I am beautiful because…

My partner and I have been playing with some aspects of Power and Privilege.  We decided to play with the experience of being in control.  We agreed to both have a weekend where one of us got to ‘be in control,’  to order the other around, and have them do tasks we wished to have done.  We have found it very rich.  I wrote a previous blog about how my experience of being in control informed me of my current experience of place in the world, and with alternatives to the powerlessness I experience in general society, as a woman.  The weekend I am discussing now, he was to be the person in control.  I was to do the tasks he requested: work out, write, eat breakfast, make coffee.  The most challenging one was…. here it comes….. yes, it’s true, I actually volunteered to do things for him… Wait for it….. the most challenging task was to Shave his Face.

 

Yes – my hardest task was to shave his face.  I did it too lightly.  I did it too deeply. There are all these icky curves I usually love about his face, but I was afraid of cutting him.  To be honest, it made a sound that felt like rubbing shark skin.  I was just no good at it.  To be honest, it made me want to vomit. It completely stressed me out. I had no idea it would be that difficult or emotional!  At some point, I decided I did not care what the ‘consequences’ were – I was going to give up.

 

It was a beautiful moment.  Tears filled my eyes and I realized how many things I have given up – because I was not good at them  – the first couple times I ever did them.  I told him so, at the same time I told him I quit, a I wasn’t going to shave his face – consequences be damned!

 

He listened and then gave me my next task; a consequence to my experience.  He told me to write down 5 things I had quit …. and 15 ways I was beautiful.

 

This was also a awful and profound experience.  I sat down and wrote down 111 things I had quit, using up most of my allotted time.  Then I struggled to pull out ‘ways I am beautiful.’  I could only come up with 8. I did not accomplish my task!   My punishment was to ……this is exciting, don’t hold your breath….To correct my list; 5 things I’d quit and 15 ways I was beautiful, then standing like an orator, stand on top of the fireplace hearth and read them out loud.  I think I might have cried.  Shit!  I’d better straighten up and get this right!

 

I corrected my list, the 15 ways I was beautiful. It took a long long time, so I hurriedly wrote down the first 5 things I’d quit. I might have cried.  My consequence for that transgression, for not speaking with pride about how beautiful I really am, was….. to say out loud, into the mirror, the 15 ways I was beautiful.

 

This felt really stupid!! But I was excited! I would NEVER do this on my own.  Oh the hippie-dippie-ness of it all.  Sure, respected authors and self-help people said to do it… but no way.

 

I leaned over the sink and looked myself in the eye and told myself why I was beautiful.  A few lines in, I realized the reflection of my eye was….not my own.  I have dark brown eyes and, get this, round pupils!  It was amazing, one of the eyes staring back at me was clearly blue, and the pupil was ….odd.  I looked some more – and the eye smiled back at me.  The iris was deeper than my iris, ancient blue with flecks of green color, and brown that was not my own color.  It had a square pupil.  Was that possible?  That eye looked – tired, and wise.  It looked like an Ancient Mother’s eye.  She was looking at me out of one of my own eyes.  And smiling. I cried some more: Tears not of sorrow. Tears of surprise and welcoming after a long time not seeing this friend.

 

I go to the mirror now daily to say my list.  My lists keeps growing now.  I don’t cry.

Really, I go to the mirror just to see the other woman.

To feel her welcoming acceptance.

To hear her say,

“And I made you that way.”

“You are just the way you should be.”

 

Today’s List:

I am beautiful because I am curious.

I am beautiful because I am adventurous.

I am beautiful because I am intelligent.

I am beautiful because I am introspective.

I am beautiful because I like to smile and laugh.

I am beautiful because I sing!

I am beautiful because I dance spontaneously.

I am beautiful because I am a good mother.

I am beautiful because I protect those I love…. (the older woman added this,)  …. including myself.

I am beautiful because I ask hard questions.

I am beautiful because I help others grow.

I am beautiful because I love animals, plants and the earth.

I am beautiful because I enjoy the  senses.

I am beautiful because I am eager to participate.

I am beautiful because I am working and growing.

I am beautiful because I try to do no harm.

Quilts and Handshakes

My usually wonderful, sensitive, trying to unpack his privilege partner, who is a male, said one of the rudest things he’s ever unwittingly said to me. I had been talking about having a women’s group meeting. He said “You all can get out your mirrors and look at your vagina’s…or what ever it is you women do at your women’s meetings.” I looked at him aghast. I just stared at him with my mouth open.

First – he goes to a bi-monthly men’s’ meeting. Never have I thought to ask him if he and his friends measure each other’s penises, or get out mirrors and look at their assholes! Assholes. Secondly, I have told him – at least 3 to 4 times that that is not what we do, that I have never done that at a women’s meeting.

He said “Well! I really don’t know what you do, you know, umm…”

I looked him in the eye and said ”That is one of the most demeaning things you have ever said to me!”

“I’m sorry….”

“Oh yeah? Well the only way you can make it up to me is to buy that vulva/yoni quilt we saw on Pinterest! No – I mean it. You buy it and we are going to put in on our bed for months!”

WTF!?!

(I guess I am still pissed., eh?)

 

Days later, I was at work. In a spare moment, I looked at the news headlines: Trump refuses to shake hands with Chancellor Merkel. I read the article written by Jessica Valenti in the Guardian.   This behavior was not surprising to her, or many other women. She wrote about an experience of her husband and she, meeting a shared male aquaintance, .

“…..he wouldn’t even look at me when I asked a direct question.”

So familiar!!!!   Other parts of her article were more to the point. These sentences about Trump behavior, about men’s behavor, changed my life in a day.

“While it would be tempting to write off the exchange as simple rudeness, this brand of slight is familiar to most women.”

“The assumption, of course, is that the women in the room simply aren’t important enough to warrant attention or conversation. It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed increases as women get older, and ever more invisible.”

I read the article on a busy day at work, and did not have time to process it. When I came home and shared my day with my mate, however, the impact came out. We started talking about how this is my experience; across the board. In fact it is so common, that we don’t even mention it. It is ‘just part of everyday life.’ Women go somewhere…. anywhere, everywhere…. and women are ignored by men, treated as if they are there or aren’t relevant. What a shock to see it written out loud. A relief, really.

I realized, it is one of the ways that women are continuously shown by society, that we are still owned, that we are basically chattel, and below notice from those who count – the men! We are all, on some level, still ‘just pusses’ to men. It is not even the ‘bad guys.’ Good guys, even my loving caring partner, even sometimes women put women ‘in their place.’ These actions are meant to tell us who and what we are. The informa women that we are things. As things we are owned, and as such can ‘rightly’ be controlled. No one should ever say what he said to me. It reduces me to a thing – a pussy specifically.

In a way, it is not directly his fault. If he could have seen it, he wouldn’t have said the things he did. But he is a product of our shared culture, as am I. Such a statement could almost slip past unnoticed, by both of us. Thank goodness for ole’ orange Donald, pointing these injustices out to us once again. No one should ever ignore another person due to gender, color or socioeconomic status, religion or sexual orientation.

In some basic ways, our society actively promotes the invisibility of women, minorities, people of color, and children…basically any group that is not male and/or white. It promotes even caring members of society, men, and sometimes even women, putting us in our place. They do it without even knowing they are doing it. They are unwitting drones for the status quo.

It was very helpful to me to see these two things, highlighted as they were, and side by side. How much of my self-esteem issues, or childhood trauma is just culturally induced prejudice and systematic repression. Quite a lot, I would say. One of my largest internal issues is dealing with ‘some childhood incident’ that lead me to believe I was not important, significant, or worth listening to. I have searched for this event for years. Now I am realizing why my search for this one childhood event has been fruitless. It is not that my father did not do this to me, he did. However, more importantly, he was not the only one; there was no one perpetrator. There was no single event. It was an endless onslaught of culture saying, “We don’t see you. We don’t hear you – you have nothing worth listening too. You are not of any interest.”

So – okay Dad. You are off the hook. But you and all you other men- you are still on the hook! Now that you men can see the hook – I will be expecting different behavior from you. Starting right now!

And I want my yoni quilt! The one with the psychedelic colors and the large lips and the round enfolded clitoris. If you are sleeping in my bed, you are sleeping under the auspices of all the yoni, vulva’s, vaginas, and pussies that brought you into to this world and fostered you and your growth. Bring on the pussy quilts!

 

See Art by MarDee Hansen – Yoni Quilts

Power and Privilege, Hugs and Sex

My partner and I explore ways of being together. We are still working out how power moves in our living together, and being together. It has been revealing, helping me to understand privilege, racism, and sexuality. If you are squeamish about sex, you should probably move on, because I am going to try to tie together some concepts from vastly different spaces. Those include politics, sexism, the body ….and sex, as this is one of the ways I express and explore the world and my reality.

I think it all started with me complaining that I always ‘had to’ conform my body to his when we hugged. He is sensitive and pro-active….He started conforming his body to mine. Wow! That was amazing! It was so……different. It felt…..different! It felt odd, because I was so used to our bodies coming together differently.

He started bending his knees to kiss me, so that I wasn’t cranking my head up and he wasn’t looking down on me. I didn’t have to hold the back of my own neck to support my head when we kissed! WaLa! No neck pain. I liked this – this lack of discomfort and started to pay attention.

As I did so, I started to notice things: When we sit on the bed to talk, he leans back against the head board, looking out. I sit cross-legged facing him, or crane my neck around to see him, or lay propped up on a pillow for long conversations. One day, I suddenly noticed: I was going through all sorts of uncomfortable contortions to fit his position…..AND I ALWAYS HAD.

My WHOLE life. I always had done this, not even noticing.

Then one day, I took my life frustrations out on him, in a fun sexual way; I played at telling him what to do, and focused on being there only for my pleasure. Selfish and Lovely. That was fine and silly, but what happened afterwards was the most important.

Afterwards, when we both laid back on the bed, he opened his arms to invite me in. I frown at him and said “Nooo!” Then I said, “You come lay in MY arms.” Everything changed. He put his head on my shoulder, and I put my arms around him….but this time, he had to conform to MY body. As I held him, I felt a sense of power, calm, control, protectiveness. It was as if by changing our positions, my view of life had changed. I’ve tried changing back and forth a few times since then, and it is consistent. There is power in the ‘how’ of how you hold someone. Every time, he conforms his world to mine, it FEELS different. Vastly – Powerfully – Different.

So, without any details, I played the person in charge again. No, that is not true. I WAS the person in charge. That being said, it was expected that I should order the world so that it suited ME. It was meet and right that I do so. It was just ‘how it is.” You get the picture here, right.

It was viscerally different experience. To really have the power to have everything the way you prefer it, just BECAUSE you prefer it that way – that is different. I realize that now, in a way I never had before. That is why I call it visceral; there is a body sense that changes when you don’t have to conform.

I have thought about being powerful. I have worked on being powerful. I’ve trained, and read, and discussed. But I feel like I make little to no headway in actually being more powerful. THESE experiences of power are the times I can clearly recall an experience what it is like to BE powerful, if only on a teeny scale: YOU mold yourself to my body. You mold yourself to My desires. You mold yourself to MY life. That is vastly different. it opens my eyes. It is changing me and how I feel I can show up in the world. It is allowing me to BE more powerful.

The other day, we were eating at a restaurant. Our waitress was a lovely young woman, working on a holiday, dealing with grumpy people – like me. She was chatting with us about grumpy people. We were laughing and having a good time. A bus boy, man in his late 20’s to early 30’s, came out pushing his cart to clean the table behind us. I knew he was going to do it when he was 30 feet and two turns away from her! As he passed, he bumped into her with his cart on the way to a table. She apologized. When he was done cleaning the table, he came back the same rout, though another was available to him. She moved out of the way – WITHOUT EVEN THINKING. Not only that, but as I went to look for the restroom, I noticed the men’s door had a large “M” on it. The women’s door? I had an upside down “M,” which was clearly, let me say it again, clearly not a “W.” I found it surprisingly offensive. What – we can’t even have our own letter?!

THAT is privilege. I am privileged, I know. I am white. However, I am not a male. I realize that I routinely conform my body, my life and my world to the masculine. These experiences have given me a way to intimately understand the experience of privilege……and lack of privilege. I am working on understanding and changing.

The bus-boy incident reminded me of an article, I am not sure I even posted, about what happens when we DON’T move from the bullies path. Well that is the experience of Women. When you don’t move out of the path of the male – you are corrected. We don’t get our own letter, only a lesser subset of the male world. Unless you meet a male who is willing to give you equality. To take the longer path. To bend down, so you don’t hurt your neck. To make a W for our doors, because they know we deserve our own letter.

This is what we have to do. First, we have to be able to see. To even know to see! I thank all those who have spoken up and brought these subjects to light. Second, we have to seek to partner with forces that are willing to change, to BE different, to make a new world. If we do that, it will change our world. Even if we start by making these changes on a small level. Even if it starts in the bedroom or in a hug.

So go out and kiss your partner, sit on the bed to talk, hug, but take a different power stance from your normal one. Explain what you are doing. Let the other person experience what it is to be Powerful. Or to be Conforming. Try it on for size. It may change you world.

 Note: In the photo, note the more natural position of the male vs the woman’s position.  If you took one person or the other away, who would look comfortable or stable?