Things that go *ping*

I had a glorious *ping* earlier, which goes a long way to sorting out the trouble I have had talking about gender recently. (In brief: talking to essentialists ends up with me crying, sooner or later, which is such a feminine response that it makes me think they're right, and leaves me feeling a lot worse than I did in the first place. I'll come back to it later.)

I was reading a book called 'Faith' by an American Buddhist author called Sharon Salzberg. It's very useful, actually, good-spirited and non-judgemental, but is only tangentially related to the point of this post. Early on she quotes somebody who cites Aeneas as an archetype of faith: going out into the unknown, not knowing what the next step is but taking it anyway. This is an image that is very relevant to me; I have been finding the lead-kindly-light (one-step-enough-for-me) lighthouse metaphor extremely helpful in dealing with the depression, and so general befuddled sea voyages are also helpful. To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.

Last month I was reading a book called 'Dido', by Adèle Geras, which didn't do much for me. It was a retelling of the Dido and Aeneas legend, which has never really done much for me either. I am a great fan of Dido while she is mucking around with oxhides building Carthage, but as soon as she starts mooning around after Aeneas - meh. We did not see much of Aeneas in 'Dido', and what we did see wasn't pleasant. Fair enough.

But I'd forgotten that I was allowed to identify with Aeneas. I'd forgotten that I, too, am allowed to strive, seek, find and not to yield. I'd forgotten that I'm allowed male role models. (freddiefraggles did an excellent post on this theme some time ago.) I suppose it was more difficult with 'Dido', which was a very woman-centred narrative (which would be an excellent thing, if only the author didn't let Aeneas screw it all up). However, I used to have no problem whatsoever identifying with Roland, from the Song of that name. Not that he is a role model. He is stubborn, he never asks for help until the very last minute when it is Too Late, he worries far too much about what other people will think of him, and he is very bad at listening to his best friend's sensible advice. Male traits, those, or female ones? I don't know, but I have every single one of them.

Recently, Roland has been missing, and I'm not sure that there's anyone else filling the gap. Which is a bad thing, because for all that the Roland-traits I mentioned above are not positive, there are good Roland-traits that I've been missing. Courage, persistence, confidence, that sort of thing. Male or female? I don't know, but I want them back, because without them I'm firing on only two cylinders.

In the essentialist camp, there is a narrative that goes like this: women are motherly and caring, and if they want to get anywhere in a man's world they have to act against their true nature. That if you see a woman who has got to 'the top' she has had to suppress something in herself to get there.

Despite the fact that I am not the kind of person who is ever likely to make Chief Executive, that attitude hurts a hell of a lot. If you tell me that the woman who has made Chief Executive has only done that because she has 'affected' traditional 'male' behaviour, it feels like a direct attack on me. If you tell me that I cannot have traits that are a valuable, integral part of my personality, because they are 'male' traits, and if I am damnfool enough to believe you (which I regret to say I almost have been) I am not going to continue to function for long.

This ties in with a recent My Experience Is Real And So Is Yours *ping*. You have no right to tell me that my experiences are not true (because, in this case, I'm a woman and only men can have these experiences), because they are. And the reason that I have started to run away from this debate is that too many people have told me this. Not directly, but 'women do this', and 'men do this', and 'women think like this', and 'men think like this'. And then I point out the implication, remind them that 'separate but equal' never ended well - and they say 'But who's saying that?' And my God, I'm still smarting from that one. And actually I think that running away to cry, while it may not be the optimal response to this, is not half as neurotic a one as I thought it was.

It also ties in with the Things That Work *ping*, which I keep meaning to post about. But I suspect that it will all turn out to be part of the same thing sooner or later. Many things have been going *ping* this year, and most of them are tied in with most of the rest of them.