I was reading Bell Hooks’ “The Will to Change” this morning and it inspired me to ponder more on my own upbringing. Hooks talks a lot about her relationship with her father and the violent ways in which he reinforced the patriarchal rule. She also mentioned her mother and the more quiet but just as strong ways in which she supported his message.
This was not my experience, I did not grow up in capitalist America, I was actually born two months before communism fell in Bulgaria. Whenever you try to talk about feminism in Bulgaria, it is not met well. “We had communism, we learned everyone is equal, what more do you want?”. Hooks’ writing got me to reflect and crystalise in my mind the ways in which the forced blind equality can damage women and femme presenting people. Do you “want it all” if that ALL is constantly shoved down your throat?
My dad never stopped me from pursuing “male” activities. I was always interested in making things, and he would bring me along with him often when he was doing them. I have sifted sand with him, to then subsequently mix it with cement and make concrete, I have helped tighten the reinforcement links on slabs to be poured and was made to observe him levelling the brickwork (I wasn’t allowed to participate in this, not because I was a girl, but because it was “too delicate”). All this before the age of 8. I loved it. All this has had a profound impact on who I am. It was not done however without reminding me that I was “a third unsuccessful attempt for a boy” that, “well, there are no sons, so you have to help along”, that despite me being allowed those activities when we are around the table, I am to serve my dad. He was seldom aggressive with his demands of servitude, more often he would apply blatant emotional manipulation - “whichever daughter loves me the most will get up to bring the pepper grinder”, but the important part was that he was unyieldingly consistent. He would wait for everyone to be sat around the table, and then he would start asking us to get up to do various things; this would happen always, without a single meal missed. He has recently started to edit himself, but now, when he gets up to fulfil his own needs, he would make a loud and clear point about his grace and generosity of not making us do it. All this while quite annoying and a bit impolite is just this - a little annoying and impolite. It’s not overtly violent, it’s like a water drip, soft at a glance, but before you know it, it can deform a rock.
The violent and overt reinforcement of patriarchal roles in my upbringing came from women. It was my mother who encouraged me to starve myself, eating only boiled cabbage for weeks and weeks when I was 14, it was my grandmother who told me when I was 7 “if you choose to wear a skirt, you must know the boys will lift it up”. It was my aunt who lived the life of a woman so dedicated to carrying for her father and brother, that she neglected to build her own family - she would so clearly prefer and prioritise any men present, that it would leave the women and girls to never be able to choose their food, or have to shower with cold water. It was my sisters who pinned me to the ground and physically restrained me when I was 9 years old to wax me for the first time. It was my oldest sister who told me when I was 14, “I am glad you are a little chubby because I am not so afraid you will get raped”, spoiler alert, my size did not protect me from violation, even when it was far greater than the time this idea was planted in my mind. All those women were either raised or lived the majority of their lives in communism.
Communist societies, if we set aside the totalitarian systems that take them over in many cases, promote total equality. Realistically this has not happened anywhere yet. It did however inform my father's views that indeed, his daughters should be able to pursue any professional life they choose. That system however entirely refused to address the different needs and experiences of people who identify as men and who identify as women. It assumed that the commonly accepted as desired things should be equal - ie the pursuit of power and professional fulfilment. Hence women were invited to be educated and work. Equalising of caring responsibilities however was not something that was prioritised.
To me, the experience of being socialised as a woman in this context was extremely confusing. I identified with my father entirely. I was competitive and creative, I loved making things, and I loved making the rules. So I also took on many toxic masculinity traits too - I was extremely hard on myself, I expected myself to be the best at everything and I always took 100% of the responsibility in any situation I was in. It came as a huge shock to me that people did not regard me the way they did my father or my friends who were being socialised as boys. I could not understand why. As I was getting older women around me were making more of an effort to guide me towards what was expected of me as well.
Bell Hooks talks about the ineptitude men experience when talking about their feelings and when attempting to practise the art of love - “ ”Something missing within” was a self-description I heard from many men as I went around our nation talking about love”. I think this is what is happening to women, and maybe even people who belong to other marginalised groups when bound in “total equality”, when they are not allowed to express their wholeness - it results in violence. Those women, who were caring for me with violence, had “something missing within”. Absolutely, a lot of this was to protect me, they knew if I was thin, hairless and obedient, I would have an easier life, and that is also true. But I think they also felt the uniqueness of their femininity being erased - they could feel it, but at the same time, they were told they “can have it all”. So they just tried to reinforce the things they were told were feminine.
When you don’t have safe spaces to explore yourself and to be allowed to be and feel, the need to be and feel the things that are innate to you does not subside. It only deforms, and it deforms to mimic the restraints that it is put under. Equality is also oppressive because it tells us we are all the same. We are not. We have different needs and wants and what we need is not equality, it is equity.
We all have a lot to unlearn and rebuild within ourselves. When we ask people to join us on the journey to a fairer world for all, we need to understand their context and meet them where they are. Information, while it is still very controlled and distorted around the world, definitely travels much much faster than it did for the previous generation. Millennials and Gen X-ers who have grown up behind the Iron Curtain may seem to be living lives very similar to their western counterparts, but a lot of their upbringing would have been dramatically different. When we ask women from Eastern Europe (and I suspect that this applies to pretty much everywhere else which is not the white English speaking world) to embrace true intersectional feminism and accept gender diversity beyond the binary specifically, we ask for a lot, and we need to account for the damage of the distorted totalitarian equality they have constructed their identities in.
I write this with a lot of love and care for the women who have raised me. I write it with an acceptance that some of them might never be able to accept my whole identity, they may never be able to reconcile the shock of transness or the one from male vulnerability, but I am not writing it for them. I am writing it for all the formidable radical drivers of change in the West, who do beautiful work, I write it to allow yet another perspective, and to hopefully inspire a little more kindness and gentleness for all of our journeys.
