REVELATIONS ON MODERN SEXISM IN MARRIAGE

I'm not a slob, but I do have a self-entitled atmosphere about not needing to perform on every little household or lifestyle detail in order to gain social currency with any old Joe around me in the community. Actually, it's only recently that I've started kinda trying to create that illusion just as a joke. In the past 5 years or so I got into lifestyle homemaker jokes. Like doing photoshoots of cookies and pretending I baked them myself just to celebrate a holiday when really they were storebought (lol). For me, even buying cookie cutters casually at the dollar store to shape storebought cookies into a holiday shape just to pretend as a joke as if I baked them is almost too much work for me. Like as much as I can appreciate things like celebrating holidays and being festive, I'm horrified by the enormous amount of labour it actually takes to perform at the level of these "marriage-material" women I see around me who do it like it's nothing, like it's no big deal (lol).

For a while I felt inferior to them, because it's like they had established a social norm, and that standard felt actually ingrained by many generations of women's labour and had a traditional echo to it even though it was of modern style and appeal — but I never really stopped much to ask myself if they were being subservient. It seems to me now that they were, because perhaps they sensed that the social status that you gain from everyone in the community for performing so well just on lifestyle will reward you in exchange, socially — although the biggest reward has been being able to take their pick of a husband, with many men who would wish to marry them. Yet if they are expected to work on top of it all, and he's not, it's very true this is a raw deal. In fact, interesting to note that the women I've seen in the community have been the home-makers and not their husbands. I don't know that much about their personal lives, but just looking from the outside I'm surprised today to finally realize it looks like a classic sexist dynamic. 

I never picked up on the sexism inherent to this because none of these couples seemed to believe in sexism from what I could see. It seems to me it might take many years of marriage to ever metacognitively reflect on these sub-surface assumptions which govern the dynamics. I try to guess how their personal conversations go when negotiating chores, and I realize that it seems likely without dispute even if the woman is doing all the chores, because these are women who have prided themselves on performance for no return all their lives. And theoretically it makes sense that the men also may have been raised by sexist parents, considering the sexism of the previous generation. Just watching your father run the household with the assumption that his wife will cover everything for him (and seeing no dispute between them about it) can ingrain the acceptance of this imbalanced dynamic. 

The cool thing about this was reflecting more on myself and why I've never been a performer in that way like other women. Of course, it's enjoyable to realize how unconsciously selfish the men around me may have been who didn't propose, for one — since it's a good thing for me that they didn't after all. But also, it's so emotionally freeing for me to realize that when I had seen myself as inferior, I wasn't in this way. I mean, I understand clearly that due to trauma I haven't been as comfortable just applying myself at all times — but then again, trauma is incredibly common. I may have imagined I'm much more different in trauma than I am.

Some of these women in the community have obviously been less stricken by trauma than others, and I've noticed that their relationships and marriages seemed to last longer — but I assumed that was because they were healthy, not because they were just so much slower to get sick of doing chores for someone else on top of what they had always done for themselves (lol). This shows me how husbands may blame a woman's wounds or traumas for household dispute readily because they're comparing them in their mind with other men's wives. When they see these other wives being more subservient (but don't label that as subservience), they might miss the fact that the real problem is only that too much has been expected of them (lol). 

And I look at myself. I think that's odd that I've never felt that sense of obligation to perform in those ways, if my parents were in a very sexist relationship dynamic. I mean, their marriage was typical for their parents' generation, but they were also baby boomers : I mean it really showed that burden ROE was talking about where the new policy of women being "allowed to" therefore expected to also contribute a household income, but still expected to work full time taking care of the family as a housewife, really caused extra stress on marriages. So why wasn't I sucked into that idea? You know, I consider myself very lucky about how my parents raised me and I think that's a huge part of it. 

My parents did a fantastic job of not repeating their parents' mistakes as best as they could. The most important one was not believing in or implementing child-abuse as a way to correct children. I applaud my Dad in that — he was spanked most violently and told that when he is the head of the household one day, he will then be able to make the rules. Finding interest in that policy, he made a very firm decision to change the rules on child violence in his family, and so they were very sparing with spankings and taught me all about this idea that it's only used as the most minimal and sparing last resort. But also, they had been Christian hippies in the 60's and 70's, and though this is not a full scale hippie style they had definitely been inspired by the feminist revolution. So they always did their very best to teach me that as the first born and a daughter, I'm not considered any less of a first born than a son. They also taught me that I'm just as respected in the household as my father, in the sense of being a future equal to him. 

But that's not all. Also, my mother's trauma was centred largely around chores. Her parents were abusive and she always told me that they treated the small children like slaves around the house from an early age with most severe punishments for not doing an enormous amount of work for everyone. She always resented this. At some age, she found out that's considered inappropriate to treat children like that and she understood it as abuse. So, for my mother, she was that unusual combination of a high performer around the house (without thinking about it), but also very commonly resentful about that. She was a machine about "just doing it" and enjoyed the prestige of being an amazing housemaker, but her hate was constantly rising towards me and my father for this. Unlike other women who find it difficult, she never put her foot down by simply not doing the chores. So the steps were never fully taken to assert herself. And I wasn't thinking "Don't do the chores, mom and you'll finally get your way" but I was subtly thinking  "It's fairly appropriate to be upset about chores being demanded of you". 

I didn't think my mom should do the chores or not — that part was confusing since she always did them and it was helpful but she always resented it. I just thought I totally empathize with my mom's resentment about doing them at all and I might just feel the same way. So when she would angrily tell me that if I don't do them that means she has to, I would simply think I don't appreciate her aggression because I'm in the same boat as her if chores are such a horrible affliction. So eventually with things like cleaning my own room, I fully settled on the choice not to clean it very often at all. When she finally stopped cleaning it for me, I learned to just tolerate a messy room. I mean she finally stopped cleaning my room for me when I was older, but she continued to clean the rest of the house. And that's how I continued as an adult.

So what this all ironed out to for me was that once I was out on my own, I simply let go of the chores to any degree whenever I felt like it, and simply did them when I was sick of seeing the place neglected. But I certainly didn't act like her — just mechanically doing them as if something drives me to do what I would theoretically dislike. Her trauma from childhood is what drove her and I didn't have the same issue. I didn't think of my mother's prestige for having done so as a notion of how I could gain prestige. I didn't think her prestige actually meant much considering how upset she was. I was so taught to think of that type of homemaker's prestige as cheap, shoddy, or of no real significance to emotional realities. 

So as much as that sounds terrible, I must say it has worked out for me so well. And that's the joy I got today from that ROE article. When I think about it in terms of broader sexism in society, I realize that in the time I could have spent doing chores and lifestyle homemaking has been spent on bettering myself — simply self-nurturing and reflecting, infusing and enriching myself, not about every random Joe around me getting a rush in thinking I appeal.

I've pursued so many things from a sense of freedom of leisure time that I realize those women have not gotten into anywhere remotely as much as me. I mean, my education has been very extensive, way beyond University. But the best example must be that my degree of meditation practice has been just soaringly way way beyond most people I know. I've been incredibly serious about spending countless hours in serious meditation for so much of my life since my formative years (as well as reading books on meditation and pursuing spirituality). That's hard to achieve while maintaining social status (unless you're formally religious about it) cause a lot of people will think you're just being lazy if you meditate much. Especially if your place is not that exciting, you can't cook them a fancy meal at home, and you haven't sewn your own clothes and won the neighbourhood or community award for holiday festivity. But I had time (lol). 

I now realize that the rewards of not being subservient to a sexist culture have paid off in ways so incredibly outrageously key that most people don't recognize it as a good or special quality about me — because it's so rare in this world that they have only shreds context to understand it from the world around them (lol). 

I was aware of feminism when I was growing up, but it takes self-reflection to really understand it better because on the surface, people don't see things as a social issue like sexism — they label it differently and use language which isn't about social structures and get confused. Even trauma is like that. Surprisingly, so many people don't think "Oh that person's exhibiting more trauma than others", they only think "That person's not as good as other people" (lol). For that reason, I'm so proud to have been acting like such a feminist long before I was able to write this article, even if I didn't realize why.

Quite often, since I embraced the band NIRVANA so deeply into my life (which is punk feminist) I've seen my behaviour as punk. I've noticed I have an awesome punk ethos to me even without the mowhawk to prove it haha. Well, same thing in this way with feminism, and it's an honour. I feel that the band NIRVANA, and Courtney Love, when they have interacted with me, they've gotten such a great impression off me because I'm such an empowered woman who shows a lifetime of self-respect in ways like I've mentioned here and that really shows. I know they just love seeing that. I mean, I imagine when Courtney noticed things like that I had gotten way into meditation, she thought that was so bling about me. Same with NIRVANA — I just know they love that as such an incredible extra frill on my Ayahuasca path. I'm pretty sure they do laugh at people under their breath who think that's no big deal (lol).