I'm looking back over past images and videos as a way to prepare myself to write a program I shall follow for the year.
It has become clear to me how and where my self-development went a little off track. That is, I'm happy to do anything with anyone, but don't tie me down to having to be a nurturer. I don't like that female gender role and strongly resist having to adopt its terms of reference. I don't like it when people assume that writings or products created by me have the purpose of enhancing people's emotional states -- or, if they don't then there is something wrong with my efforts or with me.
I don't write in that way and I don't think in that way and I don't act that way. I don't want to and I don't like to nurture anyone, unless it is a two-way street. When I've thought this was my job, to take on the form of the identity society was forcing onto me, I've always performed below par. Similarly, when people evaluate my writing in terms of how much it serves to improve community spirit, I feel like going mad.
In extreme instances, I have lost track of who I am. I had thought I was trying to communicate experientially, conveying my impression of phenomena. Instead, it turns out I am merely a failed nurturer.
But to fail at something one was never aiming for is shocking, disorienting and confusing.
Don't get me wrong. I have been extremely efficient at all sorts of endeavors when I was not faced with gender-based demands.
But, start to demand that I be your mother and the friendship rots, all falls in disarray and I cannot proceed, no matter how hefty the threats may be.
I was full of resentment, I admit. My parents loved me, but they turned the tables on me, and I was supposed to bring them up. Migrants demand knowledge and emotional support from the next generation. I was the eldest. If they come from an authoritarian culture, they may also demand that their children obey the old rules, from the old society, whilst bringing up the parents by the new rules in a new society. That doesn't work. But then there is another layer of opened wounds, familial traumas. My father needed much more parenting; whilst I needed support from him, not condemnation.
As you see, I had nothing and I knew nothing, but was required to make everything work, or spiral into tremendous feelings of guilt.
I don't want to have to nurture, because that evokes the sense of a pathological relationship, where those who have no power are supposed to take all the responsibility in life for what has not worked out historically. Had everything worked out, I would not have been a migrant-- let's face it. I was, because things hadn't worked out as they might have. So I had to rectify historical wrongs.
I did take on that burden, but that is enough to ask of me. To say my writing, and my actions and my thinking has to take the form of nurturing, in a self-conscious way, is far too much to ask.
The supposition I had entertained -- that I could even partially acquiesce to this demand, in order to fit in -- I no longer entertain. I'm calm when I am treating others as equals, but the maternal role causes me too much anxiety.
To both submit to external authority and yet to be the internal authority that makes the relationship work --that is beyond me. I'm sure I can be one or the other, but once you exert external authority over me, don't expect me to retain the energy to make the internal mechanism of the relationship work.
That sense I have, that what I am supposed to do is deeply contradictory, only follows me as far as gender roles do. That is why I am so keen to get rid of them. Since I do not function as a "nurturer", but do function as a decent human being, I am opposed to any system or idea that would reinstate gender essentialism: don't try to make me into my parents' and your parents' mother. I'm myself. I may be random, but I am an individual.
Also, please leave me out of nurturing professions, or nurturing roles. I fight myself when it comes to these -- and in the end, there is no energy left.
Let's have a feminism that isn't biologically determined.
It has become clear to me how and where my self-development went a little off track. That is, I'm happy to do anything with anyone, but don't tie me down to having to be a nurturer. I don't like that female gender role and strongly resist having to adopt its terms of reference. I don't like it when people assume that writings or products created by me have the purpose of enhancing people's emotional states -- or, if they don't then there is something wrong with my efforts or with me.
I don't write in that way and I don't think in that way and I don't act that way. I don't want to and I don't like to nurture anyone, unless it is a two-way street. When I've thought this was my job, to take on the form of the identity society was forcing onto me, I've always performed below par. Similarly, when people evaluate my writing in terms of how much it serves to improve community spirit, I feel like going mad.
In extreme instances, I have lost track of who I am. I had thought I was trying to communicate experientially, conveying my impression of phenomena. Instead, it turns out I am merely a failed nurturer.
But to fail at something one was never aiming for is shocking, disorienting and confusing.
Don't get me wrong. I have been extremely efficient at all sorts of endeavors when I was not faced with gender-based demands.
But, start to demand that I be your mother and the friendship rots, all falls in disarray and I cannot proceed, no matter how hefty the threats may be.
I was full of resentment, I admit. My parents loved me, but they turned the tables on me, and I was supposed to bring them up. Migrants demand knowledge and emotional support from the next generation. I was the eldest. If they come from an authoritarian culture, they may also demand that their children obey the old rules, from the old society, whilst bringing up the parents by the new rules in a new society. That doesn't work. But then there is another layer of opened wounds, familial traumas. My father needed much more parenting; whilst I needed support from him, not condemnation.
As you see, I had nothing and I knew nothing, but was required to make everything work, or spiral into tremendous feelings of guilt.
I don't want to have to nurture, because that evokes the sense of a pathological relationship, where those who have no power are supposed to take all the responsibility in life for what has not worked out historically. Had everything worked out, I would not have been a migrant-- let's face it. I was, because things hadn't worked out as they might have. So I had to rectify historical wrongs.
I did take on that burden, but that is enough to ask of me. To say my writing, and my actions and my thinking has to take the form of nurturing, in a self-conscious way, is far too much to ask.
The supposition I had entertained -- that I could even partially acquiesce to this demand, in order to fit in -- I no longer entertain. I'm calm when I am treating others as equals, but the maternal role causes me too much anxiety.
To both submit to external authority and yet to be the internal authority that makes the relationship work --that is beyond me. I'm sure I can be one or the other, but once you exert external authority over me, don't expect me to retain the energy to make the internal mechanism of the relationship work.
That sense I have, that what I am supposed to do is deeply contradictory, only follows me as far as gender roles do. That is why I am so keen to get rid of them. Since I do not function as a "nurturer", but do function as a decent human being, I am opposed to any system or idea that would reinstate gender essentialism: don't try to make me into my parents' and your parents' mother. I'm myself. I may be random, but I am an individual.
Also, please leave me out of nurturing professions, or nurturing roles. I fight myself when it comes to these -- and in the end, there is no energy left.
Let's have a feminism that isn't biologically determined.
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