Sisters, hear me
- Laci Gagliano
- Oct 24, 2017
- 2 min read
Ladies, this is a love letter. The solidarity through this prolific wave of discussion that has cropped up means more to me than I can express to you. The value of seeing other women talking about their experiences openly is just as meaningful to me, and it takes me out of a very isolated place.
I've spent a lot of time doing what I used to think was "obsessing" over male privilege, harassment, inequalities, and the overall experience of being female, especially in the years before I actually called myself a feminist. I'd get on a train of thought and feel the burn of resentment smoldering deep down, but then feel consumed by guilt for being too preoccupied by those thoughts. "Oh, come off it," I'd think. What I didn't get was that I wasn't being obsessive or preoccupied--I was thinking about it so much because it was actually HAPPENING that much. It's always masked in normalization, which makes it hard to pinpoint without a frame of reference like I have today, thanks to the tireless effort folks are putting in to fight back, and the discussions people are willing to have in the open.
With ownership of your thoughts and feelings subtly, unknowingly, and passive-aggressively revoked around every corner because of your genitals, even from people you care about, it becomes easy to internalize the exact stuff you're instinctively fighting against without even realizing it. I realize now I used to fight back by internalizing and conforming to what we talk about nowadays as "toxic masculinity." What I severely lacked was solidarity with other women, mostly because I rejected it through internalized misogyny. There was a time when I truly could not equate being female with being a badass (I sure as shit do these days, though!) and unfortunately, I thought badassery was reserved especially for men, who played all the cool roles in film and music and books and all the other artistic enclaves I've always turned to for escape.
I encounter many, many completely badass women every day now. Women, in our truest, strongest form, have been there all along, but I had to stop cornering gender in some stupidly compartmentalized box (it's fluid, y'all), and stop mentally sidelining women in my own mind in order to see them (and, consequentially, see myself!). That's the definition of internalized misogyny right there.
From the lens of normalized male perspectives that gets placed on countless situations, to the tiny swipes men take to check their power, and worst of all, the subtle dismissals or ignorant invalidation most women inevitably face, this shit still weighs heavily on me as it happens, but I don't feel shame for thinking about it a ton anymore, and I have even less shame for feeling fucking angry about it. Cracking that egg open and feeling united with other femme folk makes me feel exponentially more empowered than I've ever felt.
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