catharine far from fully representative, a small gathering of things that feel “me.” contrary to the popular quote, you are not what you do. but it is fun to do things
This might sound enabling of me. I don’t mean it to be.
I have two little boys I’m raising and I want them to treat all people like people, the same way I try very hard to treat all people like people.
I’m dismantling and navigating a great deal as I try to figure out who I am right now. The last time I was in a similar place was college, and I was in a “help meet seeking the one to help” time. I did not feel complete on my own, or like I’d lived to my full potential. It’s such a damaging message to teach people that they are not complete on their own, with all due respect to religion and the Bible etc… it’s such a damaging message to be taught that idea. (I’m not sure where to place blame for it- the message or the messenger. Not going to get side-tracked). In any case I certainly encountered the message that it was not good for man, or woman, to be alone, that we were corresponding puzzle pieces, and that burning was bad, therefore…be fruitful and etc etc etc
I think the last time I felt fully and freely myself was around age 10. I remember it. I was in 4th grade, Mrs. Stachel’s class. She nicknamed me “the arm.” This is painful to admit. At least I knew she liked me. I feel like she was one of the few people who did like me in the room. To her credit, she gave me paper to do origami after work was done and I made a display for open house that got put on the front page of the newspaper (small town, very small town). ANYWAY I felt like myself at that age, in my stirruped stretch pants, tucked-in neon shirt, white socks and white tennis shoes and ponytail. I felt bright and excited to be alive. My journal was the same every day (this was when I started writing in journals). “Today was a good day. GDF[my initials]” Good Day From [me]. Every day was almost exactly the same, except there was one day I also wrote, “PS: Tony is cute.” He had spikes. Thank goodness that trend is over.
Anyway I loved writing cursive, math, origami, and *leaping* during PE skipping- leaping so far that people said I was cheating at races, but I couldn’t help that I was tall. I was a foot taller than everyone else in the room, probably also my teacher.
This was the end of me feeling like myself. That Halloween I dressed up like a cat, in sheer black stockings and a black ballet leotard, wtih a headband and ears. I was a child. A completely-child child. There was nothing sexual about this. But someone suggested it might not be appropriate and… this was the end.
The next year I got peer pressured into wearing jeans and people (literally) cheered the first day I wore jeans to school. Can you imagine a crowd of people cheering the first day you wore jeans? Well. Those stretch pants really needed to go, I guess.
From then on I felt like I also had a burden to carry of a body. That I had one, that it needed to be managed, and that it was also a problem.
Middle school was middle school. Everyone who’s survived it knows. Everything for me got worse, so much worse. Not only did I now have a problematic body, but I also had a problematic brain. Words. Not only this… but I learned a secret and it was toxic
The secret was
that if you pretended to be dumb… boys actually noticed you
🙁
I didn’t do it much. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
But I experimented enough to learn that it was a dance you could do and it worked. How toxic! How unbelievably toxic. To learn that the one thing you wanted more than anything else could be gotten by making yourself into an object! A lump! Someone who was not a person!
How sad!!!
I was not successful at this, let’s be clear. Non-success (I did not have a boyfriend until I was 18). Very much non-success. But I learned.
It was true at church, too. In fact it was especially true at church, and not with boys, with men! And not sexually, just being respected at all as a person!
If I spoke, this was all very risky. But what if I just smiled a whole lot and asked people questions??! SAFE!
Safe.
And so I became known as the sunbeam. And I sunbeamed all the time. I claimed it was joy from God or Jesus or something, probably. It was just me being happy, and I truly did love people. But. This was survival in an oppressive system.
And then I grew up and did all the grown up things. And the games didn’t change at all. The only difference now, in my grown-up church (for most of my marriage) is that the men would try to put me in my place with more aggression, as I finally got the therapy I’d always needed. Elder after elder seemingly threatened by my existence in the room. Once I had babies things got better. I also had a body that had just had babies, and was literally covered in babies. Babies made everything better in this regard.
Anyway.
🙁
Sometimes I try to figure out why so many men hate women. I know that in Christian-influenced circles, it isn’t rocket science why: women are blamed for lust throughout the entire Bible, Paul looks to Eve’s deception as the reason why women should be in submission…I think at some level, hatred of women is simply perpetuated by the extent a non-deconstructed Bible interpretation is taught. Not only that, but preaching about repentence through self hatred only leads to more hatred. Hate leads to hate. Things about chopping things off only lead to additional chopping. It’s toxic. It’s a never ending cycle, a trap. It’s why Paul talks about his ongoing battles… because his methodology and thinking perpetuate it, and because he has an end goal that is discrete in a way that reality cannot be.
Anyway. I don’t really want to talk too much about religion. It’s bad for me to spend time thinking about. If it’s your thing, talk to your leaders etc about it. I don’t want to get into it really. I’m just identifying it as, for some people, a clear source of hate. Hatred of self, and hatred of everyone else at some level, because what we internalize we will also externalize.
Jesus did not hate himself, I don’t think.
Anyway so I have great empathy for men who hate women who have been taught to hate women, who have only ever seen other men in their life hate women. Whose fathers hate women, whose brothers hate women.
I have empathy for men who are sexually frustrated for any myriad of reasons and need therapeutic support for their thinking that will not blame women for this being the situation. I’ve spent many hours talking to people I know who are in alt-right conservative corners of the internet- previous friends, even. Men who are into MGTOW and MAGA and all that stuff. I think men are coping with the trauma of losing male-dominated spaces as the world becomes more equal. Just because it’s right doesn’t mean it doesn’t create the experience of a loss when a replacement space has not yet been created.
Culture changes around gender roles mean that sacrifices people have made with “if-then” expectations that perhaps, years ago, would have statistically been somehwat likely to lead to a certain outcome, might not do that now, and it’s disorienting and disillusioning for some.
I feel grief about the flip side of that coin; the if-then sacrifices I’ve made that didn’t end up panning out the way religion seemed to promise they would are something I’m processing in an ongoing way.
I’ve found that blame-shifting is how we cope, generally speaking, with reality, as humans. That this is what we do.
Rather than take responsibility for our decisons, we ask what we should do, and then we can blame the source of the should.
Rather than own our coping mechanisms, we can blame the cause of the pain that led us to them.
And the reason we blame-shift is because of the pain of shame we may feel when confronted with self, which goes back to our earliest wounds.
ANYWAY
What I am saying.
Is that I have internalized misogyny that I am trying very hard to confront. I feel like I’ve been in a daze of sorts, since I was 10 years old, of trying to please men. It’s sad [Trump voice].
Some people will cope with moments similar to this by trying to please no one. Some will make different choices about genders of people they interact with. Some will spiral. (Some will jump to the converse of hating men, which is not the answer). I’m far from alone in reaching this little moment.
What I want to say is that I HATE IT. I hate it. I hate it! I hate it!!! I hate it.
And I grieve the loss of who I used to be.
I grieve the many years spent in the middle trying to chase the approval of people who hated me, overall. Not all, but so many. So many! And they would call their hate love, “calling me to repent,” “leadership” or some other term for “bull crap.”
Lack of acceptance. Lack of curiosity. Lack of valuing. Lack of caring. Blame-shifting for all evils. Blame-shifting for all negative emotions, frankly.
It’s perversely humorous to realize that one is simultaneously treated as utterly powerless/worthless and also completely powerful and somehow to blame for all things.
I don’t know who Woman Catharine is. I remember who Child Catharine was. Woman Catharine has only ever worn masks to survive. She still wears them. She wears them almost every single time she interacts with a man (even over the phone, I do the dance. Every time someone has authority, every time I need something, every time. Customer service, too).
I’ll do the dance when I have a need for utility (ie customer service) but I am determined to stop doing it when it comes to me. When it comes to my life. I probably won’t ever fully be able to. I need to be realistic. Programming is deep. Programming can even be fun (I love fun stereotyping. There are so many jokes in my family. This isn’t the post for them but you know what I mean. There’s fun in gender stereotype culture. There *can* be if people are creating them for themselves). I don’t want to lose the fun. Biology also has some aspects to it that simply are what they are.
but I don’t want to give up on Catharine 😭
and I’ve given up on her for a long time.
