Your Story Is Your Power Page 2

  “Go to hell, I’ll never have my fill of hating women, not if I’m said to talk without ceasing. For woman are also unceasingly wicked. Either someone should teach them to be sensible, or let me trample them underfoot forever.”—Euripides, from the play Hippolyta

  “The relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled.”—Plato

  “It is better for you to have put your manhood in the mouth of a venomous snake or a pit of burning charcoal than a woman.”—Buddhad Gotama

  “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”—Donald Trump

  “The female also is more subject to depression . . . and despair than the male. She is also more shameless and false, more readily deceived.”—Aristotle

  “I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman—although I don’t recommend doing it in the same way you’d hit a man. On openhanded slap is justified—if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning. If a woman is a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I’d do it, I think a man has to be slightly advanced, ahead of the woman.”—Sir Sean Connery

  “The Word and works of god is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”—Martin Luther

  “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.”—Rush Limbaugh

  “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands.”—The Bible

  “To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children; yet your desire will be for you husband, and he will rule over you.”—the bible

  Misogyny is embedded in the culture and can be hard to see.

  “When [Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg] went to a law school at Columbia in the 1950’s there were no women’s bathrooms in the building. ‘If nature called, you had to make a mad dash to another building that had a women’s bathroom,’ she recalled . . .

  It was ‘even worse if you were in the middle of an exam. We never complained; it never occurred to us to complain.’”

  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as recounted by Shankar Vedantam in The Hidden Brain

  Oftentimes, when men display solidarity or identification with something seen as overly feminine, they receive social backlash. For example, one of the biggest insults a man can say to another man is to refer to him as “a girl.” Or, if they agree with their wives or are doing something to be of service to them, they might be called “pussy-whipped.” This keeps men separated from women, making intimacy almost impossible. The more aware men become, the more they realize the effect it has on them. Men are starting to realize that women deal with misogyny all the time:

  “Women are responsible for two-thirds of the work done worldwide, yet earn only ten percent of the total income and own one percent of the total property . . . So, are we equals Until the answer is yes, we must never stop asking.”—Daniel Craig actor

  Work

  earnings

  property

  As a woman born (most likely) into patriarchal culture, the most important questions to ask yourself as you consider your own cultural story are:

  How have you been impacted by a global culture that values and empowers men above women?

  How have you been impacted by your national culture? Your race? Your socioeconomic status? The spiritual culture that you were born into?

  We—Susie and Elle—each discovered that we had internalized cultural misogyny.

  After a big breakup, I had a life-changing epiphany. I noticed that whenever I had a boyfriend, I felt great and had life by the tail. But whenever I was single, I felt inferior to others and ashamed. This inspired me to sit down with a friend at a restaurant and quickly jot down what came to mind when I thought about women. As I wrote on my placemat, I realized that deep down, I didn’t really feel that I was a person at all because I was a woman. Rather, I felt like my existence was conditional. I was alive only to be beautiful and/or to procreate. And if I didn’t do that? I needed to be rich. Other than that, I was useless. I continued writing these things down, and once they were collected on the placemat, I studied them through my lens as a trained psychotherapist. This groundbreaking moment was my first real, conscious experience of uncovering my own internal misogyny. After that day, I intervened on my own behalf and began to transform my internal misogynist from a dominant oppressor into an inner masculine partner that would stand up for me and believe in my innate gifts as a woman.

  My journey with misogyny began when I started listening to the little voice in my mind that I called my “inner critic.” This voice would pop up while I was painting, or getting dressed, or driving . . . or doing anything, really. But as I began to listen to this “inner critic,” I realized that critic was an understatement. The voice was much worse than critical—it was downright hateful to me simply because I had been born a woman. It told me that I should never age, I should never rock the boat, and I should never speak out on my own behalf because it might make others upset. To listen to this internal voice playing on repeat in my mind was painful, but by bringing it into consciousness, I could begin to talk to it and, with time, transform it. As the psychologist Carl Rogers once said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

  For both of us, bringing misogyny and its effects on our own minds into consciousness changed the course of our lives in unimaginably positive ways.

  How do messages you have received from others about being a woman impact your life? For example:

  Do you feel empowered to confront a boss if you are being paid unequally?

  Were you treated differently in your family because you were female?

  Has anyone ever taken credit for your idea?

  Have you ever backed off from a competition because men were in the running?

  Do you think you're pretty? How does that affect your interactions?

  Have you ever felt so embarrassed that it changed you and/or your course of action in a significant way?

  Consider doing some research on how additional aspects of your culture have affected you. For example, you can investigate the history of your country or religion, or look at current culturally biased messages that you see modeled in your own behavior and the behavior of the people around you.

  Ask yourself the following questions:

   Where did my parents come from?

   What religion was I raised in?

   What religion am I now?

   Does religion matter to me?

   What race am I?

   What impact does the fact that I am a particular race have on my interactions with my classmates, workmates, and neighbors?

   How are my relatives’ lives affected by their socioeconomic status, race, or religion? For example, are they privileged and do they have doors opened for them, or have they struggled? Has my family been shown disrespect?

   Are my parents’ social lives affected by what they do for a living?

   Have I had positive or negative experiences when approaching a club or social group of interest to me?

  Your cultural story

  Quick Association

  This diversity training activity was used by Delorme McKee-Stovall, an advocate for human and civil rights. Speed is key when answering these prompts, so just write down the first thing that comes to mind, without judgment. No one else has to see the answers.

  Your cultural story

  Focus you story

  Get blank note cards to write down highlights of Your Cultural Story.

  Name eight to ten ways that you have been impacted by a global
culture that values and empowers men above women. Can you recall memories or experiences where the cultural story directly impacted your life? Write them down, one per card. If you get stuck, go back to the previous exercises and write some of your earlier responses down.

  What stories, beliefs, images, or memories do you carry with you pertaining to your culture? If they irritated or frustrated you, it’s a good sign that you’re on the right track.

  “If you want to understand any woman you must first ask her about her mother and then listen carefully. . . . The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother’s life the stronger the daughter.”—Anita Diamant author The Red Tent

  Have you ever seen a dog circle the ground before lying down to sleep? The dog is exhibiting a behavior based on information inherited from its wolf ancestors that tells the dog if it is going to lie down in tall grass, it must first mat the grass down. A shih tzu in Manhattan who has never seen grass taller than a few inches will still perform this age-old ritual.

  Just as you are born into a broad cultural story, you are also a part of your family’s ongoing narrative. Psychiatrist and professor Murray Bowen learned that, like the dog, we transmit some behaviors from one generation to the next. If you want to understand your own story, it’s helpful to look at it within the context of your family.

  Some questions that a family therapist might ask to understand your family structure are:

  You family story

  Learn you family story

  Interview someone influential in your family and ask them questions—even if you think you already know the answers. This person could be from your family in which you grew up, from the generation before you, or perhaps even one of your own children.

  You could ask:

   What are the family rules around marriage, divorce, or sex?

   What were the expectations about becoming pregnant or getting someone else pregnant?

   Where do you think those rules came from?

   What are some of your early memories about your parents and grandparents?

   What traits did they pass down to you?

   Where do you think some of these traits came from?

   What do you know about your family history? Do you remember interesting stories about your oldest relatives or ancestors?

  As you collect answers, you will start to become more aware of the impact of the process on you:

  We, Susie and Elle, came from families whose rules about pregnancy were strong and specific.

  I remembered that when I was about five, I used to hit my stomach; I was using my fist to try to loosen up what was inside so a baby couldn’t stay in there. I felt sick inside and afraid when I looked in the mirror. It was shocking to realize how, as a child, I had internalized the family/cultural fear that I shouldn’t get pregnant before wedlock and how deep the terror went into my psyche way before puberty.

  When Susie told me this, I recalled when, as a child, I saw that my stomach stuck out very far, and I assumed that I was pregnant. I wasn’t, of course, but looking back all these years later, I recall a poignant sense of dread and shame that I was pregnant. I felt terrified and said nothing about it for years.

  You family story

  You're in the car

  You’re in the car with your family, and a driver cuts you off. What would each member of your family say when they see that the offending driver is . . .

   a man wearing a business suit and texting on his phone?

   a fashion model wearing a tank top?

   an African American teenage boy wearing a do-rag?

   an elderly woman clutching the wheel and leaning forward?

   an Asian man driving a luxury sedan with tinted windows?

   a taxi driver wearing a turban?

  The responses to these exercises might show that certain prejudices have been passed down through generations. By identifying them and bringing them into your consciousness, you are better able to choose whether or not they’re working for you in a positive way.

  It might be helpful to look at some of the characteristics and beliefs of your family. To help identify them, try answering these questions:

   What are some of the distinctive characteristics of your family (e.g., are they boisterous, controlled, intellectual, loving)?

   Did your family have explicit expectations of you or other family members?

   Were there family myths that you discovered or busted later in life?

   How would you describe your family to other people?

   What are you most proud of about your family?

   What are you most ashamed of?

   What makes you angry about your family?

  We each looked at our own family history.

  I come from a long line of attorneys. As I grew up, I figured I should be a lawyer, just like them. I applied to nine law schools, and I was rejected from every single one—even the safety school. I felt like a total failure. Without any other option, I paused to really look at my life. Although I had applied to so many law schools, I was painting around the clock, practically sleeping at the art studio, and skipping meals just so I could make art. For some reason, I never accepted that I could actually pursue my creativity as a way of life. I had unconsciously assumed that I needed to go to law school so that I could make money and be secure, even though I wasn’t passionate about law. I kept telling myself that I could be an intellectual property attorney so that at least I would get to work with artists. Thanks in part to those rejections, I came to see that my desire to go to law school stemmed from family messages about what was safe and valuable. And then I realized that I had the freedom to make choices that suited me better.

  For reasons I didn’t understand for a long time, I’ve always had an irrational fear of becoming a victim of physical abuse and homicide. It is strange because there is no history of violent abuse in my family, but I could feel it, and I could see a similar terror in the eyes of my female relatives. We all shared a belief that if we made a mistake, or stood out too much, something really bad would happen to us. I decided to go back into my family history to see if there was anything that might explain this fear. Nothing seemed to correlate with the fears until I discovered that there were several relatives in the 1600s who were closely connected to the Salem witch trials. One relative was the constable responsible for arresting the suspects, and another was the marshal who carried out the verdicts. The marshal also served as a witness for the prosecution. Other relatives were on juries or served as witnesses. Most disturbing of all—one of my female ancestors was a suspect. After I uncovered this information, I realized that I had absorbed a hidden message from my family through spoken and unspoken stories, actions, and responses: If you stand out in any way that seems unusual, you will be a suspect, and you may be killed.

  Your family story

  Focus you story

  Get a dozen note cards on which to write down highlights of Your Family Story.

  Name eight to ten beliefs and traits that you inherited from your family. They may have been passed down for many generations. Write each of them on its own card.

  For example, Susie’s family story included these notes: “We are musically talented,” “Family sticks together,”and “Question authority.” What beliefs and traits do you feel you hold as a part of your family history?

  As you continue to find clues about what you have inherited from other generations, you will begin to get a sense of how and why you are the way you are. It’s as though your life will start to open like a book.

  “If she got really quiet and listened, new parts of her wanted to speak.”—Sark author and artist

  Your personal story

  To know the story of your life, once you’ve looked at the cultural influences and after you’ve identified what your family might have passed on to you,
you will want look at your own personality structure so you can evaluate the way it is supporting—or not supporting—you. You may notice that you have a way of maneuvering in the world that is different from that of your siblings or other family members, even though you have the same cultural and family background.

  You may think of your personality as just a naturally occurring part of you. But scientists have not yet fully determined how much of personality is intrinsic—just “you”—and how much is learned behavior and responses. What we do know is that both genetics and early experiences affect how we maneuver in the world, and despite how indelible our personalities can feel, the brain remains neuroplastic, or “malleable,” throughout our lives. The purpose of understanding your personality is to find those aspects that are keeping you from the life that you want.

  Looking at how you went about getting your needs met as a baby and a child provides a window into your personality structure.

  Maybe you learned very early on that if you cried, someone would quickly come to your side.

  Or perhaps the opposite was true and you learned that making your needs known was not a welcome behavior.