Shyla
I am on a quest for the real. Not the essentialist, singular, unchanging,
immutable sense of real, but rather, bitter truths hidden behind facades.
(This is but one aspect of it; it is a creative problem I'm continually
solving.) I believe that only in remaining unblinkingly (and yet calmly) aware
that power isn't going to be handed to you, and that more often than not, it
will be taken from you or used against you, can one be "real" in the world.
This doesn't allow for easy, inactive cynicism. It is, rather, a way to
balance our socialized need to nurture others (boyfriends, parents, roommates,
you name it) with a vigilant awareness of how we (women) have to nurture
OURSELVES, in ways that would seem to go against our training. (Embracing this
as a particularly female issue does NOT mean I reject or exclude men from
"realness." Their issues, however, aren't identical to ours.)
I look to
Chicana poet Gloria Anzaldua's notion of "facultad" (a special kind of sixth-
sense) for inspiration. "Pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it, so
we hone that radar. It's a kind of survival tactic that people, caught between
two worlds, unknowingly cultivate" (_Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,_
61). So much "female training" asks us to turn to others so we can feel "safe"
from pain and fear (much of it, not even inevitable, but thanks to the--
ultimately--arbitrary concentration of power among members of society who are
not, among other things, women) instead of facing it, embracing it, and working
through it so we can harness it ON OUR OWN TERMS and empower ourselves. Only
then can we turn around and nurture others (husbands, lovers, parents, sisters,
friends, selves) in ways that really work and really mean something.
Yes! I want to read more from Real Life Heartless Bitches
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