Also, this is something i always say: why hate myself when other people can do it so much better for me? (like my mother, or like a few people I've heard don't care for me, which always intrigues me -- I'm always, like, "really! they hate me? how fascinating!") No time for self-loathing. Leave it to the haters, and then ignore them.
I left home at the age of about 22, to get as far away from my undermining, sadistic mother, and the day I heard a voice in myself say, "No one will ever love you," I realized it was her voice in my head. It took me another two decades to turn that voice off, but at least I knew it was her and not me. I ignore that voice, and for that matter, when I was a kid I'd told myself that I'd be myself no matter what it cost me, love be damned. I was proven right when I met the one guy who really liked me as I was, at 37. It's a shame, but he ruined me for everyone else after he died, because damned if I have ever met another man who isn't threatened by my self-confidence and autonomy. I have to say, though, that I'm sticking to my "love be damned," because I did figure out in the meanwhile that love is a way of life, and isn't embodied in one man or woman, and I am very happy as I am. As for failure, I think I had the gift of a father on the autism spectrum, and he was a great example to me. Doing something badly wasn't personal, it was just doing something badly. You either learned to do it right, or you found something else to do. I've never felt badly about my "failures." Failures are just experiments to me. It made me really good at beta testing software as a day job. I learned a lot from so-called failure. As long as no one dies, every failure is worth the try.
I have "failed" at so many cool things! In fact, I used to love telling the kids at the cafe I worked at that I didn't think they were cut for washing dishes or serving people, ha ha ha... I'd be all, "I really hate to tell you this, but I don't think you have a future in dishwashing...," (wink wink). I loved telling them to move on and "graduate" into something closer to their "thing."
This is a beautiful piece, Jessica, and I would think it had to be hard to write because it's so personal. I left my more abstract thoughts about the situation you describe in a reply to another commenter who provided a key insight. I would just say that I hope when you're feeling down on yourself, that you'll remember that a lot of people read what you write and appreciate it and really think you're great, and that maybe that will give you a little boost. And I hope this article will remind all of us who read it to give each other those little boosts too.
I needed this this morning. I'm working on so many projects and feeling like a talentless hack on all of them. Thanks for being so honest and open about these things.
Pfff, sorry, another too long comment. Feel very free to skip. (I had to delete the earlier one because I accidentally pressed 'post'.)
Yes, it's important for you and your daughter to at least try to do this. Kids have a nose for things that are off and it wouldn't surprise me if she'd already felt some dissonance - between the way you treat her but think about yourself.
I'll turn 60 in a bit more than a month and I come from a still not obsolete culture where men never said anything positive about other men, including, or maybe even especially, their friends. We would routinely call each other stupid, ugly, boring etc. It wasn't particularly meant to be hurtful (and was often presented as humour, in the spirit of camaraderie) but it was nevertheless erosive. I still find it hard to be simply positive about myself, and that is, of course, partly character/genetics but certainly also that past 'You're ugly, stupid...' chorus that is reverberating through time.
Still, there is this one huge difference between men doing this kind of thing to themselves and women's negativity.
Compare it to the politics of the Southern States from the start of the 20th century: the politicians and factory owners etc treated the white working class like shit but also told them they were of a superior race and could look down on everyone not born with a white skin.
The patriarchy works in a similar way. Yes, rich men treat poor men with utter contempt and a culture of self-loathing-through-machismo-bullshit is still widely cherished* but men are also told that they are in all ways superior to women and, at the same time, threatened by emasculating women.
So, while men individually may feel the same way as women do, on a societal level these feelings are weaponised. In the eyes of the patriarchy women should not feel self-confident, proud and self-loving, while men feeling bad are encouraged to blame women for this. (See the incel lunatics.)
*Look at hero worship in popular culture: men are told to revere a John Wayne, or a Batman but at the same time these movies show they themselves could never be worthy of such worship, or even praise - and how can the fetishising of (semi-automatic) guns be ever anything else than compensation for males who feel in their hearts that they are inferior?
As someone who writes too long comments myself (and I know the feeling of my finger accidentally hitting post before I'm done!) I say, don't disparage yourself! (Did you read the article? ;-D
You make very good points. The first step to solving misogyny is often identifying the differences between how we as a culture treat men on a particular topic, and how we treat women on that same topic, and finding that the great majority of the time what women get is worse. (There are rare exceptions).
And when something comes along like today's article, it's not always so obvious. Jessica I love what you wrote today and I hope you're reading this even as a reply to another comment! I nodded my head yes and cheered on what she was saying. But, I did kind of say to myself, well I treat myself like shit like this too. And I knew what she was saying was much more common to women, but I also kind of thought individual psychology plays a role.
What I was thinking was, well, good people tend to be much harder on themselves - that's why they're good people! and that women are more likely to do that because they're less likely to be told their whole life that she matters and other people don't. But that men could fall in this camp too.
But you've squared the circle for me! 'On a societal level these feelings are weaponized' - yes, that's it! It's taking advantage of someone else's lack of self-esteem, not necessarily the lack of self-esteem itself, that's the problem.
To add a little male perspective, I do think among men there's a kind of hierarchy (and you allude to it in your comment), where the most 'alpha' males at the top dominate the others, and so men who don't feel 'alpha' (like myself) can feel like it's the same men who treat women like crap who are stepping on us too. And I do think there's truth to that; we are part of the animal kingdom after all.
But the dominators always employ this tactic - it's a feature of a patriarchy and of white supremacy too: They pit their victims against one another. 'Men feeling bad are encouraged to blame women for this', you wrote. YES! Exactly! Those at the top benefit by deflecting attention away from themselves, and encouraging those they oppress to quarrel with one another.
It's that divisiveness, that weaponizing of good people's feelings of self-doubt and using it against them, that's characteristic of the systematic oppression and domination.
You know, when I look at an issue and I look for the differences between how men are treated and how women are treated, I rarely conclude that women should be treated like men or that women should do what men do. We don't need more narcissistic sociopaths! :-D More often the answer is that men need to behave the way we condition women to behave, and that men need to treat other people the way women would, to care about community and the needs of others.
Thank you for your comment and it giving me the opportunity and the inspiration to express my own thoughts!
I followed the link to the article/ interview, yes.
I agree that we have to care for ourselves, if we want to be of use to others - which is also an echo of the old 'Love your neighbour AS you love yourself'. (People often forget that last bit.)
Still, for women, there's not just that but also a wider political/feminist issue: if I don't show my children that it is important that I take care of my self, I'm part of this societal mechanism that, through example, teaches daughters to be givers and sons to be takers.
Every word of this. It’s amazing to be this age (47) with a 5 year old daughter and still need to hear this advice. But there you go. I was hearing all the other crap for a long, long time.
Also, this is something i always say: why hate myself when other people can do it so much better for me? (like my mother, or like a few people I've heard don't care for me, which always intrigues me -- I'm always, like, "really! they hate me? how fascinating!") No time for self-loathing. Leave it to the haters, and then ignore them.
I left home at the age of about 22, to get as far away from my undermining, sadistic mother, and the day I heard a voice in myself say, "No one will ever love you," I realized it was her voice in my head. It took me another two decades to turn that voice off, but at least I knew it was her and not me. I ignore that voice, and for that matter, when I was a kid I'd told myself that I'd be myself no matter what it cost me, love be damned. I was proven right when I met the one guy who really liked me as I was, at 37. It's a shame, but he ruined me for everyone else after he died, because damned if I have ever met another man who isn't threatened by my self-confidence and autonomy. I have to say, though, that I'm sticking to my "love be damned," because I did figure out in the meanwhile that love is a way of life, and isn't embodied in one man or woman, and I am very happy as I am. As for failure, I think I had the gift of a father on the autism spectrum, and he was a great example to me. Doing something badly wasn't personal, it was just doing something badly. You either learned to do it right, or you found something else to do. I've never felt badly about my "failures." Failures are just experiments to me. It made me really good at beta testing software as a day job. I learned a lot from so-called failure. As long as no one dies, every failure is worth the try.
I have "failed" at so many cool things! In fact, I used to love telling the kids at the cafe I worked at that I didn't think they were cut for washing dishes or serving people, ha ha ha... I'd be all, "I really hate to tell you this, but I don't think you have a future in dishwashing...," (wink wink). I loved telling them to move on and "graduate" into something closer to their "thing."
Best. advice. ever: "tell that nagging voice in my head to fuck off."
This is a beautiful piece, Jessica, and I would think it had to be hard to write because it's so personal. I left my more abstract thoughts about the situation you describe in a reply to another commenter who provided a key insight. I would just say that I hope when you're feeling down on yourself, that you'll remember that a lot of people read what you write and appreciate it and really think you're great, and that maybe that will give you a little boost. And I hope this article will remind all of us who read it to give each other those little boosts too.
I'm just now starting to take this advice and I'm 50....
I needed this this morning. I'm working on so many projects and feeling like a talentless hack on all of them. Thanks for being so honest and open about these things.
Pfff, sorry, another too long comment. Feel very free to skip. (I had to delete the earlier one because I accidentally pressed 'post'.)
Yes, it's important for you and your daughter to at least try to do this. Kids have a nose for things that are off and it wouldn't surprise me if she'd already felt some dissonance - between the way you treat her but think about yourself.
I'll turn 60 in a bit more than a month and I come from a still not obsolete culture where men never said anything positive about other men, including, or maybe even especially, their friends. We would routinely call each other stupid, ugly, boring etc. It wasn't particularly meant to be hurtful (and was often presented as humour, in the spirit of camaraderie) but it was nevertheless erosive. I still find it hard to be simply positive about myself, and that is, of course, partly character/genetics but certainly also that past 'You're ugly, stupid...' chorus that is reverberating through time.
Still, there is this one huge difference between men doing this kind of thing to themselves and women's negativity.
Compare it to the politics of the Southern States from the start of the 20th century: the politicians and factory owners etc treated the white working class like shit but also told them they were of a superior race and could look down on everyone not born with a white skin.
The patriarchy works in a similar way. Yes, rich men treat poor men with utter contempt and a culture of self-loathing-through-machismo-bullshit is still widely cherished* but men are also told that they are in all ways superior to women and, at the same time, threatened by emasculating women.
So, while men individually may feel the same way as women do, on a societal level these feelings are weaponised. In the eyes of the patriarchy women should not feel self-confident, proud and self-loving, while men feeling bad are encouraged to blame women for this. (See the incel lunatics.)
*Look at hero worship in popular culture: men are told to revere a John Wayne, or a Batman but at the same time these movies show they themselves could never be worthy of such worship, or even praise - and how can the fetishising of (semi-automatic) guns be ever anything else than compensation for males who feel in their hearts that they are inferior?
As someone who writes too long comments myself (and I know the feeling of my finger accidentally hitting post before I'm done!) I say, don't disparage yourself! (Did you read the article? ;-D
You make very good points. The first step to solving misogyny is often identifying the differences between how we as a culture treat men on a particular topic, and how we treat women on that same topic, and finding that the great majority of the time what women get is worse. (There are rare exceptions).
And when something comes along like today's article, it's not always so obvious. Jessica I love what you wrote today and I hope you're reading this even as a reply to another comment! I nodded my head yes and cheered on what she was saying. But, I did kind of say to myself, well I treat myself like shit like this too. And I knew what she was saying was much more common to women, but I also kind of thought individual psychology plays a role.
What I was thinking was, well, good people tend to be much harder on themselves - that's why they're good people! and that women are more likely to do that because they're less likely to be told their whole life that she matters and other people don't. But that men could fall in this camp too.
But you've squared the circle for me! 'On a societal level these feelings are weaponized' - yes, that's it! It's taking advantage of someone else's lack of self-esteem, not necessarily the lack of self-esteem itself, that's the problem.
To add a little male perspective, I do think among men there's a kind of hierarchy (and you allude to it in your comment), where the most 'alpha' males at the top dominate the others, and so men who don't feel 'alpha' (like myself) can feel like it's the same men who treat women like crap who are stepping on us too. And I do think there's truth to that; we are part of the animal kingdom after all.
But the dominators always employ this tactic - it's a feature of a patriarchy and of white supremacy too: They pit their victims against one another. 'Men feeling bad are encouraged to blame women for this', you wrote. YES! Exactly! Those at the top benefit by deflecting attention away from themselves, and encouraging those they oppress to quarrel with one another.
It's that divisiveness, that weaponizing of good people's feelings of self-doubt and using it against them, that's characteristic of the systematic oppression and domination.
You know, when I look at an issue and I look for the differences between how men are treated and how women are treated, I rarely conclude that women should be treated like men or that women should do what men do. We don't need more narcissistic sociopaths! :-D More often the answer is that men need to behave the way we condition women to behave, and that men need to treat other people the way women would, to care about community and the needs of others.
Thank you for your comment and it giving me the opportunity and the inspiration to express my own thoughts!
I followed the link to the article/ interview, yes.
I agree that we have to care for ourselves, if we want to be of use to others - which is also an echo of the old 'Love your neighbour AS you love yourself'. (People often forget that last bit.)
Still, for women, there's not just that but also a wider political/feminist issue: if I don't show my children that it is important that I take care of my self, I'm part of this societal mechanism that, through example, teaches daughters to be givers and sons to be takers.
Every word of this. It’s amazing to be this age (47) with a 5 year old daughter and still need to hear this advice. But there you go. I was hearing all the other crap for a long, long time.
Well said Jessica.