Buying into patriarchy
The mayonnaise thread over at Twisty’s morphed into a discussion of why women in a patriarchy justify their own oppression. A commenter named JR mentioned Social Justification Theory, which other people in the thread at first thought was the same as Stockholm Syndrome. Here’s my comment, which I’m dragging over here in order to continue the conversation:
System Justification Theory is not quite the same as Stockholm Syndrome. The latter is basically “please the captor to ensure survival,” as Twisty summarizes. Social Justification Theory is not really about bonding with the powerful oppressor, but about accepting the intrinsic moral validity of the situation.
But SJT didn’t need to be invented; many feminists (including me!) independently recognized quite a while ago that this sort of psychological justification explains how women accept their status under patriarchy. Look: if patriarchy is all you see and there’s no way out and everybody in the world (including the people you love) thinks you’re an inferior piece of shit whose destiny is to serve men, then believing in your own worth would provoke an unendurable storm of cognitive dissonance. It would just hurt too fucking much. So, unless you’re Mary Wollstonecraft or something, it’s much more comfortable to simply believe that everyone is right — you ARE an inferior piece of shit — and no injustice is being done. God’s in His heaven and all is right with the world.
SJT and Stockholm Syndrome are not mutually exclusive, of course. But for some women in some situations, Stockholm Syndrome really doesn’t explain their complicity in their fate; there is no bonding with the oppressor, no escape from suffering, no silver lining (even an imaginary one). There’s just shit. Yet they justify this situation to themselves as “natural,” inevitable, part of God’s plan. An analog is the psychology of some low-caste Hindus and Untouchables, who endure their situation by believing that it is karmically just.
An interesting point is that it is often the most disadvantaged people in a social system who have the most psychological investment in justifying it. This justification is deeply precious to them, the only thing that makes a grotesque situation endurable. This is part of the explanation for the paradox that some women are even more reluctant to embrace feminism than some men. Psychologically women under patriarchy have a great deal to lose by acknowledging the injustice of the system. Men potentially have something to lose as well, but their psychology is different. High-status men in an entrenched patriarchy (historically the class which has occasionally produced pro-feminist men) enjoy a sense of abundant, unquestioned privilege which they may not be consciously aware of, but which influences their behavior. Obviously many of them sense the vulnerability of their superior position and defend it against any challenge, but others — a few — are like rich kids born into wealth who don’t know the value of the dollar. These are the ones who say, Sure, why not give the little ladies the right to vote? No skin off my nose! It’s easy to feel generous and benevolent when you’ve got millions in the bank. Needless to say, this money-grows-on-trees mentality can rapidly give way to a scarcity model once the threat to male privilege becomes real.
Another point to be made is that in order for the closed loop of social justification to be broken, there has to be an alternative on the horizon. In my comment at Twisty’s I alluded to the hopeless outlook for a young woman in an entrenched patriarchy: if that’s all you see and all you know and all there’s ever been, then there’s no way out. Psychological complicity is almost guaranteed unless you’re an exceptionally strong-minded individual. There have doubtless been feminists in every single human generation since the dawn of patriarchy, but unless feminist awareness reaches some kind of critical mass, it’s destined to flicker out. The feminist alternative has to be real enough and credible enough for the great mass of women to take the enormous psychological risk of believing in it. Hence the importance of consciousness-raising, of feminist role models, of criticism of patriarchy, and of a feminist vision for the future. And then the revolution doesn’t happen overnight, obviously; forty years after the start of the modern feminist movement in America, there are still plenty of women who find it easier to drink the patriarchy kool-aid than to believe in their own worth (though at our current juncture I think Stockholm Syndrome is probably more important than Social Justification Theory in explaining the mentality of the most vehemently anti-feminist women in America.)
40 Responses to “Buying into patriarchy”
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Sam says:
“An interesting point is that it is often the most disadvantaged people in a social system who have the most psychological investment in justifying it.”
I read something a while back about applicants for a job who didn’t get hired. Demographically, white men were most likely to blame affirmative action for not getting the job and black women were most likely to blame themselves.
December 12th, 2006 at 8:39 pm EST -
foilwoman says:
My question regarding the SJT is this: knowing that we do buy into the patriarchy (and needing to make a living in the patriarchy, with health insurance and the chance for college for our children) how does one survive without going nuts. It’s easy to say just stop: buying makeup, trying to make oneself attractive, flirting with men, shaving ones legs, whatever the symbol or sympton of oppression is, but outside of tenured academia (and maybe not even there) a woman rejecting the societal feminine norm isn’t going to get very far. And for a heterosexual female who wants relationships with men once in a while, how does one negotiate that landscape without going absolutely batshit insane?
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diana christine says:
I have been reading your site quietly from the sidelines, never intending to become a participant. I am, after all, a beginner feminist in what is clearly not a beginner feminist site, and I did not expect to have relevant contribution. Buying Into Patriarchy, however, compels me to write. I dare to speak in the possibility that my personal experience may offer deeper insight. I dare to write also for the opportunity to thank you for this post, for in the reading of it again and again, I have broken into tears and have come to a deeper understanding of my own buying into a patriarchal society.
I am a confident, competent, professional woman, well respected in a corporate world. I have addressed nearly two hundred audiences in four countries and am viewed as one who is strong and capable. However, I was born into a world drenched in patriarchal rule and for nearly 50 years I have carried that world inside me. I have had to address every aspect of it one single thread at a time. It may require a lifetime.
Why do women in a patriarchy justify their oppression—patriarchy exhibits itself in very different ways, some more easily recognizable than others. A beloved friend of mine grew up in an African nation and was subjected to feminine circumcision. I know the anguish of her broken body and the many surgeries required for her recovery. Her patriarchal world was easy for me to recognize and to oppose. My own, however, has been more subtle and more difficult to contest.
I grew up in a middle-class town in the Midwest. Though it was the 60s and early 70s, in my world women didn’t drive cars (my mother and her many sisters never sat behind the wheel), didn’t work outside the home, didn’t have checking accounts or own their own property. I never heard women called inferior (I would have been shocked to be told such a thing—this would have been relevant to oppose) but the message was implied. I was simply taught that men are to be the head of the home, the nation, and the church. With regard to “leading a nation,” an explanation given to me when I was young was that because of women’s menstrual cycles, their emotions could not be consistent enough to allow for constant critical decision making that carried global impact (please don’t mistake my mentioning this to be my acceptance of this—I merely contribute an inside view for those who wonder what it is like in this kind of patriarchal/religious world). Sometimes patriarchy is not preached; it is merely practiced. If one lives in a world where women do not drive cars, it is no wonder growing up to be a pilot never comes within view.
It never occurred to me there was anything wrong with the patriarchal elements of my world. It simply was the way things were. I believed in the intelligence of grown-ups and followed it with a belief in the intelligence of men. I had no models for disagreement. I only knew how to do what I was asked to do.
I was smart, a straight-A student at the top of my class in high school, but I sacrificed the rest of my education because the men in my world asked me to do so. After all, I expected men to be smarter (in my youth there were no women doctors, no women lawyers, no councilwomen). Now many years later, I still clearly recall how I felt the first time I looked into the face of a man and realized I am smarter than he. I was shocked. When I recovered from my shock, I felt guilty, and guilt continued. I soon became skilled with disguise—if I concealed my intelligence, I would not be guilty of diminishing the men around me. I became so good at concealing my intelligence I began to believe it myself. Only recently have I begun undoing a lifetime of habits that diminish my own aptitude.
I accepted the intrinsic moral validity of the situation for many reasons, some of them still unknown to myself. You mentioned an “unendurable storm of cognitive dissonance that would just hurt too much.” You are correct. In the reading and rereading of your post I have come closer than ever to accepting the truth of my patriarchal world. I have discovered that in this acceptance, I have to confront the many sacrifices I made. My sacrifices have been grave and my confronting them is painful. This in itself is a reason to accept patriarchy.
Your words offer a solution, and that of the importance of consciousness-raising, of feminist role models, of criticism of patriarchy, and of a feminist vision for the future. For those in a deeply patriarchal/religious world, sometimes vehement and angry protesters are not the answer (it makes you look like the enemy and creates further resistance to awareness). The greatest presentation comes in strong feminist role models and some kind of understanding of the world we seek to change.
I may not yet have the courage to become a leading feminist or a writer of such concerns. Perhaps my only courage is in changing my own views, in becoming my own person. I hope that in becoming more of who I am, that in itself will be a worthy contribution.
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therealUK says:
Social justification theory seems to have some similar elements to the “Just World Hypothesis”.
So, poor or ill or raped people are poor/ill/raped because they are lazy/stupid/tarty, and if they’d tried a bit harder (or were a “better” person) then they’d be well-off and happy instead - conversly the rich are so because they are “good” people who make the effort and so deserve their rewards. It’s a sort of blame the victim mentality.
People indulge in these biases because it makes the world less threatening, and so are very invested in them.
I’m wondering though why that some people don’t operate under these illusons so much and are more inclined to see the world as shitty and unjust. Possibly sufficient trauma and/or maybe ties in with the whole optimist/pessimist thing and locus of control ideas.
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Viveth says:
Very well said!
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Violet says:
diana christine, welcome and thank you so much for your comment. You don’t sound like such a beginner to me!
There are so many reasons we buy into patriarchy, and a big one is simply the fact that most human beings accept the world they’re born into. You say, “I had no models for disagreement. I only knew how to do what I was asked to do.” Most people are like that. We’re social animals, and the first couple of decades of our lives are spent in learning our culture. We have to learn everything, every single value and nuance. Children question a lot but they’re also constantly engaged in imitating and modeling what they see.
By the way, I didn’t grow up in a religious/patriarchal sub-culture, but I heard the “women can’t be president because of their periods” thing too. It was quite common and taken very seriously, actually some kind of received wisdom: a female President having her period would be emotionally unreliable and might press “the button.”
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Violet says:
foilwoman and therealUK, I’m thinking about the questions you raised.
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Tom Nolan says:
the mentality of the most vehemently anti-feminist women in America - VS
Are you referring to public figures? Because if you are, I think that you ought to consider another possibility: that such women are neither Stockhausen dupes nor SJT dupes, but rather regard the anti-feminist line as a good way to further their own careers, reputations and fortunes.
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Violet says:
Are you referring to public figures?
No.
The furthering one’s own career thing kind of goes without saying for the professional sell-outs so beloved of the wingnut media. Not just anti-feminist women, of course, but also “conservative” blacks, anti-gay rights gays, and so forth.
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henderson says:
Some women have learned how to make the patriarchy work for them. Or rather, they have learned how to flourish in the environment of the patriarchy. For them, perhaps, they would react out of fear of messing up their survival. Not on a conscious level always.
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Mandos says:
By the way, Violet, I tagged you with a “meme”. First time I’ve ever done that.
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ehj2 says:
I suspect the existence of something metaphorically akin neurobiologically to visual or optical illusions, and that the nature of the way we think (quickly helps), and must find patterns (workable narratives) and act upon them, leads us astray. All optical illusions are based on the brain’s effort to take short-cuts in analysis of tremendous amounts of visual information. Is it a leaping tiger (one dangerous object), or just a swirl of leaves in the same basic shape? A tenth of a second matters — hence the evolutionary utility of shortcuts, and the problem of illusions.
Once we embrace these patterns, they can be extremely difficult to un-see — even in the face of extreme discomfort and what should be overwhelming knowledge.
Ted Haggard provides us an interesting public example. It is likely he lived with considerable self-loathing for his homosexuality, unable to ever untangle himself from his own notions of what Christianity means. Like a person who sees an optical illusion one way (the two silhouettes) and can’t see it any other way (the outline of a chalice), he is trapped in his rigid and self-annihilating worldview.
He was certainly supported (and publicly successful) in his chosen narrative, but at the cost of any private happiness and any authentic life.
What’s extremely frustrating and often deeply painful for those of us who can see the system — i.e., who are conscious of at least parts of it — is that awareness of the system (and support for it) is not a function of intelligence or education.
I was recently at the corporate Christmas party of a very liberal organization, and at an intimate table of dedicated liberals I was mildly castigated for my expression of sorrow over the ubiquity of so-called confederate flags in the rural area where I live, barely more than 100 miles — a stone’s throw — from the capital of the free world (the governing center of a great 200-year-old liberal democracy). A Harvard graduate, a young and attractive woman completely in tune and at ease with patriarchy-supporting “beauty” clothing, told me that she went dancing at a club which sported confederate flags on its walls (along with other conservative symbols), and that, if I would just meet these people in their world on their terms, they’re very nice people.
Of course they’re nice people, if you’re staying within the lines that they define and you’re flying false colors. To say this crudely but clearly — sexbots are always allowed to the dance. Just don’t try to park in their car lot with an ACLU or gay-rights bumper sticker, or call them on their flag (an explicit racist symbol proclaiming allegiance to white supremacy, and which in fact the Confederacy rejected as a symbol of the rebel states and thus is not a part of anyone’s heritage or history), or dare to argue that women have a serious role outside the home and should be paid equally for equal work.
Of course they’re nice people. But someone voted for torture, to continue crushing human rights in favor of corporate powers, for an anti-gay marriage amendment, for America to continue being a rogue state in violation of international laws and its own treaty obligations, the continuance of very not-nice preemptive wars that are destabilizing the world, and for building long border walls to keep people like her (not white anglo-saxon) out.
Something in me despairs when I see a successful and articulate woman with a liberal education from a liberal institution in such unconscious support of the system.
What she didn’t (and doesn’t) see is that simply attending such a dance, with such visible symbols of the system, and being a visible participant and a model for other women in the system, is powerfully supportive of the system. Her voice was clearly the consensus view at the table. I was seen and carefully (politely) painted as narrow-minded for having expressed sadness that the narrow-minded are still thriving so close to democracy’s very center.
She’s learned how to be admired in both worlds and how to accept the gifts from both worlds, and she’s a model to other women on how to look beautiful, be intelligent, hold your real beliefs to yourself, be silent when necessary, take what comes and appear successful and fully empowered while doing so. In short, she’s a perfect model of what the patriarchy wants a woman to be. An educated, soft spoken, carefully-coiffed and pretty advocate for the system.
And she doesn’t even know it. And most of those watching her don’t know it.
For Mandos:
Women of Sufism, A Hidden Treasure
Camille Adams Helminski[5] Early one morning, as the lovers of Mevlana waited by the foot of the Gullu Hill and watched life awaken, they could not hear the sound of the rebab for which they were waiting. [6] They became worried and their hearts were in a quandary as to what to do. [7] They all looked at Mevlana, while he waited in silence. [8] Once the sun had risen in the sky, Mevlana asked one of his young students to go and check the house on the hill. [9] Those who went to the house saw nothing but a few peacock feathers in the middle of the house, still warm from having just left a live body.
[I know that's four sentences, not three -- but I prefer quaternities over trinities. See Jung.]
[Note: A rebab is a stringed instrument made from a coconut shell sound-bowl, with a rounded long neck with three pegged strings. It is played with a bow and has a very throaty, emotive voice. Mevlana himself played the rebab, and for centuries now it has been one of the traditional Mevlevi instruments.]
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ehj2 says:
for years i’ve been meditating on what it would be like to live without a narrative. to drop all stories. to allow all meaning from all events to slip away. to simply try to live with the world as it is in each moment.
can the mind give up narrative — the notion that every event must “mean” something? can the mind give up its continual churning of partial memories into collective threaded meanings?
i have some success on my own. i can putter about in first-level meanings. if i’m hungry it means i must find some food. but as soon as i run into someone i’m forced to the level of meta-meanings. if a person looks at me this way it means this thing.
what does a cultural narrative look like that gives everyone the most freedom?
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richard cherry says:
diana
I may not yet have the courage to become a leading feminist or a writer of such concerns. Perhaps my only courage is in changing my own views, in becoming my own person. I hope that in becoming more of who I am, that in itself will be a worthy contribution.I apologise in advance if I am about to preach from a position of male privilege, and who am i to tell anyone waht feminism is or should be (you can tell I’m about to try…) but from what i read on many of the most eloquent feminist blogs, including this (and i know there is more to feminism than this but it’s the bit to which i am most frequently exposed), growing, educating oneself and changing your views is precisely what feminism seems to be about. If you have changed yourself you have changed the world - maybe you need to change your second sentence to read:
Perhaps THE only courage is in changing my own views, in becoming my own person.
And as to feminist leaders - surely by changing, you ARE leading.
Top comment, Diana -
richard cherry says:
ehj2 -
if I would just meet these people in their world on their terms, they’re very nice people.How would we get to meet them in any other world or any other terms - they run our fucking world on their terms - that’s why it’s all so fucked.
I met people like this a lot at Uni (a very privileged world in this case) and it was all that sort of comment - ‘yes he’s racist but if you get past that…’ -
ehj2 says:
Dear Diana,
What Richard Cherry said [comment 14].
I believe he’s from the other rogue state (Britain). I consider the USA to be the larger one. But Richard is no mad dog. He seems to be some kind of Englishman.
Dear Richard,
Ah yes, racism, tribalism, nationalism, religionism, my-group-ism. The great common mental shortcut to the ever-present question, “Is this friend or foe, should I share or steal, should I let live or kill?” If one can just get past being dominated by racism (a basic “optical/mental” illusion), one is on one’s way to being a grownup. And what we don’t teach in schools is “being a grownup” (learning how your mind doesn’t work) — because it would get in the way of teaching nationalism (jingoism) and religionism.
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ehj2 says:
I just realized I should make this explicit. Sexism is not a member of that listing as a potentially hardwired neurological shortcut.
There is insufficient evidence at this time to conclude that sexism and hierarchy and inequality are genetically mandated at either the individual or species level.
On this issue, I take the social constructionist position, and hold that “human beings have developed generally adaptive capacities to accommodate, internalize, and rationalize key features of their socially constructed environments, especially those features that are difficult or impossible to change.” (Jost, Banaji, Nosek).
Women bear children; this is key in our environment; this is difficult or impossible to change; we (men and women) specialize in provision of the labor to support children; we institutionalize those differences; we internalize them; we rationalize them.
Sexism is a social construct.
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diana christine says:
ehj2 [comment 13]
can the mind give up narrative—i haven’t had years to meditate on this but i’ve spent some of this year working toward its practice (this may be slightly off thread but i follow your comment).
in my practice, when the mind gives up narrative there is no judgment…rust on a broken bolt is not ugly, bankruptcy is not failure (failure is a judgment and bankruptcy merely an outcome different from that intended), and mis-takes are not wrong.
when the mind gives up narrative there exists no resistance and belief in something More becomes trust.
when the mind gives up narrative we are without comparison and without definition, being neither female nor male, neither smart nor stupid, neither good nor bad. and when we are without definition, we are without limitation.
but we live in a world filled with judgment and resistance and we are constrained by the narratives we carry. i deeply appreciate any moment in which i can step away.
~ ~ ~
richard [comment 14]
thank you.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Diana,
One of the things I attempt to do in my life, in my conversation, and in my writing, is press awareness downward one level, to the something closer to direct experience beneath or behind the immediate mental view (which filters out most of direct experience). Words and concepts (mental constructs) are all just metaphors for movements deeper within.
We’re not off topic here. A system is a narrative, and a justification is a judgment. My experience is that people can’t live together (even for a moment) without a story, a narrative, a metaphor of what pulls or holds them together — and cannot escape judgments (or in more rational terms, discriminations) about fidelity to assumed shared metaphors. I am strongly persuaded that better narratives are more inclusive, and seek what Edward Tuft called Topview (a place in which the relations and connections of all the strands of narrative and metaphor are drawn together and held together without doing injustice to any).
For instance (and employing a narrative thread from your own upbringing), Jesus (a Jew, not a Christian) proclaimed that he came not to end the law (of Moses) but to fulfill it. And then he spoke the Sermon on the Mount. He didn’t replace or abolish an old narrative, he expanded and fulfilled its potential for inclusivity. He proclaimed (in my mind) a far more expansive and human narrative than the ancient words (and text of Moses) and in fact, a narrative far harder to actually live.
Can we call this a meta-narrative? A meta-system? If so, then it is one that is mostly ignored in modern religious (not spiritual) life.
I certainly consider Buddhism a meta-system, and note its effort to relinquish many of the continuous judgments that cloud unmanaged thought.
Jesus himself, aware of the tendency of narratives to become rigid and justifications sterile and immoral, warned of the presence and danger of judgment (judge not, least ye be judged). The story we impose on others will be imposed on us — and Ted Haggard is a cautionary tale about the consequences of chosing one’s narrative poorly (unconsciously) and being unwilling to relinquish it. He cannot escape his own self-loathing, even as he loathes everyone and everything around him.
Note that all narratives are about meaning. The story provides a method of interpreting the meaning of events. A religion attempts to explain why we are here. The story is maintained by internalization and rationalization and judgment — yet it provides ways of discriminating between paths of activity. To give up a story for another story (even a meta-story) says we acknowledge we’ve made poor discriminations in the past. To avoid doing so, we would be a “stiff-necked” people.
You wrote, “When the mind gives up narrative there exists no resistance and belief in something More becomes trust.”
I’m not sure what you mean here, even with your expansion of this thought which follows. Belief, however, is another word for story or narrative thread, so you seem to be saying you’ve replaced a thought with another thought, and one without the utility of reality to ground it.
I believe from your text that you have escaped the belief in the current Christianist religion that women are somehow inferior to men — that Men are the Head and women must blindly follow. But please beware of the use of the word belief as a codeword for faith — an element of a narrative that cannot be proved and is held (believed) simply because one wants to believe it (perhaps because it makes one a member of an admired ingroup — I’m saved, a member of the elect, and going to heaven).
I also believe that what may have brought you to this new narrative (replacing your old narrative) is something closer to direct experience — your own cognitive dissonance with the meaning of the old narrative and your own experience of your incredible self-value, intelligence, competence, capacity.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Diana,
I invoke the rule of takeback for my comment #19.
You wrote, “When the mind gives up narrative there exists no resistance and belief in something More becomes trust” … which can be parsed to say “belief in something More become trust in something More.”
My first response would be to say that trust is another codeword for faith (i.e., “Trust in God”).
But now I’ve decided you’re not writing about a thought replacing a thought — your writing about allowing thought to be supplanted with the direct experience of something which feels (at least in part) like trust.
Since that’s very metaphysical and Spinoza-like (one of my personal heros), and Chris Clarke (another of my heros) has declared me the site mystic, and because I actually completely agree with you, I’ll totally accept that.
p.s. and do know that this is a feminist site. women rule here. while us men have to be polite and on our best behavior, you can slosh your gin and tonics around and kick butt.
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henderson says:
you can slosh your gin and tonics around and kick butt.
I don’t drink gin and tonic- bud light. but I like this because I have to be on my best behavior in real life.
I dont’ know what meta means. but you two are fun and comforting to read.
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Pastor Al E Pistle says:
“Meta” means when Laura Bush says that while Condoleezza Rice would be a “really good candidate” for president, Condi just isn’t interested:
“Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she’s an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job.”
And lonely spinsters just can’t take the heat.
-feministing.com -
diana christine says:
for the continuation of “she said / he said,” and for henderson’s amusement and comfort, i resume our dialogue.
you are good. very good. how lovely that despite your lengthy and profound missive, you did not sit back and rest on your writing but rather continued its pondering. and because you did so, you uncovered what i meant in my message regardless of the error in my syntax.
i wrote, “when the mind gives up narrative there exists no resistance and belief in something More becomes trust” which you parsed to say “belief in something More becomes trust in something More.”
yes.
yes.
can the mind give up narrative?—i was trying to express what seems to be my experience of the mind giving up narrative…stepping out of narrative…even if for only a tiny moment. if we step out of our narrative, we are without judgment (we can’t judge something without a story), we have no resistance (how can we oppose that which we do not judge), and we are without definition (thereby being without limitation).
the part that read “belief in something More becomes trust” should have stood alone, as it is not a direct expansion of the thought in the first half of its sentence. my intention was “when the mind gives up narrative, belief in something More becomes trust in something More” (because our narrative no longer throws up resistance).
when the mind gives up narrative, then belief (the thought, the story, the narrative) becomes trust. and stepping out of narrative means stepping into something More.
i read and re-read this post and in so doing i deepen my understanding of my own narrative, my compliance with the patriarchy and otherwise.
you are making me work hard. i may be sloshing the gin and tonics but this is hard work.
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Violet says:
I don’t think we can do away with narratives entirely; individually that may be possible but it doesn’t seem likely to me that we can get everyone to go into a Zen trance and stay there. As ehj2 suggests, we need better narratives.
Anthropologists call these scripts: the narratives that encode a society’s constructed values. In our society the scripts encode patriarchy: Men are Strong and Women are Weak, God the Father created Adam and Eve, etc. etc. In those traditional societies with relative gender equality (yes, they exist), the narratives or scripts are very different: they stress the complementary but equal roles of males and females in the creation of the universe, in the sustenance of life, and so forth.
In our current Western world we’re in the process of creating new scripts to encode our new values, like multiculturalism. We need a script for gender equality, for female power. We feminists are trying to write that script, but the blowback from patriarchy is gigantic.
Little kids from kindergarten on are taught the virtues of multiculturalism, one of the new scripts we’re writing. Are they also taught that men and women are equal? I doubt it; the fundies would have a fit if anything like that was in the textbooks.
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simply wondered says:
ah story narrative and now script; all are the basis of my professional life as actor writer and producer - and of course i imagine (without as usual bothering to read them) that most thinkers insist that all three are performed by us all on a daily basis anyway, so just because i get piad (occasionbally) for working with those processes doesn’t mean i know any more about them than those who ‘only’ live them. i have for ages been trying to define a difference between story and narative and while i’m sure they are distinct i’m buggered if i can define accurately what that difference is. and the difficulty is that we have only recently adopted these terms to talk about normal life, so it’s hard to have a common accepted distinction between them. was it martina navratilova (and am i going to render it correctly?) who said ‘The difference between being involved and being committed is in the case of ham and eggs the hen is involved but the pig is committed’ i’m sure you can correct this - and she was probably quoting someone.
sometimes it feels like in a sub-pinter play. has anyone seen party time? a unique experience for me in a theatre: a character (let’s say ‘chris’) was talked about - with pauses - all through as being absent - where is he etc… and then a body collapses through the front door as the final allegedly dramatic moment; huge general pause…. voice from audience ‘that’ll be chris’. now was that narrative, story or script? pile of bollocks i reckon. -
diana christine says:
i am a student. i am a student here and each of you is a proportion of my scholarship. i cannot but thank you.
scripts, narratives, and how attached are we to our own narrative….
it seems to me a narrative is something like a cloak except the one wearing it believes it is her skin. she believes her narrative is reality, truth. she is attached to her narrative. an ability to be less attached to my own narrative puts me in a place of compassion with those who have what i believe is a negative narrative or one that diminishes one’s self or others.
when i see fundamentalists i have compassion because i remember what it was like when i was a girl and i believed the fundamental path and its rigidity (i believed it to be truth). now that i have seen beyond its borders, i cannot not see it as a script, as a set of beliefs. i am in a place of compassion with those who cannot not see it as a narrative.
ehj2 describes rural neighbors who wave a confederate flag, a symbol that makes me weep for the hatred and exclusion it represents. my sadness, however, is not only for the hatred and exclusion imposed on the surrounding world, but for the internal hatred that cannot not be present in one who hates another group.
hating, despising, being angry with another’s narrative puts me in a position of being overly attached to my own narrative. in my attachment i will not act from compassion but rather will render evil for evil. we end up with opposing views pitted against each other. narrative against narrative.
regardless of my endorsement of compassion, though, i cannot ignore others’ narratives of hatred and exclusion or claim them to be merely errant personal narrative; after all, we all participate in a shared narrative and non-involvement on my part then champions the narrative of hatred and exclusivity. which is why i will not be able to remain a silent feminist or a silent liberal.
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ehj2 says:
Dear Diana,
If we’re wise, we do project different persona in different settings, and we do wear them like different skins. If we’re wise, we do recognize that they are only skin deep.
In general, I think that the liberals do not hate the right wing or the conservatives in their opposition to them. We think they’re misguided and are at something of a loss as to how they stay so misguided. We don’t call them traitors and demand they all be hanged.
Democracy is a narrative of inclusion — the people rule. But the narrative of inclusion hasn’t really caught on where I live — explicit exclusion is considered patriotic, war is peace, and abolishing civil rights is freedom. The right wing doesn’t seem to be happy unless it’s proclaiming its victimhood and wrecking the hard-won gains of civilization. Today its the hordes of illegal immigrants that are about to end right-wing happiness. And the terrorists. And the gays. And uppity women who want equality. And everybody against war.
In my mind, the right wing is made up primarily of people who project their own internal anger at some imagined evil out there — and then marshall and misdirect their energies to something out there when their problem is within them. Getting rid of their own fear and self-anger is what motivates them.
From my perspective, the GOP is the Party of Fear and Hatred. Ultimately, it’s a doomed narrative. But it can cause an awful lot of human suffering before it is discarded on the dungheap of history.
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henderson says:
By narrative, do you folks mean “personal experience”? Or the experience of another? or do you mean a parable or fable? Or all of it?
Experiences mean alot to me. So do parables ( withn reason) They help you to see and understand what you would otherwise not. It’s how humans learn.
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henderson says:
I mean to say, that nearly everything I know ( or anyone else I know) is a result of my own or anothers experiences and their interpretations of those experiences. That includes the times when I learn others have had different or opposing experiences. or times when I am able to love others. I’m big on nature. She’s always right. it seems like that’s how she teaches us. trials, errors, experiences etc. They may include making judgements ( I am not sure that’s a bad thing- to make judegemtna at times and to refrain at other times). Scripts can be useful guidelines especially where there are none existing. as long as we are allowed to revise those scripts in light of new knowledge and information. Otherwise they can become dogma. And that’s not useful or helpful to reach our goal of making it the best possible situation for the most possible folk.
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henderson says:
Bah! too much bud light. I’m sorry, con escoose me.
if you can untangle that mess of writing you get 100 brownie points.
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flawedplan says:
Reminds me of what’s called “schemas” in psychology, it’s sort of the same thing, broader, more macro than micro I guess. But I think about the fatalism of my mother and the lessons of masochism she taught me at her knee and this is useful, since those concepts don’t completely cover it.
But I was told by her that incest in our family was unavoidable, that the males were using me sexually because that’s the way life was. She ended by telling me I could “consider it an honor” that my brothers and their friends were passing me around, as I was helping them practice for sexual relations with adult women. I was 13, and struggled with that for decades, but it was so consistent with her other teachings that they were up front in therapy and easy to deal with because they were so bizarre and wrong and damaging. She told me over and over that to be female was to suffer, so get used to it. So in one way my psychological abuse was better than what happens in normal middle class families, where the mindfucks are more subtle and harder to locate. Still, since I did grow up with this sort of teachings, mental confusion is customary for me, and I’ll always have a tendency to get tangled in thought disorders, thanks mom!
So I just figured it was masochism and fatalism and of course her teaching me the ways she dealt with what must have happened to her. But the memories strangle my mind, I remember seeing a man rape her, she came home drunk, tripped over my feet in the living room, fell and hit her head on the radiator and it knocked her out. She was bleeding from her lip while the man she picked up fell on her and started humping, her 3 kids in the same living room, ignoring it. I helped her to bed after he left, and I knew I’d spend a good part of my life trying to figure out what that was all about.
You know I truly appreciate what I find here.
((((Violet, Dr. Socks))))
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diana christine says:
i am in a classroom surrounded by students and one among us has posed a question. there is no instructor at the head of the class, only all of us learning and discovering. i hesitate to speak, uncertain if i am qualified to respond. i am, after all, so very new in understanding these things. my understanding of the meaning of “narrative” may be quite different from another’s and, in fact, may be different from how i will understand it as i continue to learn.
dear henderson, you ask the good questions. i am on my way to an airport but want to take a moment to respond to your inquiry. what do i mean when i use the word “narrative”….
a baby is born and moments following her birth, her mother is holding her proudly. “sarah, sarah…” the mother coos into her baby’s face, and the baby’s narrative begins. she is sarah. the baby feels herself being held (which later becomes believing she is supported) and the narrative continues to deepen. she is a girl; she is an american (or asian or african); she is pretty or plain or tall or short or confident or smart or stupid or athletic or clumsy or forgetful. all of this is part of her narrative. this is the story she is living out. she knows how to ride a bicycle; she doesn’t know how to sew a seam. some labels are obvious to (shared by) the world (she is an american girl with red hair) and some of the narrative is more subtle, more insidious (she is superior because she is caucasian; she is inferior because she is a woman).
in truth, sarah simply “is” and everything else is narrative. her experiences become her narrative. her beliefs, her values, her viewpoints become her narrative. but so, too, do her imaginations, her fantasies, her fiction, her fables. as a nation, as a group, our fiction and movies and parables and myths are part of our narrative, part of what reflects that which is underneath, just as much as do our politics and [supposed] “real” experiences. our narrative is our myth. the only thing “true” is what is underneath, what is outside narrative (and we have been discussing if it is possible for the mind to step outside narrative).
one of the things i began to realize from reading ejh2’s comments is that sometimes when i have believed i have “stepped outside” narrative, i have simply stepped into another narrative, and that of believing there is no narrative (a thought replacing a thought). i have perhaps some ability to be less attached to my own narrative (able to see it as narrative and even change my narrative, learn from others’ narratives, and see others’ narratives for the narrative it is that they are attached to) but even so i sometimes find myself “believing” my own narrative. in my experience my time with my mind “outside” narrative is my time in pure meditation, when i am in pure silence and pure stillness and thought is suspended. dr. violet reminded me by referring to ehj2’s comments that as a group our work is to create better narrative, not to step outside narrative (unless everyone can agree to join me in a zen-like meditation). create better narrative….
well, that’s what i think anyway….
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diana christine says:
flawed plan…
an embrace for you for your courage, for all the work you are doing to sort it all out.
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henderson says:
Flawed plan- there’s a brave one. The wisdom you have gained ( you probably would have chosen to have done without it- thank you very much) is so great. You could not buy that wisdom anywhere. Not in the finest university, not from a teacher, not from a thousand books. Experiences give us wisdom. Bad ones and good ones. Sometimes I think the more ass whooping life gives us the “older” we get. And i mean that in a good way.
Diana, thank you for answering. You’re much too smart for me.I can barely follow along. I’m going to read your posts with great interest. Very thought provoking.
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Paul Tergeist says:
to 31:
FP, that was the most compelling post I have ever read on this subject. I am so overwhelmed, horrified and nauseated that I cannot even conjure the type of remark I am wont to make.
I cannot even attempt to say anything supportive since it cannot possibly be sufficient and might, quite unintentionally, sound patronizing.
I want to make it stop but I don’t know how.
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henderson says:
I have a question. How do you all deal with your greif? Grief from bad things that happened to you or those you loved? Injustices? Things you have witnessed that made your eyes and mind burn from sorrow? Especially when there was nothing you could do about it at the time with what you knew or what you had to do it with? How did you replace one thought for another better one? One way or mindset for another better one?
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diana christine says:
dear henderson (comment #36),
i am a sanctuary, a place of consolation, a place of kindness for my own pain. i have not always been so, for i have spent quite some time working on rewriting my own narrative. in my early years i struggled with depression (learning much from its presence in my world). i have since rewritten my relationship with grief.
while your question is a beautiful one, its answer is not a simple one for me for two reasons…first, because my current relationship with grief unfolded over the course of several levels of understanding, and second, because we experience [seemingly] very different sources of grief and responses seem to call for different kinds of management. for now i have only a few moments and cannot respond fully (i am on business travel and my time is filled with meetings and presentations). i beg your allowance for this comment to be a placeholder for my full response when i return home.
i tend to live from a place of gratitude. while much of my appreciation reflects inherent style (personality style), my tendency toward gratitude has also been deliberately deepened. i practice thankfulness…and found it provided my opening lines for replacing one mindset for another.
i also came into a relationship with the practice of mindfulness, of living in the present moment. it seems to me we cannot experience emotional pain if we are in the present moment, living in the now. emotional pain can exist only from living in the past (re-living something from yesterday and applying narrative to it or comparing now with something we had or wanted yesterday) or from living in the future (worrying about something that might happen or might not happen).
it is often said “letting go is painful…” but something i learned from my own poetry is that letting go is not painful, only holding on is painful.
i will return to respond to your question when i am able to sit with it and answer fully.
i wish you all many blessings…peace…and contentment.
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Lizzy says:
Such a compelling post and what amazing comments… I am so glad I visited you and read this. Thank you all.
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henderson says:
only holding on is painful.
Diana thank you for answering. I appreciate it very much. You’re a nice person.
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diana christine says:
grief (re: comment 36).
dear henderson,
during the past several days i thought much about the question you presented. how do we deal with grief…how do we replace one thought for another better one, one way or mindset for another better one. during this past week as i stood in front of an audience, while i sat in an airport watching travelers bustling about me, as i returned home to shopping and to baking blackberry pie and butternut squash soufflé and serving a holiday dinner, i kept thinking about the question you posed and i considered how i deal with grief, pondered the many steps that led me to how i do so. i have wondered if i can respond appropriately with anything less than book-length but i will attempt to do so in these few paragraphs. thank you for asking such a significant question. thank you for your patience in my taking so long to respond.
i am not deeply studied and am unable to argue theory or principle. please know i can discuss this topic only from personal experience and individual practice. i am no authority but instead am a student. i have worked hard, wrestled even, to learn my own lessons, and now i struggle to share with you those same things i have learned and continue to learn.
the beginning of my understanding of how to deal with grief began when i was about 13 years old, though i was unaware of it at the time. i read a magazine article in which the author told a story that went something like this…when the author was a child, his or her family came into the possession of a bendix washing machine. one of their relatives was in between homes and needed a place to put the washing machine for a bit of time. the family enjoyed using the convenient bendix, and as time passed, some forgot how the machine came to be in their home until finally the day came when the machine was called for by its owner. the child (the author of the article) had become accustomed to having the washing machine and cried when it was taken away. the mother reminded the child there was no need to be sad because, after all, the machine never belonged to them in the first place. they were lucky to have had it at all. the author used this story to explain that in a time of loss, we can choose to respond with anger or with gratitude. we can be angry that we have lost something or we can be grateful to have had it for whatever time it was placed in our care. whatever we hold never completely belongs to us anyway. although i did not have any trauma in my young life, it felt to me i was holding in my hands an important lesson on how to deal with any kind of loss, and thinking i may need it one day, i cut out that article and tucked it into my little-girl wallet. years turned into decades and i carried that article from a little girl’s pink wallet to a young woman’s classic handbag to a business woman’s dayplanner. it took me a lot of years to get it, but i finally did.
my story so far sounds a lot like theory, and you asked how have i been able to practice replacement of one thought for another. i practice turning it into something like a meditation, something like this: i lost a friend, a beloved friend, to an untimely death and i found my grief overwhelming until i turned it into a meditation of gratitude. when i awakened in the morning i would immediately feel the weight of her absence so before i even got out of bed i began naming the things i had enjoyed with her and gave thanks for each of them. as the day continued i would name the things i learned from her, the gifts i had received from her, and gave thanks for those too. sometimes while walking down a hallway in the office, with each step i would recognize one more thing for which to give thanks for what she had meant to my life. i surrounded myself, and filled myself, with thankfulness. and i remembered the bendix lesson. somehow these practices started changing how i respond to things.
learning how to deal with grief did not come to me in one lesson. another step in my process has been to learn how to feel my grief…truly feel what it is i am feeling. several years ago i attended a retreat in the wilderness and during my first day it was suggested i needed to learn how to “feel what i am feeling.” well, now, i argued, that was definitely not my problem, because i was overwhelmed with emotions. how could i not be “feeling” what i am feeling when i was so deeply emotional? i had no idea how to understand it at the time, but feeling strong emotions about something and truly feeling what i feel about something are two different things. in fact, being heavily emotional about something was keeping me separated from truly feeling, and truly dealing with, my grief. in american society (and the western world in general), our lives are so filled with sound and movement that most people are constantly distracted from feeling what they are feeling, and learning takes far longer than necessary.
we experience grief from [seemingly] very different sources, some from what we perceive as loss (losing a relationship, a job, a friend, a home, or anything we love) and some from a painful experience, injustice, injury, et cetera. it seems we would need to discuss these somewhat differently.
another of my lessons has been not to hate that which grieves me (for example an injustice). you see, my grief is part of who i am (we cannot separate ourselves from that which we feel). in the same way, that which grieves me becomes part of who i am. what i hate becomes part of who i am…and if i am hating part of my own self, my grief is compounded. i cannot hate and i cannot be angry without my hatred or anger wounding me. herein is one of the places that begin to sound complicated…i cannot deny my anger or hatred without wounding my own self. (if i hate that which grieves me i compound my grief and if i deny my hatred i also compound my grief.) this appears to be a circular reference but it doesn’t have to be. let’s say i am angry at an injustice served to me and i hate that it happened and hate the person who did this thing “to” me…but what happened to me becomes part of me so hating it becomes at some level hating part of my own self. my path toward acceptance of that which i have come to hate (and acceptance of my own self) is first through acceptance of my anger and hatred. i make friends with my anger, my hatred, and then with that which grieves me…and recover from my grief.
some of our grief comes from a place of attachment. i mentioned in comment #37 that “letting go” is not painful but rather “holding on” is what is painful. once we stop holding on, our pain is released in the letting go. we cannot let go and still have pain.
and mindfulness…this has been my greatest lesson in dealing with grief. if we are in the moment we hold right now, not comparing it with any in the past or the future, we cannot be in emotional pain. (i suppose if i were writing a book on how to deal with grief, the topic of mindfulness would get its own chapter.)
these are barely the beginning lines to what life has been teaching me on how to deal with grief, how to rewrite my own narrative, how to replace one mindset for another.
i want to note that while i am no longer overwhelmed by emotions, i continue to feel life at a deep level. my letting go has become deep contentment; my gratitude has become rich joy. at some point every single day i cry for a few moments for life’s beauty, for its tenderness. and i weep to see the pain others suffer even as i look for every opportunity for my life to make a difference.
