on and on, they receive support and acknowledgment of what they've gone through. We don't. We get no help. Yet we persist, because we are expected to.

And if we do as well as everybody else, we are faced with hatred and jealousy: "What kind of woman are you?" they ask us, when we excel at sports and academics and everything. We are expected to be less than we are, to assuage the jealousy and feelings of inferiority of the men. Drop everything for the sake of coddling the men. Make sure you comply with how they want to see you, how they want the world to see you, for no reason other than that it feels better to them that way. To make believe they are superior - this feels nice to them. So let's do everything in our power to make women feel horrible about themselves, to mistreat and attack women, everything we can to make them believe that they are not human.

I think, too, that men see that women are superior - we are more analytical and detailed, more insightful and perceptive, physically stronger (how many men live as long as we do, even after we've been physically and emotionally abused our entire lives? How many men are in their athletic peak for 30 years or more as we are?), more loving and charasmatic...men know this, and so, they do what George Busch does when feeling a little threatened: they panic and lash out with violence.

Men need to learn from the masters: women. Men need to learn how 'to swim' as I did: by patiently, quietly observing the others and then trying it myself. They need to humbly accept reality: women are more evolved, we are their natural teachers, and watch and mimic us.

I will never join a religion unless it has as its head the common sensical and natual leader: a female god. Until that time, oh, I am a content atheist.

Silly men.

Men's hysteria about Hillary

Dear friends,

Good god, I'm having a hard time post-Hillary. When Hillary had a chance of being our president, I felt a hope I hadn't realized I was capable of feeling: I realized, that for the first time in my life, *I* had a chance at being president, all girls/women did. I felt, for the first time in my life, that women might actually be perceived as being who they are, who they've always been - supremely capable, talented, smart, resourceful humans who were beginning to be perceived as people, as truly worthy of serious consideration for any position or achievement - and not simply as something to be fucked and flirted with and to make serve you and to cheat on and violate. This was a dream/desire that had been robbed from me/all girls at birth, because of mass-hysteria surrounding the possibility that women might actually be human and worthy of respect: that women are actually human and all those horrific things done to us on a daily basis hurt and are as insulting and appalling as had they been done to you. That is, nothing 'innate' in us prepares us or immunes us to the daily abuse and horror we are forced to go through on a daily basis.

When the only viable candidate - Hillary - was not allowed to be president, I began to feel the familiar grind of trying to survive on a daily basis, of knowing that my efforts would always be in vain. Yes, that's nice to have dreams, little girl...now get back to looking pretty and being quiet while the men go live life.

***

Almost without exception, every Hillary conversation I've been involved has begun with someone insulting Hillary - and I'm talking really horrible insults, which have nothing to do with her impeccable, superior credentials and everything to do with mass hysteria surrounding the fear that women might be human - and me very quickly interjecting that I was devastated when Hillary, the only viable candidate this election, was forced out of the race, and that I cried like a baby during her last 2 concession speeches. They usually don't get the hint - their terror about the possibility that women are human is so strong. "How'd she get the working class white-male vote? She must have been showing cleavage" (this at a "Drinking Liberally" event, from a woman adequately indoctrinated into the art of hating herself and anyone like her...and I'd thought I was safe here, I thought people would agree with me in this venue that women are human); "You're just voting for her because she's a woman!" (this from a 20-something boy [don't throw pearls at swine, I tell you] on whom I wasted the time explaining in detailed fashion why Hillary is the professional superior for the position - and who carte blanche is voting for Obama because he's a man.

God these are tame examples. I've seen man after man after man - journalists, famous, powerful men - betray their hysteria about *almost* having to admit that women are truly human. The latest was on "The Big Idea" with Donny Deutsch - what a pig - who was interviewing Jon Bon Jovi (a decent human). "I'm just not sure that the country" - this said while holding his glasses in a faux-sophisticated/professional pose - "is ready for a woman president. I'm just not sure we're ready to see a woman as commander in chief." While he said this, he looked at Bon Jovi with desperation - "Please, please affirm what I just said, please, please! Tell me that I'm still going to get all the unfair advantages that I'm used to! Please, please tell me I don't have to speak to my wife, daughters, sisters with respect! Oh, please tell me the time hasn't yet come!" - it was all over his face, his terror that he might now be forced to see women as human, that perceiving a woman as veritable authority, worthy of complete respect was possibly, possibly being asked of him...and he just didn't want to have to change his lazy-arse thinking, not today, please Bon Jovi?

It's everywhere and it's exhausting and violent.

jem