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[rm]

The women I know are all so strong and what astounds me the most is how long it takes to make that strength serve us, instead of someone else.

So many of them I know through stories, which just adds levels, often silent ones, to the already oddly nuanced world of women.

ladyjaida has written this story (yes, I'm reccing you original fic) that while in need of a few tweaks is quite masterful in the way and the why of how it allows us to identify or sympathize its the main character. The story is of note here, aside from being very good, because Jaida is also someone I have known through stories and here she also writes about endurance, although of a somewhat less womanish kind than inspired this post (which thanks to the new LJ draft feature was actually started last night).

When a lot of us talk about Iraq or the administration or whatever, we talk about outrage fatigue. We can't remember if we got the phrase from John Stewart or The Onion, but the sentiment works for us, an expression of rage and sadness without having to feel either. We phone in our objections and flip to see what's on the Bravo.

One of the results of reading His Dark Materials (which I fully acknowledged becomes a screed that seriously borders on the hateful in the last book as Pullman struggles with both "show don't tell" and his own senses of optimism and rage), is that I got angry again, angry at other people insisting on getting their god into my small, sweet life. But that didn't just make me angry about the sorry state of politics and leadership in America, and it didn't just make me angry about the lastest moves in the abortion wars, or America's absolutely depressing homo-obsession where on a good day queerness is fetishized and on a bad day everyone is more honest about just how human they think gays aren't (however, do see this amusing post from alterjess on one response to Ohio's proposed bill barring gays and lesbians from adopting kids). Was it really supposed to be an exciting, positive milestone when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy went from freaking out the straights to feaking out the gays? This is cultural evolution?

The other thing I've gotten angry about, and which I'm always angry about on some level, but there's been a real flurry of it reaching a head amongst my friends of late, is how so many women come so close to giving up everything that makes them utterly stellar in the name of some unholy intersection between their competence and their compassion. I've done it. It's a misguided belief in a finish line, and it's being told or shown that love looks different than your instincts once told you it does; it's the notion that we are so astoundingly beautiful in the placid and weighty calm that comes with relaionships no one else understands as they carve us out into some ethereal bone white core. To have a nerd metaphor moment -- we become the ringbearers to others' grief and insecurity and rage and too often we carry it until it becomes so heavy, and we become so alone, we cannot move.

I won't say this is about men or straight men -- my queer friends take up burdens from their lovers in this way too. And I won't say it's all crap, because truly how do you know freedom and power if you haven't for some moment given yours up? And I won't blame or it say it's a waste or anything else. But god almightly I wish more people could see soooner that endurance is for the trip on, the journey up -- it is for your own ambition and resilience to what thwarts it, which is quite different from what beats it down.

This is not as eloquent as I would like, and perhaps both more and less pointed than it should be. I am so proud of so many of my friends lately, but I just feel like I wish I didn't have to be.

One of the things I love the most in the Thelemic gnostic mass, and really that I just have an inordinate fondness for in a most general way, is the naming of the saints, because of its rhythm (which is really exquisite), but also because it's so clearly a moment of admiration that involves no shame before its subjects, nor about them. That's been important to me. It's so lacking in Tina-the-Troubled-Teen America. It's all force of will, darlings.

Off to work now. If I've said "call/page if you need," call/page if you need -- I'm too much of a misanthrope to say it if I didn't mean it.

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

The women I know are all so strong and what astounds me the most is how long it takes to make that strength serve us, instead of someone else.

It astounds me, too. Especially in the way that all that time serving others, there is so often a voice that says "No, this is really for you. This is right. If it feels wrong, it's only because you're doing it wrong. Try harder. Bend deeper. This is good for you." It's a terrible, quiet voice, that loves you when you don't love yourself.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I wish we could all find a way not to be so destinated to what is often years and even decades of this temporary insanity.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

Me, too. I wish we didn't take drugs to try and stay happy in it, like so many of us do. And I wish that recovering sanity didn't require the disruption that it does. I have no idea how to overcome it in my own child except to refuse to live in it, myself.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think one of the huge challenges with children is that one has to get them to undersand the idea of permission and communicate on the subject and adhere to its dictates as a small creature that needs some intervention to be safe in the world, but then how the hell do we make that translate to making them understand as they grow up that they don't need permission to achieve and strive and to be who they are as long as they also integrate meeting the fair responsibilities they've signed up for into this -- I don't know. But you're absolutely right, by example is probably the first and maybe only step that really matters.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

I used to jokingly say that I wasn't a parent, I was an Adulthood Achievement Facilitator. I still feel that way. When Mys wanted pet rats, we asked her to find out everything she thought she would need to know to be a rat-owner and present it to us. She researched, made printouts, wrote a 2 page report by hand on why rats were good pets and how she intended to be a good rat-owned, put it all in a report folder, and gave it to us. She would have been eight at the time, I think. We bought her rats for her next birthday.

Choices like figure skating vs. horseback riding, soccer or not, even going to school, have always been hers within the limits of our resources. The money we have to spend on her gets spent in the way that she thinks is most useful. She's always been the only kid in her class who /wants/ to be in school. The one year she had a harridan for a teacher and was miserable, she said she wasn't happy, so I homeschooled her. I didn't want to teach her that it was acceptable for her to suffer under a domineering, disrespectful authority figure. If I'd been working, I would have taken a leave of absence to get that one across.

I am hoping she doesn't end up damaged by the changes I'm making. She loves me and we're friends as well as mom/kid and I think it'll be okay. When she was little and she was mad at me I'd say, "You can yell at Mommy in therapy when you're a big girl, but I'm making this choice right now." It still applies, if she's mad at me, she can yell at me in therapy. I consider that almost more of a parenting victory than having a kid who thinks I'm the perfect mother.

We must be doing something right. I don't know anyone else's kid who leaves "You're a great mom." post-its on the coffee maker or randomly gives "I love you" cards to their parents. I'm keeping them all to remind her when she's 16 and hates me for something. *g*

[ladyjaida.livejournal.com]

I thank you very much for the rec, but also very much for the post.

Just woke up, just read through your suggestions on the story itself, and I'm really in agreement with the last line bit -- I struggled with it, the only part I struggled with in the whole process of writing the damn thing, but it's worth it to struggle some more and you're right about it needing a little shove. I suppose I should also re-read the whole thing, at all ever, which is necessary to checking out where the stumbles in rhythm are that you mentioned.

But all in all, this is just to say thank you, really, because it means a hell of a lot to me not just that you'd read it with so serious an eye but that you'd offer the necessary criticism. And for the initial response, as well, advice which I'm not going to namby pamby around about and instead just take it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Read the story alound, and you'll find the rhythm problems, which are most word or prepositional phrase order things.

Also, seriously, since we're both uptown girls now, we should have coffee sometime.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I won't say this is about men or straight men -- my queer friends take up burdens from their lovers in this way too. And I won't say it's all crap, because truly how do you know freedom and power if you haven't for some moment given yours up? And I won't blame or it say it's a waste or anything else. But god almightly I wish more people could see soooner that endurance is for the trip on, the journey up -- it is for your own ambition and resilience to what thwarts it, which is quite different from what beats it down.

Yes, yes, and yes. Perhaps the one advantage I've gained from growing up with an insanely controlling mother who was fond of making me do things "for my own good" and manipulated me with every vicious tool at her disposal to attempt to mold me into what she thought I should be, is that after one rather horrid and impressively abusive relationship in early college, I've been largely immune to that sort of thing. I think this is a lesson most of us, male and female, need to learn.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

This is really excellent. There's stuff here I need to chew on.