Girls are stupid.

When a woman is exhorted to be compliant, cooperative, and quiet, to not make upset or go against the old guard, she is pressed into living a most unnatural life - a life that is self-blinding ... without innovation. The world-wide issue for women is that under such conditions they are not only silenced, they are put to sleep. Their concerns, their viewpoints, their own truths are vaporized.
-Clarissa Pinkola Estés


I really like Sue Monk Kidd's work, so some time ago I picked up her spiritual memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. Feminism doesn't really appeal to me, but this narration of an 'awakening' and a spiritual rebellion against the sexism that makes the world go around... well, the book has me hooked. I usually treat my books very carefully, but I'm treating this one like I would a college textbook: folding page corners to mark favorite passages and underlining key quotes.

Partly, I'm fascinated by the book because it's made me painfully aware that I have also been contaminated by my country's sexism. Even I badmouth women all the time. Especially when I'm driving- I swear, they let anyone have a driver's license these days. But when I see something preposterous on the road and see that there's a woman at the wheel, I can't help but say, "It had to be a woman."

I'm not even one-third into the book, and it has already generated such complex feelings in me. Part of me wants to embrace feminism, and part of me argues that sometimes it's as if women are asking- no, begging to be belittled and discriminated and shunted aside.

I actually find myself hoping that somewhere in Kidd's book there'll be a chapter dedicated to why women deserve the way they're treated...

The emotions provoked by the book are complex enough, but they were made worse when I read them between classes today at the university... especially when I left each class fuming because I wanted to pummel a female classmate for sheer stupidity.

Honestly.

I almost thought the universe was plotting against me... the day I dive into feminism and awareness of 'the feminine wound' (concentration of female inferiority), is the day when I can't find a single person worthy of the respect the book inspired in me.

I only had three classes today, but in each one there was a girl or woman so airheaded or so ignorant that I wanted to turn to and say "Shut up". I could've sworn they had all agreed beforehand to act stupider than usual today.


"... a 1991 survey by the American Association of University Women suggests that parents and teachers seem to have lesser expectations for girls than for boys. [...] Girls' self-esteem is lost as they "dumb themselves down" and conform to lesser lesser expectations to avoid being threatening."
-from "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter"


I promised myself I wouldn't go into much detail, but I can't help myself. This one was just unbelievable.

In my Literature for Adolescents class there's a girl I can't stand. I took two classes with her last semester, and I groaned when I saw that she was taking Lit with me this semester. She's one of those girls you just want to throw into a laboratory so scientists can use to prove that prolonged hair dyeing eventually affects your brain. The girl is as dumb as they come- I don't know who she had to f*ck to get into college, LET ALONE the TESS (Teaching English to Spanish Speakers) program. I mean, she even talks in Spanish during an English class, her English is so bad.

Our professor read a story out loud to us. I love it when she does that. I feel like I'm a child again, just drinking in those lovely stories from the teachers' velvety, maternal voices. Well, today she read Love You Forever to us. It was a children's book, but we saw that it was really for all ages. We listened to the story of a mother holding her sleeping son, singing to him:

I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be

The little baby grows up, and through different stages from childhood to manhood, the mother always rocks him and sings that song to him when she's sure he's sleeping. In the story, when the son is an adult and moves into his own home, we see the mother getting into her car, driving to his house, and when she sees that the lights are out in his room, she climbs in through the window and picks him up, rocks him back and forth while she sings the same song. Are you realizing what this story is saying yet?

Then the woman gets older and older, and she can't get out of bed and she can barely finish her song. So when her son comes to her, he picks up her frail little body, rocks her back and forth and sings to her, "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my mommy you'll be".

When our professor closed the book, we were all sentimental and teary-eyed and one girl even said, "I want to see my mom now."

And then- that airhead I mentioned before?- she soured up the atmosphere by beginning to complain about the book (in Spanish... it would've been too complicated for her to say it in English). She acted so self-righteous, saying that the love presented in the book was unhealthy, obsessive, that the mother was overprotective and babying him even when he wasn't a child anymore. I glared at her several times, wanting to say, "You really don't get it, do you?" but the professor very kindly showed her some of the illustrations in the book. "See? He was making this mess in the house, just like children always do. Here he is when he's a teenager, doing what all teenagers do, wearing strange clothes and listening to strange music..." And then the illustrations of the mother singing to her sleeping son. "He's always sleeping. He doesn't even realize what she's doing." And there was the message, the professor explained, very good-naturedly: the love of the parent, unconditional even when it went unperceived sometimes.

The fact that the girl didn't open her mouth to say another word gave me a very wicked satisfaction.

I do feel guilty sometimes for my arrogance and for thinking the things I do, but I think I was just too sensitive today.