Act, sister: How did I get rid of misogyny and believe in women
There is a popular question at the interviews. about who you see yourself in five years. My experience suggests that we never see ourselves as those who we become in five years. Or become them in parallel with how we become also someone else. Five years ago, I worked as an editor and could not even imagine that you could write “for girls” or “about girls” on the site without frowning with shame. Five years ago, I was sick with a serious form of mis-sin with rare glimpses of recovery. I loved the girls cautiously - for the most part those with whom I talked closely - I treated the others condescendingly and / or squeamily.
For me, they were capricious in shopping centers, made scandals on their frontal places in Dom-2, took their guys to retarded romcoms and thought about the beauty of their nails. If they achieved something, they did it a little worse than their male colleagues. If they publicly expressed opinions, they were emotional and not always consistent. I was not joking about them as on Somedy Radio, but I characterized many in a similar way - stereotypes are convenient because they turn into biting opinions and poisonous speakers without much effort. Just add bile. Five years ago, I did not realize that without realizing it I would stop thinking so. This is a story about how it all happened. And this is a pretty typical story.
Parents never told me that girls are worse than boys, but the feeling that something was wrong with girls was haunting me most of my life.
"How could you, my friend? You haven't got any closer to me!" - the group "Arrows" sang all my youth. BG sang: "Every woman should have a snake." And my favorite movie hero, Lyudmila Prokofyevna, told me on a date: "But one day my best friend decided to marry ... my fiancé. Since then, I have eliminated all my friends." Parents never told me that girls are worse than boys, did not set me against others, but the feeling that something was wrong with girls and that they could not be trusted, haunted me most of my life.
Thinking about how it turned out that trusting other girls and respecting them was so difficult for me, I came to the conclusion that the most important thing was how our parents treated friends. With few exceptions, they survived. Constantly moved, worked on several jobs and put up with humiliating living conditions. Not only time, fun - an hour, but also family time, friendship - an hour, if this hour ever was. Friendship - something from school, from happy college days, which ended with the first years of plowing. To work with like-minded people, to meet with a partner with similar interests, to manage free time, to have children when you live for pleasure, and not when the family is looking askance - they did not have the luxury of our generation. As there was no option to establish and maintain long horizontal links. Our parents often knew how to be friends to the grave, as in the pioneer oath, but they could not always spend time together in a fun and interesting way.
This fact, combined with the stories about the perfidy of female friendship, has placed inside me the feeling that I am one warrior in the field, and the real battle is for the most important thing. For that same person. Needless to say, there are books by the Bronte sisters and songs by Alanis Morissett, Vivienne Westwood and the smiles of Hollywood actresses, but what is life worth living alone? Friends come and go, and friends do not count. Teenage friendship with girls was something of a frivolous rehearsal of relationships that would come later — with the very person I’ve been waiting for and that will save me from loneliness.
I wanted to be born a boy under the age of 25 - life examples confirmed that any boy was provided with more attention. In our class there were about ten girls with good and excellent learning results, but only the abilities of the boys were spoken out loud. Girls are not praised, so as not to praise. They criticized very selectively and almost always with the transition to the individual, but in general they were taken for granted. The girls got comments about their behavior and appearance, from the girls themselves - first and foremost. We competed for a bit of the most mediocre boyish attention and gossiped very cruelly.
If stopping a fight seemed important to almost every teacher, then no one in ten years at school explained to us basic things about the rules of communication, mutual respect, the boundaries of each other and that we are not at war. I didn’t want to be the queen of the beehive, but, God, what did I think about when my classmate trimmed the main honored student of our class braid? Laughing with everyone. The school was too decent for everything to end with the movie “Effigy”, but the persecution, as is well known, manifests itself in trifles. No sisterhood could be imagined - and the division of holidays on February 23 and March 8, the meaning of which then, as now, no one understood (the "defenders of the Fatherland" were not going to serve in the army, and many "mothers and wives" were not married without family), only emphasized the division into two camps: those who are destined to take the initiative, and those who will look forward to it. I communicated with girls only because the boys didn’t want to communicate with me, and if they agreed, I would send all the girlfriends of the past and the future far away to be called for some patsansky birthday.
I would like to say that I have never participated in the persecution of other girls, but this is not so: it happened that I saw and did not intercede, retreated to the side
I encountered persecution in a maiden environment: at the age of 12 I went to summer camp and got into the epicenter of the attention of the local gopnits team. The hierarchy was the most standard, teenage: beauties that boys like and so they don’t touch, boys who are friends with boys and therefore also have immunity, girls from good families with strong self-esteem and expensive phones and new ones like me. Having suffered three days of unreasonable and very cruel insults and harassment, I complained to my parents, and everything quickly settled down - first of all thanks to the loud cries of the baleen mustache growing under two meters.
“We didn’t suspect that you were normal,” papin roar bought me the respect of all the children who came to this camp: the rest of the summer I shook my ass under Tarkan and Ricky Martin with the hooligans who burned my things two days earlier. As it turned out later, most of the children were from single-parent families, and my dad, who was ready to be brought to the Moscow region during the working week and bring a rustle there, was a trump card that I had no idea. Would there be such an effect if one mom arrived? I think I know the answer. I would like to say that I have never participated in the persecution of other girls, but this is not so: it happened that I saw and did not intercede, moved aside. Often dominated by less agile and more calm girlfriends who were "weaker" than me.
My parents, who have younger brothers and sisters in the family, will never understand this. An incident in the camp and a year and a half in the wrestling sports section with some boys reinforced me with the thought that being a boy was a happy privilege: all the rules of the boys suited me, but I was confused as a girl. In addition, to be the only girl in the sports section and pass the same standards - even a self-assessment upgrade.
It's a shame to admit it, but almost all teenage years I defined myself through the guys I met — it didn't occur to me that I, not my boyfriend, could write songs, make a music label, write reviews or interesting lyrics. What can come from me initiative. That is why noticeable girls, no matter what they do, I sharpened the knives - primarily from envy of their courage to do their own way and complete self-sufficiency.
Mizoginia corrected her studies a little and then her work. In our institute there were 60 people on the stream, and 90 percent were girls. They were not stupid fools in anticipation of marriage or mediocre and inexpressive repetitions. There I found my first true friends, falling in love with them until I lost consciousness, as I had not yet fallen in love with guys. But the "girls-girls" caused us a condescending chuckle: I remember how in some stupid comedy we heard the phrase "Babskie women!" and used it at every opportunity - from a fuchsia-colored bag to another joke about “blondes”.
Of course, we did not mean anything bad. Of course, I was sure that they would take some work through the bed. It became very funny when a year later I was accused of this, when I briefly became the editor of an important Moscow edition. The phrase "inner misogyny" I did not know then. The next time the persecution happened already at the age of 19, but it didn’t feel anything like the summer in the camp. Two dozens of respected people a few years older than me were discussing my professional and personal qualities in the Live Journal in the open mode of sracha, and - hate it! - my appearance. From the sticky sweat that covered me from head to foot, it was impossible to wash off for several days, and flashbacks returned for several years: as often happens in srach, rare voices "why discuss a living person like that?" drowned by dozens of comments about the face and figure. But - lo and behold! - people change. And all these speakers have grown up with me into profeminists, sincere and consistent.
I realized that working with friends is a privilege, not a terrarium, and I still do not know what they laugh at, condescendingly speaking about the "female team"
I began to experience the problems of the face, the figure and my own abilities with the guy I’m still meeting: it so happened that he was a pro-feminist (we both didn’t know that word for long), and competing with girls for male attention became an irrelevant task. Over time, derogatory "don't be a woman!" and "what have you got, PMS?". I focused on myself and my friends. Suddenly, her friends became incredibly many. Sisterhood is a long and demanding process, but the global and important feeling of girl power with many girls around the world came to me only a few years ago. I have been working and talking with girls for the last ten years and I managed to notice on a thousand examples that it was the greatest folly in my life to despise my own sex.
Misogyny gives short-term social privileges, but rarely accompanies a happy life. Girls write music and perform, go to the Venice Biennale and become chief editors, grow from promising interns to excellent professionals in a few years, lead their businesses and businesses, run museums and foundations, run marathons and make films - almost all of my girls are friends . And while they drink vodka or "Cosmopolitan", wear jeans or mini, make tattoos or love the song "Barbie Girl" - and more often than not, no "or" is needed.
I will say that everyone already knows: girls work with incredible diligence for a lower salary, where they are less often merged from responsible tasks, they know how to listen perfectly and work perfectly in a team. The girlish team that I worked with is now in great demand. It was while working with her that I realized that working with friends is a privilege, not a terrarium, and I still don’t know what they are laughing at, condescendingly speaking about the “female team”.
More than a year ago I wrote a text about my own experience of depression - during the process of therapy it became obvious how many negative feelings in my life were dictated by people from the outside. Many, especially at the beginning of my journey, allowed themselves comments that they would never say about the guy - from how to behave, to how to look, what to want and who to work with. And also that there is no female friendship (“a friend threw problems”, “hijacked you, hijacked”), girls will never be as good as boys, and there is nothing worse than a boss — a woman (well, except that the driver is a woman: for driving tratata - this is not riding).
Remember the song: "Well, what are you so terrible! Are you so terrible! And unpainted and terrible, and make-up"? And "In my head no boom boom! Tiny, stupid fool!"? It flowed over me for years. The most significant part of the therapy was the peeling of misogynic delusions and the separation of one's own desires from the imposed motivations around. “Don't listen to anyone” - good advice at 25, but the trick is that before 25 we listen to someone - and often this is what defines our life. After the publication of the text about the personal experience of the depressed depression, hundreds of people wrote to me: the girls, all as one, were afraid to talk about their problem with their relatives, worrying that they were hysterical, their boys were silent or withdrawn in full confidence that this was “woman’s deed”.
The guys who wrote to me also worried that depression was "not a male disease." After some time, I made a closed support group for my friends and realized the importance of being able to share a problem, understand its typicality and not get a hysterical label for it. Despite the fact that the main treatment for depression and anxiety disorders takes place under the supervision of a doctor, and boys and girls need a comfortable space to discuss difficulties where there is no place for accusation and aggression. You can be vulnerable and respected at the same time, you can share and support each other, you can virtually embrace strangers, and most importantly, hear the feelings, pain and experience of other people, without projecting your own life scenario on others.
We are all very different, with different shapes and tastes, and it is precisely these that are unique - an obvious common place that strikes like a bolt from the blue.
Another important part of the awareness of girlish solidarity has become the most ordinary home party with the exchange of clothing. In the practice of my parents and previous generations, a bachelorette party is what happens when boys go about their business. Or is this the last wedding party, where the golden-shorts stripper doesn't look like your future husband. At our bachelorette parties, I began to analyze how we build communication and learn to be vulnerable in adulthood. We dress up in front of each other, talk about work and weekends, make common plans, drink wine and discuss the latest news, MBA degrees, Beyonce and ponies - and we feel safe. In our turn there are no "fatty sleeves" and "crooked ears", "unsuitable figures" and "big noses", there are only good jokes and well-deserved compliments.
We are all very different, with different shapes and tastes, and it is precisely these that are unique - an obvious common place that strikes like a bolt from the blue, when 60 girls of different sizes and ages with and without children measure the clothes on your eyes. For some reason, after each such party, my self-esteem rises - unlike half a day in a fitting room. I remember how the heroines of “Mean Girls” comment on each other, and I understand how great it is to grow up and be someone you didn't even think of becoming five years ago. It is easy and pleasant to be friends without a stone in your bosom, to trust other girls and how long you need to learn it. I do not have a single sister, I found all myself. This is something that I just could not imagine.
Photo: kilukilu - adobe.stock.com, ksi - adobe.stock.com, Enlightened Media - adobe.stock.com
