A Dyke A Broad #66
Why self-care is the new Mother's Little Helper, plus Christine Delphy on womyn-hating womyn, and of course, the mysterious dolphin clitoris.
Hello from Paris!
In this grey and drippy city, there have finally been sightings of a strange bright globe. Maybe two. One pale in the morning, the other appearing in the afternoon fiery as a traffic signal or marigold.
Meanwhile, if there were sand in my apartment, I’d bury my head in it. Russia threatens to deploy their military near American shores, nuclear weapons included. U.S. Republicans keep gerrymandering voting districts for all they’re worth. Democrats are sneering at their constituents practically guaranteeing a defeat. Volcanoes are erupting and icebergs melting. Women in Afghanistan are getting tear-gassed and shot.
By comparison, I shouldn’t complain. Ever. My life compared to other people’s is great. Like that of my mother. And yet, and yet… she took tranqs to survive it. Back in the day, so many moms did that they were famously called mother’s little helpers.
I may have mentioned it before. But indulge me, picture it—this woman popping a pill so she can get her three bickering kids fed and dressed, and the two oldest off to school. Her brain’s a smooth haze as she sweeps up stray Cheerios, loads or unloads the dishwasher, deals with the laundry, vacuuming, dusting, before she bundles me—the last— into the car to go grocery shopping, then to the fabric store to buy thread, anything, to exchange a few words with other humans, stay out of the modest house she was trapped in, located in a suburb where nothing whatsoever was going on in house after house after house with their postage stamp lawns. The only moment of brightness in that horribly grey world are her fights with the next-door neighbors. On one side the Kelly’s, I think, who had a crabapple tree which in the summer dropped smelly fruit on our side of the lawn. On the other, the neighbors who sometimes dared encroach on our driveway.
Her husband, meanwhile, travels for work, and comes home on the weekends smelling of gin, and not particularly interested in talking to this smiling eager woman who has nothing particularly interesting to say, and how could she? Even if she reads the newspaper, two of them, she is stuck with small children all day every day, except for the occasional coffee with a few neighbor women who, like her, talk mostly about housework and the small quirks of children, the clothes they sew for them while listening to the radio, though more often in silence. Alone, they slowly die for lack of conversation with another adult human. No surprise she drags us to church on Wednesdays, twice on Sunday, anybody would, just for the company. She is sad, so sad. And angry. And self-loathing. It should have been enough to make her happy, these children, a man, a washing machine and dishwasher.
But she thinks of what life was like before, carefully choosing her clothes for the office where she could talk with other young women like her, go out to lunch. They had a ladies club that held the most wonderful parties. She got her own paycheck. She was free. And she wishes she could go back to that life. If she has to clean up one more bed full of pee, read The Cat in the Hat one more time, she’ll lose her mind. She decides there must be something wrong with her, that she thinks of her children as leeches, as stone weights, so she goes to the doctor. He tells her not to worry, gives her a couple of prescriptions. “This will pep you up, this will relax you.”
By the time I am ten or twelve, the anesthesia isn’t working anymore. She paces like a caged lion. She roars it out loud, “I wish I’d never gotten married and had you kids.” But still takes another tranq. Goes to bed with a migraine.
There is no gap between her, and my Facebook timeline increasingly stuffed with other women, black, white, brown, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, homo, hetero encouraging each other to light candles or sink into a warm, perfumed bath to adjust their attitudes, clear their mind, calm their unruly thoughts, squelch that voice inside them that in the face of a difficult job, or family (that their self-sacrifice is single-handedly holding together), is silently screaming, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
And I wonder when they’ll realize it’s a scam. The world persuading overworked under- and un-paid women to tranquilize themselves, so society (men) can continue to profit handsomely from their labor. Even better, these women pay for the privilege, largely the targets of a $450 billion self-care market, with a growth rate even better than tourism.
And yes, I wonder which of these women will wake up one day, and become the next Betty Friedan, calling bullshit on the idea that only more products and more consumption can solve our most basic problems. I wonder how long it will be before somebody cracks.
In Other News…
Last week I talked about how suicide attempts were skyrocketing for American girls, up 51%. The rates in France are up, too. About 40 % for girls up to 15 years, 22 % for girls and young women between 15 - 29 years old…
Afghan women are fighting back, and paying the price for it.
The human rights crackdown few are talking about.
Dicks on the subway.
A little Covid humor.
Seriously, read this. It’s amazing.
On Women-Hating Women
This week a Christine Delphy quote popped up in my FB “memories” so I did a quick & dirty translation.
"As it happens, there's not even a tiny bit of symmetry [between the antifeminism of women and that of men]. The antifeminism of men is objectively in their own interests. There's nothing else to say about it. On the other hand, the antifeminism of women is radically different from that of men; you could even say it's diametrically opposed. That which is racism coming from the oppressor is self-loathing on the part of the oppressed. It is normal that women would be antifeminists; it's the contrary that's astonishing. And the coming to consciousness--the "becoming feminist," isn't a sudden, brutal Pentecost; you don't suddenly get this awareness one time, once and for all; it's a long process that never ends, it's unbelievably painful, because it's a continual fight against the "obvious": the ideological vision of the world, and against yourself. The fight against self-hatred is never over. So there's no clear divide between women who are feminists and those who are “antifeminists" but a continuum of points of view on the same situation. Because whatever their “opinions,” women are oppressed. Their antifeminism being an obstacle to their becoming aware of their own objective interests—and, more directly: the reflection of their oppression in their subjectivity, is then one of the ways this oppression is maintained.
Also, while the antifeminism of men is part of oppression being exercised, the antifeminism of women is part of oppression being experienced.”
Il y a en l’occurrence pas l’ombre d['une] symétrie [entre l'antiféminisme des femmes et celui des hommes]. L’antiféminisme des hommes correspond à leurs intérêts objectifs, il n’y a rien de plus à dire sur ce sujet. En revanche, l’antiféminisme des femmes diffère radicalement de l’antiféminisme des hommes ; il lui est même diamétralement opposé. Ce qui est racisme chez l’oppresseur est haine de soi chez l’opprimée. Il est normal que les femmes soient antiféministes ; c’est le contraire qui serait étonnant. Et la prise de conscience, le « devenir-féministe » n’est pas une Pentecôte soudaine et brutale ; la conscience n’est pas acquise en une fois et une fois pour toutes ; c’est un processus long et jamais terminé, douloureux de surcroît, car c’est une lutte de tous les instants contre les « évidences » : la vision idéologique du monde, et contre soi. La lutte contre la haine de soi n’est jamais terminée. Il n’y a donc pas de rupture abrupte entre les femmes féministes et les femmes « antiféministes », mais un continuum de points de vue sur une même situation. Car, quelles que soient leurs « opinions », les femmes sont opprimées. Leur antiféminisme étant un obstacle à la prise de conscience de leurs intérêts objectifs et, plus directement : le reflet de leur oppression dans leur subjectivité, est donc l’un des moyens du maintien de cette oppression.
Aussi, tandis que l’antiféminisme des hommes fait partie de l’oppression exercée, l’antiféminisme des femmes fait-il partie de l’oppression subie.
That’s it for this week.
Disgruntledly yours,