Years ago I was being evaluated by a psychologist and he commented that I had a certain hostility towards men.
I said, "Of course I do. All women do."
He looked very serious and shook his head back and forth in that "I think you're crazy" way.
Wonderful, thoughtful well written piece. Thank you!
Must add that I am frequently troubled by how other women reinforce these challenges in everything from language to disbelief regarding victims of sexual harassment. I hear the gender degrading term "bitch" frequently but rarely from men. We all have work to do.
I don’t mean to get into semantics but your implied meaning of user experience design is off. Take it from someone who is a user experience designer. The goal is not to create the same experience for all users but to use data/research to understand specific segments/user types and use that information to create tailored experiences.
power concedes nothing without force
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"how writers need experiences to write about, but women are kept from or judged for having them, or their experience is diminished, disbelieved, denied. (The opposite of being experienced, of course, is being innocent, and pure, and having no authority and nothing of importance to say.)"
Yes yes yes! More articles like this please.
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How wonderfully you write, Carina. Muchas gracias! We look forward to more columns from you in the future.
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We suppress what we fear. So the question is why are men so afraid of women? I think we know the answer has more to do with men's weaknesses than women's.
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Essays like this are why we subscribe to the Times. Thank you!
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'Why do we universalize the experience of half the world and obscure, deny and control that of the other?' Excuse me for laughing. It's been almost 90 years since 1931, Ms. Chocano. It might be worth noting that in the meantime all we hear are women's harping, know-it-all voices.
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@MC Yes, you can tell that by the overwhelming majority of women in positions of power like government, business, the judiciary ... oh, wait. None of that is true. And one of the major voices we hear in the U.S. today on TV, radio and Twitter may be harping and know-it-all, but it is definitely not female.
This book has been the most important read of my life. Thank you for returning to it!
Thank you for this interesting article.
Wenn universities were founded in Europe in the Middle Ages, women were banned to atttend (with the blessing of the church) while men were allowed to get education and live their lives in public sphere which was deemed important. Law Schools allowed female students over here only since 1919.
For centuries women were confined to the life in 'protected' space, where all forms of experience - and possiblilities to acquire any - were controlled and limited by the family i.e. men - in order to protect her body and her innocence, the most valued quality as opposed to her intellect, creativity or a desire to expand her knowledge by educating herself.
No woner that many women authors in the 19th ct felt compelled to hide themselves in attics or elsewhere when writing burdened with that sence of guilt and the lack of self confidance that were part of an 'experience' of such acomplished women as Virginia Woolf. They still torment many women nowdays when they want to denounce men's wrong-doing, assaults or haressement because some still think, as Victorian men did, they are entitled to control her body.
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“The experience of being a woman merges...with the experience of limits, of denial, of negation, of living in a body on which rules and limitations and judgments are being constantly, externally imposed — a body that must watch what it says, where it goes, what it eats, what it drinks, what it wears and whom it associates with, lest it get what it asked for.“
I can not stress often or loudly enough how much evangelical Christianity is responsible for the fact that we’ve barely evolved in this regard. It was once used to normalize slavery until the country put its foot down and said, “no more” but it’s refused to do the same with Christianity’s normalization of profound sexism. Now it infects all three branches of government.
This primitive religion was used for millennia to placate and control the masses, most especially female masses. Yet in 2018, we still refuse to break its iron grip on the nation that’s literally reversing progress. I’m so tired of the political cowering to its obsessive intrusive cult of followers, even as they ramp up attacks on women, their sexual autonomy, and the LGBTQ community. The entire country pretty much stands around and accepts abominations like Kavanaugh because, “ooh, Christians are really freaked out by the 21st Century, so let’s just give in and let them go after women and gays, just as long as we get our tax cuts.” Sick.
When will this nation finally put the reality of women above sexist peddlers of Iron Age mythologies?!
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There was always a double standard for women. Men are allowed to sow their wild oats and women are suppose to stay pure.
And women who have been raped are always seen as unpure. Men have made women not as the victim, but the cause. They ask for it, they dress for it, etc, etc etc.
We need a stronger MeToo movement with men joining the ranks demanding that women are treated as the victim and the man as the perp.
Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment should be treated as the crimes they are. No man would stand for what is allowed to be done to women. Men would be demanding loudly that such things shouldn't be done to them. Yet our society overlooks, calls the women liars, downplays what is done.
It's about power and how men have it over women. And it is time in the 21st century that we bring women to full equality.
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Wow this was a good article. I wanted more. The historical detail on Woolf's writing and thinking, and the realities of her time, was so welcome for me, and so illuminating. History is, in my opinion, the solution to so much ignorance and lack of understanding, and also empathy!
Much thanks, and the argument is a gem. On a terrible news day, this article just changed my mood.
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Thank you for this excellent article, and for highlighting one of our greatest, truest writers.
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Perhaps the reason men are afraid of admitting that rape is far more common is because it means admitting to something that is truly shameful: the fact that men are most often the ones doing it to women. Innocence is one thing when it implies a lack of experience that can be gained through living and is not inherently damaging. But forced innocence, that which is the result of having to ignore a horrifying event because society will shame the victim, is not innocence. It's bewilderment, depression, and a feeling of being made unacceptable because the person who experienced the event is not believed.
Men do this to women more often than they care to admit. We're told by men that we took their remarks the wrong way, that we're too sensitive, to be one of the guys rather than spoil the party. In other words we're supposed to let ourselves be touched, be groped, be insulted, and yes, be sexually assaulted because they don't really mean it.
I wonder how many women have been introduced to sex through molestation or rape at an early age and how it affects their outlook on life, sex, intimacy, and men. I wonder further if men can appreciate how women feel about these things when they deny reality for us.
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@hen3ry
“I wonder how many women have been introduced to sex through molestation or rape at an early age and how it affects their outlook on life, sex, intimacy, and men”
Or introduced to sex by twisted religious horror stories of the wages of sin of the “harlot” (not only a prostitute but also used to describe a woman who enjoys her sexuality). I received such a twisted view of womanhood and sexuality from my fundamentalist evangelical Baptist school that I’m still recovering 40 years later.
Christianity was and still is the dominant philosophy in America that teaches female was an afterthought to the initial magical creation of male, created afterwards with a rib of male to service male. And when said female sought enlightenment from the “Tree”, she and male were punished and banned from “the garden” forever. BUT it was all the female’s fault for seeking knowledge. And even though male is “naturally” superior and must lead in all areas of life, the only area in which he can’t lead or control is his sexuality. Therefore his sexuality is solely a female responsibility. She must be punished and shamed for the sin of sexuality while you who are male can do it again and again because, it’s not your fault!
And we’re still not only allowing but enthusiastically welcoming the peddlers of this utterly sexist, anti-science fiction to control all branches of federal government and all branches of power in half of the states. No wonder this country is so sexually dysfunctional.
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The piece so extensively quotes Virginia Woolf that methinks it would have been better to simply have reprinted Woolf.
Where is Woolf when we need her?
We have come so far and yet not come any distance at all.
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