New Project: Chapter 21
In her book, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler says, “[G]ender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.” In other words, we perform behaviors, gendered nuances, and physical movements over and over again until they become the basis of our identity. Women are not, by nature, the better caregivers. They merely behave that way. Men are not, by nature, more rational.
We are taught to adopt a series of attitudes and actions that determine our identity as women or men even though these attitudes and actions may have nothing to do with us. Gender identity can be unlearned. Our best, authentic selves are seldom who we were taught to be. Somewhere beyond the stereotypical definition of women and men are humans longing to be whole.
We can be deeply individual and fully free without compromising each other’s right to the same. My love of cheese does not in any way impede your loathing of it. My competence with power tools cannot emasculate a man or render him powerless. Marriage, friendships, and family need not be sick, twisted, or mundane if we are willing to do the work of embracing ourselves, giving to ourselves, and sharing us with those we love.
By taking my liberty, I granted Steve his. I couldn’t have done that had he not developed real empathy for my plight as a woman in this world. Knowing it, understanding my fears and doubts, hearing me in a way no man ever had empowered me to take a stand and finally kill the idea of romance I played like a fairytale in my head. “You belong to me, I belong to you,” is static, dead, and wrong.
Belong is a strange word. I want to belong to this community. She doesn’t belong here. Belong implies that we are either part of something or owned when, based on its etymology, the word simply means: to go along with. It turns out that belonging is a choice one makes. When we choose to go along with something or someone, we create a relationship based on that decision.
“Hey, I like that idea; I’ll go along with that,” never meant that the idea owns you, that you are part of it, or that it may exercise any form of control over you. It simply means that you’re going along — next to, in dialog with, and wholly your own. Likewise, one cannot belong to another person. One may go along with in friendship or love, but one is not a part of the other and one is never owned.
The adaptation of the word as a method of control carries the threat of ostracization and amplifies our fear of being alone. We use it to welcome, manipulate, or shame so there is always someone else to lean on, share with, or blame.
I no longer choose to belong in this way; to Steve or anyone else. Our culture, and its obsession with a twisted sense of belonging, radicalized me without my knowledge so it could use me as a weapon against myself and everyone else. However, belonging to this culture requires my consent and I now refuse to give it.
Like too many, I’ve spent much of my life trying to be someone I’m not so I could belong to a social construct not my own. I am, to paraphrase David Wong, part of a long line of history. I did not make the problems that choke our society, but I am responsible for making things better. Consequently, I must shed my desire to belong, face the fear of being shunned, and embrace the freedom I demand.
To walk along side the man I love is so much richer than owning or being owned by him. To take time for myself is to give us both the opportunity to rejuvenate, re-engage, and stay in love. To let him go, to trust he will return, gives us both the freedom to grow, love, and learn. Sharing experiences we’ve had alone keeps our conversations strong. Sharing an ever deepening frustration with the limitations imposed on all of us by a political and economic system vested only in its own survival, and that of those at the top, motivates us to do more both individually and as a couple.
Shedding gender roles means shedding gender identity. I love being a woman and the many differences between women and men, but I don’t need to sculpt myself into an object or caricature to belong. Can you imagine a world where men cry freely and women lead the charge? Where men kissing men isn’t disgusting and women kissing women isn’t porn? Where men and women share the caring, the bread-winning, and the household chores?
In her book, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg says that if women are to occupy the “C” Suite, they must act like men. Then, when they get there, they can make changes to corporate culture that will benefit women.
This, to me, is insane. I would rather walk away from the steel towers, corporate suites, and glass ceilings. I would create a new way to be, one where women and men are free to determine their own identities and build personal, communal, and economic relationships that that are rich, diverse, and permissive.
Culture dictates that we fit in, do like those around us, and conform to ideas and beliefs that were formed to control or coerce us into performing work, maintaining the status quo, and questioning our own worth. The tenets of our culture ensure we remain insecure and thus powerless.
In the place of power, we are granted the opportunity for civic debate and the right to vote. These lure us into believing we can make change by electing some new figurehead that will embrace the values we were taught to celebrate. Instead of making change, however, we just get more of the same. Our political system has dissolved into a mockery of itself and Republicans and Democrats are waging a vicious culture war that accomplishes nothing.
It does not fix the economy, end hunger, or ensure that we, as a nation, are safe. Instead, it keeps us divided, defensive, and disengaged. As long as we’re vested in winning, vested in forcing our personal morals on everyone else, we are not clear-headed enough to challenge this new norm.
As citizens, we have an obligation to protect our freedom. We are bound, as sentient beings, to ensure that its three tenets – liberty, empathy, and economic independence – are taught, encouraged, and supported so that we have what we need to thrive, but as long as mega-corporations buy our elections and write our laws, we will be forced to compromise.
Corporations sponsor the culture war, spending countless dollars each year to distract us while they secure astronomical profits at the expense of our welfare, the planet’s welfare, and our children’s welfare.
Capitalism with good stewardship built a magnificent nation. Runaway capitalism will destroy it. It’s up to us to reexamine our convictions about how money is made and spent and how business and government enhance our lives or prove relentless. If we can free ourselves from cultural norms and develop empathy for each other, we are also capable of wresting economic independence from those who’ve made it their mission to take it from us.
Many know this. Most don’t know how. Those that do are often shackled by fear, shame, or both. The truth is all relationships can be moral and profitable. Business is no different. It, too, can be good for our individual hearts and communal soul.
