On "Doing It For Girls Everywhere."
Feb. 10th, 2010 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abirdisnotI am the only woman in a “primitive skills” program, where we learn basic survival and life skills techniques, the use of local plants, and primitive hunting and fishing methods. When I first found out that all of the 7 other students would be men, I was a bit trepidatious. It’s only just now that I’ve begun to understand clearly—clearly enough to articulate—what it is that makes that difficult and stressful.
We stayed after class yesterday, to do some work around the instructors’ property, in exchange for dinner. I stayed inside while several of my classmates went out to begin work hauling brush, chopping wood, etc. I still had to finish stripping the feathers from a lovely pintail duck—I am interested in working with dead animals, for lack of a better phrasing, and I’m especially fond of birds. Then I began organizing books and materials in the classroom.
I admit, I was reticent to go out there and help everyone haul brush and chop wood—something I have little experience in—while a couple of my classmates have been arborists for years. I grew up urban and middle class, and never had to chop firewood. Even though I live on Vashon Island now, where many people heat their houses with firewood over the winter, most people just buy cords of wood. It’s not like we have enough land or enough trees back on our property to make firewood out of.
None of my relatives or recent ancestors have had to do this shit, in fact. My parents are scientists, my grandmother and aunt accountants, my brother a lawyer, my grandfather an oil company executive. Before the binge-drinking, before he lost everything, before he turned to the things he really loved—carpentry, working with his hands, camping and fishing. I see myself in him, in that. His father didn’t plan that for him, didn’t want him to have to work with his hands. And here I was with my masters degree, all set for a job writing papers and reading papers, learning the language of academic wankery, playing the tenure game. I don’t want that. I want to make things, I want to look at the world.
Finally I was done with the books and the magazines, there was nothing more to do inside, and it was a little after 4, so I figured I should go outside and start working there. I dimly felt the real cause of my reticence.
Four of my classmates were splitting a large section of maple tree, for use in bow staves. I had never seen a log split before, and was interested. The sight of a wedge, of an axe-blade, being driven deeper into the wood, the crack growing outward strike by strike until it reached the edges.
“Who’s next?” said someone. They’d all had a turn, so someone suggested me.
As I mentioned, I’d never split wood before, never had a reason to. Well, actually, one time I was at a party, a friend’s property in Toledo. They’d been chopping firewood, and I wanted to have a try, feel what it was like, get some technique down for the day when I’d be living in some cabin in the middle of nowhere. I whaled on that thing for half an hour and it never split, the wood was so hard and knotty.
My friend’s husband couldn’t do it either, had already given up on that one. Eventually I gave up too.
So after taking some advice on stance, etc., I began to hammer the wedge into the trunk, swinging the axe like a croquet mallet. Bending partway over that way made the muscles of my back tired. After a minute or so, I paused, laughing, “Ow, my back.”
“Come on, do it for girls everywhere!” And that annoyed me at the time, but I just rolled my eyes, muttered, “Shut up,” and set it aside.
Thinking about it on the drive home, it began to bother me more and more. I didn’t quite know why, until I realized he’d put his finger--very precisely--on why it can be unpleasant and frustrating to be the only woman in my program. Or, more generally, the only woman—or one of very few women—or the only woman I personally know—interested in and involved in certain fields and activities.
It’s because I’m not just another student. I’m “girls everywhere.” That’s a lot of responsibility, you know?
My performance is a reflection not on my own capabilities, on my own talents and areas of inexperience as an individual, but on the capabilities of women. If I fuck up, if I suck at something, especially one of the things more typically done by men, it doesn’t simply mean that I made a mistake or I’m not terribly good at something. It means that women are less competent at whatever it is.
I, of course, don’t believe that, and nor should any sensible person who thought about it for more than a second. But I am aware that it is perceived that way. That I somehow become the ambassador of womenkind, and the representation of all women’s capabilities. It’s a bit of a burden, you know, representing several billion people.
I think of all those women who were the only ones, the first ones. Like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to go to medical school. What pressure that must have been. If she fumbled, all eyes were on her, ready to conclude that women were inferior at whatever the task was. That she didn’t really belong there, that they’d been right all along, that women shouldn’t be involved in medicine. She couldn’t simply be a mediocre student, she couldn’t make a big mistake, show reticence, uncertainty—while her fellow students could stumble, joke, be ignorant, turn squeamishly from the first sight of an opened cadaver, and it wouldn’t mean anything about anyone except themselves.
I admire the women who did those things, and their strength.
But I did not choose that role, and I do not want that mantle. I did not come to the program to enlighten men, to be a good example of my sex. I am came to learn, and to do things I’m interested in. I am not “girls everywhere.” I am one woman. And if people are going to infer things about Women—or “Girls”—from whatever I do and however I do it, that’s really their blindness.
Yeah, I wish I could believe that.
That I’m apart from that judgment and that role. I’m not—not in the eyes of others—and there are two halves to identity: how one sees oneself and how one is seen. But I’d like to change my own mindset, at least, because that’s the only one I have much control over. To abandon the ambassador badge and just do things I like. To be uncertain, be inexperienced, perhaps even to suck at things without feeling like I’m letting down the whole goddamn sisterhood, without feeling like I somehow set women back, in the eyes of the men who surround me.
The word “girl,” too, I don’t really identify with. As alien as this adulthood thing sometimes seems, my childhood is farther and farther behind me with every day.
We stayed after class yesterday, to do some work around the instructors’ property, in exchange for dinner. I stayed inside while several of my classmates went out to begin work hauling brush, chopping wood, etc. I still had to finish stripping the feathers from a lovely pintail duck—I am interested in working with dead animals, for lack of a better phrasing, and I’m especially fond of birds. Then I began organizing books and materials in the classroom.
I admit, I was reticent to go out there and help everyone haul brush and chop wood—something I have little experience in—while a couple of my classmates have been arborists for years. I grew up urban and middle class, and never had to chop firewood. Even though I live on Vashon Island now, where many people heat their houses with firewood over the winter, most people just buy cords of wood. It’s not like we have enough land or enough trees back on our property to make firewood out of.
None of my relatives or recent ancestors have had to do this shit, in fact. My parents are scientists, my grandmother and aunt accountants, my brother a lawyer, my grandfather an oil company executive. Before the binge-drinking, before he lost everything, before he turned to the things he really loved—carpentry, working with his hands, camping and fishing. I see myself in him, in that. His father didn’t plan that for him, didn’t want him to have to work with his hands. And here I was with my masters degree, all set for a job writing papers and reading papers, learning the language of academic wankery, playing the tenure game. I don’t want that. I want to make things, I want to look at the world.
Finally I was done with the books and the magazines, there was nothing more to do inside, and it was a little after 4, so I figured I should go outside and start working there. I dimly felt the real cause of my reticence.
Four of my classmates were splitting a large section of maple tree, for use in bow staves. I had never seen a log split before, and was interested. The sight of a wedge, of an axe-blade, being driven deeper into the wood, the crack growing outward strike by strike until it reached the edges.
“Who’s next?” said someone. They’d all had a turn, so someone suggested me.
As I mentioned, I’d never split wood before, never had a reason to. Well, actually, one time I was at a party, a friend’s property in Toledo. They’d been chopping firewood, and I wanted to have a try, feel what it was like, get some technique down for the day when I’d be living in some cabin in the middle of nowhere. I whaled on that thing for half an hour and it never split, the wood was so hard and knotty.
My friend’s husband couldn’t do it either, had already given up on that one. Eventually I gave up too.
So after taking some advice on stance, etc., I began to hammer the wedge into the trunk, swinging the axe like a croquet mallet. Bending partway over that way made the muscles of my back tired. After a minute or so, I paused, laughing, “Ow, my back.”
“Come on, do it for girls everywhere!” And that annoyed me at the time, but I just rolled my eyes, muttered, “Shut up,” and set it aside.
Thinking about it on the drive home, it began to bother me more and more. I didn’t quite know why, until I realized he’d put his finger--very precisely--on why it can be unpleasant and frustrating to be the only woman in my program. Or, more generally, the only woman—or one of very few women—or the only woman I personally know—interested in and involved in certain fields and activities.
It’s because I’m not just another student. I’m “girls everywhere.” That’s a lot of responsibility, you know?
My performance is a reflection not on my own capabilities, on my own talents and areas of inexperience as an individual, but on the capabilities of women. If I fuck up, if I suck at something, especially one of the things more typically done by men, it doesn’t simply mean that I made a mistake or I’m not terribly good at something. It means that women are less competent at whatever it is.
I, of course, don’t believe that, and nor should any sensible person who thought about it for more than a second. But I am aware that it is perceived that way. That I somehow become the ambassador of womenkind, and the representation of all women’s capabilities. It’s a bit of a burden, you know, representing several billion people.
I think of all those women who were the only ones, the first ones. Like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to go to medical school. What pressure that must have been. If she fumbled, all eyes were on her, ready to conclude that women were inferior at whatever the task was. That she didn’t really belong there, that they’d been right all along, that women shouldn’t be involved in medicine. She couldn’t simply be a mediocre student, she couldn’t make a big mistake, show reticence, uncertainty—while her fellow students could stumble, joke, be ignorant, turn squeamishly from the first sight of an opened cadaver, and it wouldn’t mean anything about anyone except themselves.
I admire the women who did those things, and their strength.
But I did not choose that role, and I do not want that mantle. I did not come to the program to enlighten men, to be a good example of my sex. I am came to learn, and to do things I’m interested in. I am not “girls everywhere.” I am one woman. And if people are going to infer things about Women—or “Girls”—from whatever I do and however I do it, that’s really their blindness.
Yeah, I wish I could believe that.
That I’m apart from that judgment and that role. I’m not—not in the eyes of others—and there are two halves to identity: how one sees oneself and how one is seen. But I’d like to change my own mindset, at least, because that’s the only one I have much control over. To abandon the ambassador badge and just do things I like. To be uncertain, be inexperienced, perhaps even to suck at things without feeling like I’m letting down the whole goddamn sisterhood, without feeling like I somehow set women back, in the eyes of the men who surround me.
The word “girl,” too, I don’t really identify with. As alien as this adulthood thing sometimes seems, my childhood is farther and farther behind me with every day.
