Down the road, I’ll question the meanings of manly and womanly. For now, having specified what being a man means to me, I thought I’d take a crack at a womanly ideal. I wanted to post the exact same description, not because I really believe a good woman is just the same as a good man, but because I want to believe it. Instead, I drafted a guest blogger of the female persuasion.
This from Janna Goodwin:
When I was a kid, growing up in Wyoming, I liked to ride my bike, hard, up and down the hilly, dusty “jumps” that cut through the vast fields around our neighborhood. I played basketball, not well, but with joy. I read books on the front porch, listening to lawn sprinklers. I dreamed of travel to distant cities and adventures in foreign lands. I imagined saving peoples’ lives; I wanted to a hero. I liked dressing in blue jeans and shirts with the sleeves rolled up. I bossed my little brother around. I played cowboy with Scott, Dave, and Dolores in the beekeeper’s field across the street. I drew pictures constantly. I took up conversational issues with heated excitement and confidence in my own ability to reason (even when I could have used some tempering of my certainty with evidence). I did not like the way it felt—vulnerable, exposed—to wear skirts, patent leather shoes, frilly blouses. I couldn’t bear the high-pitched squeal of giggles or the gossipy insipidness of girly-girls. I wanted to be the Artful Dodger. I wanted to be Little Joe. Ilya Kuryakin. My notion of being a Good Woman involved wearing padded brassieres, bearing children, taking dictation, making sandwiches, wiping noses and butts, and sacrificing one’s vitality and independence for others and frankly, I wanted no part of it. I didn’t want to be a Bad Woman, either, which apparently entailed sexuality (gross!) if not narcissism and gold-digging. I wanted, instead, to be a Brave Soldier, a Fine Lad, and a Brilliant Artist. That’s about as close as I can come to expressing what I intended to grow up to be. I didn’t envy the penis, but I wanted the options.
Experience, maturity, college, and feminism changed my perspective. I was treated well, treated badly, hurt, dismissed, fondled, mauled and otherwise objectified, given some opportunities and denied others—which, as, it turns out, happens to most people, some more wrenchingly, systematically, and detrimentally than others (we all make up reasons for our bad experiences and rejections, explanations that have little to do with our personalities or luck and much to do with unfairness. Sometimes, we’re spot-on in our assessments and other times, we’re way off: sometimes, it’s sexism or racism or classism and sometimes, it’s just bad breaks or they didn’t like you as much as they liked the next one).
By age 30, for me, Good Womanliness involved blooming self-righteousness and the constant arrival, via literature and critical thinking, of insights that inflamed my sense of personal, historic, and global injustice and enlarged my capacity to dislike others, particularly men and seriously—damn them—Straight White Men, who were obviously all full of themselves, wealthy, tall, controlling, and oblivious to their own undeserved privileges. I spent too long feeling mainly pissed off, especially (yeah, go ahead, hate me for saying it, but it’s true) every month when I had my period. I began to wonder if I actually liked being an Angry Woman (not so much, it turned out) and whether Angry Woman equated to Good Woman.
In settling on an identity, I definitely didn’t want to be a Womyn, a Witch, a Crone, or one of the Sisterhood, all of which smacked of cultiness. I wasn’t even, in the end, completely at ease with the Feminist label, having grown tired of the sense that one could never be outraged enough or prove oneself sufficiently intellectual or dedicated to just finally say “Whew!” and to get on to enjoying a life largely free of indignant wrath.
By 38 or so, I was fully cognizant, in a permanent and behavioral way, of both my middle-class and skin color advantages—such as they may or may not have been, depending on the situation—even while coming to grips with the disadvantages, both actual and perceived, that I faced as a Woman—and particularly as a Straight White Woman approaching middle age, the kind of Woman most easily dismissed by all other groups (including ourselves).
Anyway, the more I became me, and the more I liked that me, the less important it felt to correct the rest of the world. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that concentrating on the shortcomings—and perceived shortcomings—of other people isn’t fun! It is what plenty of women (not, in my book, the Good ones) enjoy most. Side observation: for the Righteous Woman, correcting others as a way of gaining status and control really beats the hard work of figuring out what kind of person she wants to be, what kind of relationships she wants to have and what kind of life she wants to live. I’d guess that right now, someone reading this wants badly to reach out and correct me, to explain why and how I’m wrong to have my perspective and to speak my sense of the world aloud. Because I obviously don’t know how fortunate I am (and the Righteous Woman or Man obviously knows more about me, my life, and my circumstances than I do)… and I need to be educated, trained, enlightened. You know who you are.
So, today, I’m a full-fledged Woman. I’m possibly a Fairly Good one, though certainly not, you know, clearly and sincerely Good. I focus, as much as possible, on what makes me feel happy, healthy, competent, reliable, responsible, and strong. The values, characteristics, and practices I try to cultivate in myself and my life as I age—and become, I daresay, Better at being a Woman, a Man, and a Person—include curiosity, critical thinking, compassion, humor and playfulness, creativity, connectedness, physical wellbeing, relational wellbeing, reflectiveness, robustness, responsiveness, agency, liveliness, inner peace. I keep myself as aware as I can of the variety of contexts that inform not only my own experiences but the experiences of others, and that awareness keeps me on my toes in a good way. I don’t like, but nonetheless invite, social, psychical, and physical discomfort, and it visits me often, sometimes savagely. I maintain the right to succeed, fail, make mistakes, declare my perspective, argue, reject or accept claims, botch things, improve things, fall on my face and pick myself up. I reserve the right to laugh. I suppose that, since these are all foundational to me, and function as guiding principles, they’d constitute what I think of as Good. Or at least Pretty Darned Good.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
I enjoyed this last post so much and for so many reasons! To Janna: I love your prose first of all. Its so Jonathan Franzen-esque, who I simply adore. Your subtle humor and the witty commentary, but more importantly how you jab at the soft underbelly of this most fascinating of cultures (in the US of A) through your own unique experience of Womanhood. Thank you for that. World needs more of you frankly. I think the what I m about to say is a bit silly but I ll share it nonetheless. If you ever considered publishing some kind of novel I would get off my chair and head to Barnes & Noble. Pronto too! Then I would read the whole thing over a couple nights too… Anyway, that’s how excited I was reading this blog entry today.
To some of the particular content which spoke to me. The part where you say, “We all make up reasons for our bad experiences and rejections, explanations that have little to do with our personalities or luck and much to do with unfairness. Sometimes, we’re spot-on in our assessments and other times, we’re way off: sometimes, it’s sexism or racism or classism and sometimes, it’s just bad breaks or they didn’t like you as much as they liked the next one). Yes, yes, and yes! You hit the bulls-eye. More people need to hear this stuff and digest it. Hallelujah!
Let me elaborate. It is my opinion that when we are accurate about where the perceived unfairness or injustice is coming from, then we should just acknowledge it, give ourselves a pat in the back for our good instincts (I admit its nice to be right sometimes), but then move on to the next thing in life. Probably the next injustice, but who cares? Life is full of these anyway. Do you want to live complaining all the time, or do you want to live? This actually reminds of that joke with the guy who goes to the doctor and points to his leg and says it hurts here doc, then points to his arm and says it hurts here doc, so on and so forth. Ends up with the doctor telling the guy his finger with which he was pointing at is broken.
I think if one becomes stuck and reactive on all the unfair discrimination and -isms he/she experiences left and right, then its only going to reinforce some of the inherent complementarity in his/her systems. He/she is like that broken finger pointing at everything. Its also a classic offender-victim dynamic. By the way, I m speaking as an offense-specific therapist and evaluator for the State of Colorado (God have mercy!), so I hope this is not all hot air coming out of an orifice. Most of it is probably and I need to remind myself of that at times. Degrees and titles qualify the air just bit, but in the end most of what we say is probably flatulence. Some odor variation is always to be expected.
I mean, hello, if you complain about the injustice you just showed the “offender” what really pushes your buttons. In the beginning its unavoidable. Its like people stepping on some sh*t every once in a while when walking down the street. Seriously. It wasn’t about you. As the say, sh*t happens! But if you want to be a cry baby about it, guess what the “offender” is going to do in response to your nagging? Well, he/she is going to be nice and say, “Oh, I m so sorry this happened to you. It sucks you stepped on it.” Wanna bet on that will be his/her response? Right. So now not only do you have some sh*t on your shoes, you have the “offender” also telling you about it. Buttons are meant to be pushed. When that occurs you probably are going to cry some more about being bullied and harassed. You are actually so preoccupied with this harassment that you are not paying attention where you are stepping next. What do you know? Ha, you just stepped on some more sh*t! Welcome to the cycle of abuse. Totally unproductive rationale.
Am I implying it is the victim’s responsibility to change the pattern and not the offender who started it in the first place? Maybe I am in some way although I m not excusing the offender’s behavior. He/she has a lot of responsibility, although sometimes its just funny to laugh at accidents. I m not afraid to admit that too. If you can laugh at yourself when it happens to you and also stop laughing when its not an accident anymore, I think you are okay.
Responsibility doesn’t always mean true awareness. Often times the offender probably has no clue of your suffering and thus how to stop harassing you, so he/she will keep perpetuating unless he/she eventually understands that it sucks to be the victim in the dynamic. Moreover, if he/she doesn’t stop after the injustice is accurately pointed out a couple times, then he/she is likely antisocial (or maybe just an a-hole) so you better remove yourself from the situation altogether. Bottom line. Most people will eventually understand and adjust their behavior because everyone has been a victim and everyone has been a perpetrator no matter how much or little privilege you have. Fact.
Freud said that the dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. Buddhists paraphrase him and say that “pain” is the royal road to awareness and meaningful change. When you allow yourself to feel it (its human experience) in its entirety (complaining about it is avoiding) you become a little smarter because you learn from it first, but you also allow yourself to say that others likely experience it like I do because they are not so different, so you know when its okay to be a jerk and when its not. That way of life and learning through suffering is good as long as you don’t become a masochist or a martyr of course. That stuff is for Mother Theresa, Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela and some other folk that “carry the cross” for the rest of us. I like laughing at people’s pain sometime. Michael, I think you said that laughing is always better than complaining. Hallelujah for that one as well!
In the second scenario (although I have alluded to this somehow explaining the first), if you find yourself often being inaccurate on your assumptions about the source of your pain and suffering, or the -isms you experience, then I think you probably have a bit of an ego and think the world revolves around you. That’s hard to be aware of. You ll probably say you are accurate when you actually are not, because that stuff is ego-syntonic. It bothers me when people say the world is being unfair. It bothers me twice as much when they say its unfair to them in particular! Some distortion that one is… Let me awaken you to reality. The world doesn’t care about you. You are special and unique but you are not that special. If you still think you are so damn special and deserve fairness, in that case I ll repeat what a very dear friend of mine told me a few years back when she pointed out some of my narcissism.
“Your ego is not your amigo!” I couldn’t stop laughing.
If WordPress had a Like button, it would definitely be meant to be pushed for this comment!
I so enjoyed reading your hot air in response to my hot air here on the hot air blog. My father quotes either Kurt Vonnegut or Samuel Clemens (they are One, in my mind) in reminding me that we are “put here on earth to fart around,” a sentiment that seems to inform your own sense of absurdity, intellectual curiosity and compassion for our mutual human condition.
Today, I was going somewhere not unpleasant, driving my comfortable, air-conditioned Toyota, in my healthy, well-fed body. And suddenly, I realized that I was (not entirely silently; my lips were moving and sound was coming out) complaining and blaming others, talking to myself in an accusatory tone. Randomly, and about nothing. I wasn’t even actually pretending to talk to real people in my life; I had invented them, and had invented the situation, and was yelling at them.
What’s weirder (possibly) is that I didn’t even notice it for several miles, until I happened to tune into myself. I was taken aback: there, awash in my many blessings, was I, tootling along, cussing out more than a few imaginary people who had, in the fantasy, annoyed me or caused me some administrative or interpersonal inconvenience. Shocked and affronted at myself for being so shallow, I then turned viciously upon ME (as if that part of myself were Paris Hilton, whining about room service at the Ritz). I said to myself, “Good god, Self! Really? How dare you yell at a bunch of poor, stupid, made up people!” Apparently, I had to come out of this thing feeling superior, somehow, to someone, whatever it took.
O, laughing at other people’s pain is what I did last night, at the Book of Mormon. I don’t want to reveal the last line of the play, but suffice it to say that the sold-out audience inhaled its collective uvula and then fell to the floor in hysterics… and the line could not have been more obviously or poignantly about someone’s pain, as was much of the play. Comedy. Humans. A match made in heaven.
Anyway- thanks for your playful and thought-provoking comments, Ioannis.
You re welcome. Speaking of comedy, theater, and gender roles. If ever a time we find ourselves in Greece I promise to take you and Michael to a modern version of one of Aristophanes’ plays. Either Lysistrati or Thesmophoriazousai to be exact. This guy was tooting some of the same hot air about 2,500 years ago! Guaranteed six-pack workout from laughing at the absurdities of the human experience. Be well!
I hope to live into that part about “the more I liked that me, the less important it felt to correct the rest of the world. “