Superpowers, or how I do nothing all day
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a woman. I think of this in its most inclusive sense because it seems like the regressive dominant powers that be are all about reducing the human experience to certain traditional models, and I'm determined to reject that. So what is a woman if we're not reduced to our biology or our historical situation or oppression or positional/relational power as mothers, sisters, daughters, wives? Certainly I don't speak for all women, but I'll put my womanly voice out there because I can and because I want my children to have a record of what I think and feel and what I believe and maybe it will resonate with others and tune the world to a fuller, more just song.
Recently I've been in quite a few woman-centered spaces. A night out with girlfriends. Sharing my breastfeeding journey with expectant parents. Attending an organizing meeting for community political action. I am seeing that a woman is a nurturer. Nurturing is not just an act that some women's bodies perform when lactating. I mean that I see women as builders and sustainers of lives, families and communities. We connect humans to life, to the continuity of life. We do this in spite of how patriarchy breeds us to be devoured (our bodies and labor used up in the service of inequality) and then devalues that sacrifice. Every day, all over the world, women get up and go about their business of making sure that everyone around them has what they need, providing the structure for our daily existence while simultaneously dealing with our collective colossal ingratitude.
I say nurturer and not mother. I don't think you need to give birth or be a mother to be a powerful woman. But I do think our radical power arises from our bodies and our ownership of it. To bear the world, be in the world with our policed, politicized and commodified bodies and to still push forward towards the future is a profoundly feminine act.
While I was at that storytelling panel for expectant parents, I had to calm Darren down and the lactation consultant pointed out that I was able to put my baby to sleep in 30 seconds by nursing him. She said that it was my superpower. Another doula clarified that it is the human body and touch that can be an amazing parenting tool, not just the breastmilk. It made me think about how powerful our bodies are, and observing the somewhat skeptical faces of those expectant parents, how much we've been taught to discount it.
We live in a society in which value is measured by status signifiers. What job you have. What education degrees. What you possess. All serving to keep us inside the patriarchal hierarchy, clinging to whatever rung our birth landed us on, ensuring all our work goes to maintaining the ladder at all costs. Work off this ladder doesn't even count. This is why we can feel so deflated when we are not making big, recognizable movements/creating a marketable, monetize-able life path or brand.
There is nothing wrong with straightforward career paths or accomplishments, but we miss out if we don't recognize and honor the invisible labor too. I'm holding my sleeping infant in my lap as I write. The holding and the writing are equally important.
Recently I've been in quite a few woman-centered spaces. A night out with girlfriends. Sharing my breastfeeding journey with expectant parents. Attending an organizing meeting for community political action. I am seeing that a woman is a nurturer. Nurturing is not just an act that some women's bodies perform when lactating. I mean that I see women as builders and sustainers of lives, families and communities. We connect humans to life, to the continuity of life. We do this in spite of how patriarchy breeds us to be devoured (our bodies and labor used up in the service of inequality) and then devalues that sacrifice. Every day, all over the world, women get up and go about their business of making sure that everyone around them has what they need, providing the structure for our daily existence while simultaneously dealing with our collective colossal ingratitude.
I say nurturer and not mother. I don't think you need to give birth or be a mother to be a powerful woman. But I do think our radical power arises from our bodies and our ownership of it. To bear the world, be in the world with our policed, politicized and commodified bodies and to still push forward towards the future is a profoundly feminine act.
While I was at that storytelling panel for expectant parents, I had to calm Darren down and the lactation consultant pointed out that I was able to put my baby to sleep in 30 seconds by nursing him. She said that it was my superpower. Another doula clarified that it is the human body and touch that can be an amazing parenting tool, not just the breastmilk. It made me think about how powerful our bodies are, and observing the somewhat skeptical faces of those expectant parents, how much we've been taught to discount it.
We live in a society in which value is measured by status signifiers. What job you have. What education degrees. What you possess. All serving to keep us inside the patriarchal hierarchy, clinging to whatever rung our birth landed us on, ensuring all our work goes to maintaining the ladder at all costs. Work off this ladder doesn't even count. This is why we can feel so deflated when we are not making big, recognizable movements/creating a marketable, monetize-able life path or brand.
There is nothing wrong with straightforward career paths or accomplishments, but we miss out if we don't recognize and honor the invisible labor too. I'm holding my sleeping infant in my lap as I write. The holding and the writing are equally important.
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