I’ve been teaching women’s history here at Pasadena City College for more than a dozen years now, and throughout that time, have made journals a critical part of the course. It’s a lot of reading for me, but I remain convinced that my own teachers were right when they told me that putting my words down on paper is the single best way to figure out what it really is I think, feel, and believe.
Over these twelve years or so of teaching gender studies, of meeting with countless students in office hours, of listening. of reading student journals and reflecting on what I find there, I’ve noticed some fairly clear patterns. And the pattern that’s in my head this morning is the ubiquitousness of self-doubt and self-criticism that I see in so many of my female students (and youth group kids).
As my students will confirm, I’m fond of insisting that there are “three key points” to be made about virtually anything. (Too much Trinitarian Christianity; too much of the “three-column system” in Kabbalah; too much Hegel… or three divorces. Take your pick.) And if I were to try and sum up all of the negative self-talk I encounter from my students in just three words, it would be easy:
Fat, Slut, Selfish.
Let me be very clear that I’m not claiming that most women regularly beat themselves up with all three of these. For most of my students and youth group kids, one or two of these three words is particularly haunting. The fear of fat is much commented upon, and in looking back over the last twelve years of journals, the best that I can say is that that crushing anxiety about the body has, at least, not gotten significantly worse. Of course, it couldn’t get much worse. (I do notice more of my male students admitting to body dysmorphia and a desire to lose weight or change their shape.)
If the label “fat” still has tremendous power to wound, there are signs that at least among some young women, “slut” is losing at least a little of its force. From what I can tell (and to generalize enormously), we’ve done a marginally better job of helping young women claim ownership of their sexuality. Compared to what I was seeing, hearing, and reading in the mid-1990s, I see slightly more acceptance among young women (and their male peers) of the notion that women have the right to be sexual subjects rather than objects. Of course, as many feminists worry, when it comes to “sex talk” it’s often difficult to distinguish between false bravado and a genuine embrace of erotic agency. One role of feminist mentors (and youth group leaders) is to provide a safe environment where students can get honest about sexuality. It’s in these safe environments that those who are merely “talking big” about their comfort with their sexuality can begin to acknowledge that some of that apparent confidence is a facade; it’s also in these environments that those who are anxious or confused about their own sexuality can begin to unburden themselves.
The epithets “fat” and “slut” have great power to wound. They sting young women when another person slaps them on, but they do far greater damage once they worm their way into one’s own internal conversation. But as awful as these words are when they are used to hurt another, or when they are used in relentless, ugly self-deprecation, they aren’t as debilitating as “selfish.” When it comes to what incapacitates (or at the least, handicaps) so many of the girls and women with whom I work, it’s the tremendous fear that by following their own bliss, by carving out space for themselves, by seeing their own happiness as a fundamental good, they are disappointing others and thinking too much about themselves.
There’s a class and race element to this. First-generation female college students, particularly from immigrant families, often are more likely to get that awful “After all we sacrificed for you, you owe us” speech. What a young woman from this background owes is usually to major in something that will lead to a stable, lucrative career; while pursuing this course, she’s often expected to remain a virgin. Among folks from these lower socio-economic backgrounds, the fear about pre-marital sex is, of course, partly that it could damage a gal’s reputation and turn her into damaged goods. But it’s also a fear that if a young woman gets into a sexual relationship, her academic life will get put on the back-burner. Worse, there’s fear that if she gets pregnant, she’ll keep the baby and drop out of school, and with that decision, her parents’ hopes for upward mobility will be dashed.
Many of these families look to their dutiful daughters to establish beachheads in the middle class. Once established, these dutiful daughters are expected — somehow — to take care of everyone and their brother (literally). Many of these women were raised by mothers who taught their daughters that they needed to perform traditional female duties (cooking, cleaning, nurturing) while also engaging in what was once classically male behavior (earning a degree, getting a “good” job, providing for their broader family). When a daughter’s education is part of a long-term family plan, and when a daughter’s propriety (sexual or otherwise) is keenly connected to that same plan, it’s not surprising that a great many of these young women feel as if they’re “being selfish” when they deviate from the brutally rigid script that they have been handed.
But that fear of selfishness is hardly unique to any one social group. It is, as I said before, ubiquitous. And in the end, it may be the most debilitating of these three “key words of negative self-talk.” While the fear of fat can lead to disordered eating (and concomitant misery), and the fear of the slut label can lead to shame and repression, the fear of being selfish can divert a young woman’s life trajectory. Women from one background might believe that they’re being “selfish” when they major in art history rather than pre-med. They might believe that they’re being “selfish” when they don’t give their parents grandchildren on a pre-set timetable. They might believe that it’s “selfish” to want to go to college far away from home, in order to escape what is often an alternately smothering and alienating environment.
“I’d love to do that, but I’d feel too selfish.” Oh, how rich I’d be if I had a single dollar for each time I’ve heard that from one of my youth group kids, or read it in a college student’s journal. And it’s not just a fear confined to the young; I hear older female students regularly confess this same anxiety — that by placing themselves ahead of others around them, they are somehow betraying the obligation to be endlessly self-sacrificing.
This anxiety is often particularly acute among women from traditional religious backgrounds. And while it is true that Christ calls us to the cross and to sacrifice, too many of us confuse service to family with service to God. Too often, we tell women that by pleasing their parents (or husbands, or children) they are engaged in Christian service. But female subservience is very nearly a cultural universal; Christianity at its best is always countercultural and subversive. The great subversiveness of authentic Christianity lies in its privileging of Mary over Martha, in its insistence on mutual submission in marriage, and the stern reminder that Christ came to divide rather than unite the family.
I don’t like the words “fat” and “slut”, and see no reason to apply them to other folks (or myself), regardless of their appearance or behavior. I do think we are all capable of selfishness, if we define selfishness as ignoring the genuine needs of others in order to focus on ourselves. But most women who feel selfish aren’t. They’ve mislabelled their basic desires for autonomy and independence as selfish. They’ve confused genuine selflessness — which is a commitment to serve the truly needy — with people-pleasing. For the believers, they’ve confused following God’s call (which is frequently to leave loved one’s behind) with meek acquiescence. They’ve mixed up goodness with obedience.
There is no bigger battle that I fight as a pro-feminist educator and mentor than the one against this incapacitating anxiety about “putting themselves first.” There is no greater gift that we can give our daughters and our little sisters than to remind them that following their bliss isn’t inherently selfish.
And someday, my students won’t write in their journals that they loathe themselves because of what they ate, because of who they slept with, because they dared to divert from the plan laid out for their lives by those whose love is so genuine, so intense, and, almost invariably, so crushingly burdensome.
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