We think back through our mothers if we are women�
-virginia Woolf
"I was locked into being my mothers daughter,
I was just eating bread and water
thinking, nothing ever changes.
And I was shocked
to see the mistakes of each generation will just fade like a radio station
if you drive out of range."
-ani difranco
Ok, backround check:I am a feminist. I am an artist. I am an engaged individual, who is constantly questioning the constructions surrounding myself. My mother has a PH.D in Visual Neuroscience. She and my father are work colleagues and she is a strong, sarcastic women. She is attractive, brilliant, raised me in a very androgynous manner, taught me to be a fierce liberal, taught me to view sex without shame, got married in a short plain navy dress (never romanticized or stressed marriage) , raised me without religion, encouraged me to always be independent, jammed with me at Ani Difranco concerts, and supports my lifestyle as an artist. In fact, a long while back when I hesitantly confessed to her I wanted to major in theatre and visual art, she jokingly replied,
“There are only two things you could ever do that would piss me off enough to consider kicking you out of this house:1. not go to college 2. be a Republican.�
These are two problems she never had to worry about.
So, why in a class essay on feminism and our mothers was my first sentence,
“I will not become my mother�?
It doesn’t add up.
What also doesn’t add up is the fact that it took me 3 years to “come out� to her as a “feminist� and to discover that she doesn’t approve.
I could not believe it. My mother. My progressive, intelligent, empowered mother did not identify or approve of my claimed identity as a feminist. What was going on? In terms of career, she was my feminist role model, and yet, there was a disconnect, a wall between us when confronted with this word.
Feminism.
As we continued to talk, I began to understand where this distaste was stemming from. It was a response to fear. A response to the stereotype of what she views/fears young feminists all are today: Lesbians. I discovered with surprise and sadness that my liberal mother who embraced my homosexual friends and supports politically all homosexual rights (who taught me to do the same from and early early age) feared that I might discover (through feminism) that was a lesbian, not just any lesbian, but a butch, aggressive, “in your face�, buzz cut lesbian. Though she supports the rights of lesbian women and also has no personal moral issue with homosexuality, she would rather her own daughter not be gay.
(After that, I didn’t have the heart (or the guts) to tell her that actually…the mysterious “someone� I was falling for in my latest college class (ironically my feminist studies class) …was a woman.)
For the record, when in the future I finally fully “come out� to my mother with my ideology and sexuality, I have complete faith that my mother will love and support me and that she will come to peace with my life choices, whatever they may be. But for now, I lack the courage to include her in my struggle to define/embrace my sexuality, so until I meet someone special, or my courage overcomes my fear, it seems I will only be bringing home the “safer� half of my sexuality.
However, what disturbed me the most about this interaction was her inability, and my inability to fully see each other in this circumstance. We both in that moment, were unable to identify with each other, unable to accept each others viewpoints, unable to respond without anger and victimization, and in short, unable love each other in that moment. In Manifesta, Jennifer Baumbgardner and Amy Richards write, “We have a generation of mothers who raised children with at least some hint of feminism in the air� so how was she able to raise me within what I would call “feminist ideals� but not recognize, and support my generation’s feminism?
In consequence of such interactions, coupled with a few other nasty habits and insecurities I picked up by observing my mother while growing up, I have spent a great deal of energy and time trying not to be my mother. In my effort to uproot my own insecurities that I unfairly blame her for, I have spent a great deal of my life hiding, burying, and ignoring the aspects of her I discover in myself, but in attempting to kill the negative, I found I often also had to destroy the positive.
I felt confused and trapped by a dual desire within me, as Lugones states, “I was disturbed by my not wanting to be what she was (..) my self was missing because I could not identify with her.�
There was so much in my mother that I loved/love and wanted to emulate, but “I was unwilling to become what I had been taught to see my mother as being (…) I thought that loving her was to be in part constituted by my identifying with her, my seeing myself in her.� Why had I erased all positive aspects of my mother and my childhood from my memory? Why was I so angry at her? Why, when my mother gave me so many positive qualities, empowered me as a human being, taught me to be strong, why could I only focus on two things; my internalization of her weight insecurities which turned into my eating disorder, and my fear of embracing my personal definition feminism and sexuality. I found myself viewing her through only what she lacked, rather than what she had. I could not see her as a woman with personal issues and insecurities; I could only see her as my mother. As my mother, I could strip her of her independence and blame her for my own inadequacies. This mode of loving her was problematic in that was inclusive of my abuse. By seeing her in this light, I failed in loving her. I feared becoming her. This relationship must be revolutionized. Perhaps I must accept that “In dealing with our own mothers, many of us could be confronting our own misogyny-our dislike for the way women’s power is forced to play out in a sexist society� (Baumbgardner, Richards). The first step then will have to be valuing women “independently of their relationships to other human beings� (Baumgardner,Richards). In viewing my mother as woman, I would have had to accept that she was prey to the same patriarchal constructions as I was and that I could support, teach, and love her by identifying with her.
“We are fully dependant on each other for the possibility of being understood and without this understanding we are not intelligible, we do not make sense, we are not solid, visible, integrated; we are lacking. So traveling to each others “worlds� would enable us to be through loving each other� (Lugones).
We have to redefine our connections between generations as feminists, redefine our notions of mother and daughter, “We have to make it clear to our mothers, our foremothers, and ourselves that our actions are not a rebellion but a necessity of speaking out truths: they are not against but for� (Baumgardner, Richards). Just as 3rd wave feminists must acknowledge that the choices of our feminist “mothers� cannot be judged until they understand those choices were made in a context and a time they will never experience, 2nd wave feminists must acknowledge that they have a responsibility to engage and attempt to understand the perspectives of the 3rd wave feminist.
“The biggest conflict between generations is a lack of communication, mutual ignorance of each other’s accomplishments, and sometimes, suspicion about each other’s motivations� (Lugones).
We are not squabbling mothers and daughers, fearful of each other’s motives and unable/unwilling to examine each others point of view. We are not controlling, self righteous parents, or ungrateful brats disregarding our forebear’s accomplishments, we are the “real, everyday women who make up this movement. The characters-young and old-whose lives show us where the movement needs to go� (Baumgardner, Richards). Perhaps then, my mother and I will learn to see each other, not as an ignorant, fearful mother, not as a gullible, defensive child, but as women. Perhaps then, we will be able to see how powerful, beautiful, and strong we are separately, and how much more we have still to give to each other.
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