Via feministe, I read this post by a woman (feminist) who doesn't know how to relate to women. Who, self-professed, found herself suspicious of a woman at work, just because.
I'm definitely not that girl. I don't have a hard time relating to women; most of the best friends I've had have been women. The woman in the above post hypothesizes that her relationship with her mother might have been a catalyst for this sort of mistrust of women; my relationship with my mom is fantastic, and always have been. I've also somehow maintained a closeness with my sister (even though we tend to fight like cats and dogs when living with one another), that seems to at times transcend a simple blood tie. I genuinely like my sister, and feel like I would want to know her if she wasn't my sister. And if my mom wasn't my mom, I think I'd be jealous of whoever had her for a mom. I feel lucky, I guess, that I've had such positive model female relationships, because it's obviously served me well. My closest friends in high school were all women, some of whom I keep in touch with regularly and love dearly. (In fact, one of my friends in high school, that I might not have been super-close with became a far closer friend after high school--this is the one in seminary now--which is interesting.) I was surrounded by women, and I was fine with it.
In college, which really began for me in Rome (a school environment that literally included six men and sixty women), I became close friends with a man, and started dating a woman. When I came back to the States, my closest friends were all lesbians (and my best friend, Enzo, a man.). I'm not sure how to say this without it sounding crap, but when you hang around women who genuinely love other women, it changes your life. There was drama, of course, because lesbians seem to acquire drama at least as fast as the general population, but there was no catty, backstabbing type of shit. I don't feel like women were talking about me behind my back, and I certainly wasn't doing it, not really. When you surround yourself with women who genuinely LOVE women, you can't help but learn to love the different ways in which women move through the world. It was the most accepting society I've ever been a part of; I never, ever had a problem relating to women, straight or gay. And we did, I hasten to add, have as many women friends who were straight as gay. It was a very, very woman-centric (regardless of sexual orientation) community.
When I moved away, broke up with my g/f, and came home, I wasn't sure what was what. I started to work at the bookstore, and sure enough, the first friend that I made was a woman. She's a close friend still, one of the best I have, and it felt easy from the beginning. But I'll admit that my time at college has made me less tolerant of the back-stabbing and betrayals of high school. It's amazing to me now that I relate so well to women, because one of my friends in high school made a play for every boy I liked. I think that she has possibly complimented me (and then, back-handedly) three or four times. And I LOVED this girl. I can't explain how I came through so willing to trust women, so willing to love them and put my faith in them. I don't know. I know now that I don't put up with the same shit from close friends, but that I don't need to. There are so many kick-ass women out there, so many good people to be friends with. I don't mistrust a woman until she gives me a reason to. And yeah, some of them do. But so do men; in fact, all of my close friendships with men (besides with S) are defunct now.
I've kept the women though. A couple from every phase of my life, women I'd rather cut off my arm than live without. I guess, at the very base of this, is the fact that I don't consider other women as competition. And no matter how you look at it, through a lesbian lens or a hetero lens, women view other women as competition allllll the time. For jobs, for men, for other women, for affection from a parent, whatever. Other woman as competition is a relentless theme that is DRILLED into our heads all the time by society, and it's baaaad. It's very, very bad. You can't be friends with someone, not in a close, deep way if you view someone as a competitor.
And you can't create a feminist unity if you're willing to step on the woman in front of you just to get ahead. You can't love women, really love women, if you don't give up on the idea that you have to compete with every woman in the world. Honestly, how can you be a feminist if you can't love (and I'm not talking sexual love, here) a woman in real life? You can talk all you want about loving women, and equality for women, but what you're really talking about is equality for YOU, and rights for YOU. It seems to me that a practical part of feminism is being able to relate to women, on a very fundamental level.
I'm not saying that you're not a feminist if you have no women friends, but just that I find it hard to understand. I'm not a feminist just because I'm a woman. I'm a feminist because of all the amazing, wonderful women who have been in my life. Because being a feminist just for me seems pretty selfish; I don't think I'm the most important thing in my feminism. There's a list of women that make it vital that I'm a feminist, a list of women that I've loved, and who have loved me. I wasn't a feminist first, let me put it that way. I wasn't a feminist who learned to love women. I was a woman who loved women, and became a feminist because of this. Love women, and the feminism will follow. But perhaps not vice versa?
i love this post...i miss you... i am coming home soon...
Posted by: C | August 19, 2005 at 02:37 AM