S.M. Carrière . com
Connect:
  • Home
  • About
  • Titles
    • Daughters Of Britain
    • Dear Father
    • Ethan Cadfael: The Battle Prince
    • Human
    • Skylark
    • The Dying God & Other Stories
    • The Seraphimè Saga >
      • The Summer Bird (v.1)
      • The Winter Wolf (v.2)
    • Your Very Own Adventures >
      • Skara Braens
      • Sky Road Walker
    • WIP Updates
  • Art
  • Other Projects
    • Editing Services
    • Charity Efforts >
      • Gàrradh nan Leannan
      • Have a Heart Campaign
    • Journal
    • Martial Arts
    • Silver Stag Entertainment
    • The Adventures of Grimglum the Nord
    • SMC Awkwardly Plays
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Art Prints
  • Contact

Fighting the Feminine

10/8/2015

0 Comments

 
Good morning, Readers!
Picture
Image courtesy of united-academics.org. Click for link.
Many, many thanks for all your support and thoughtful comments regarding my last post.  I haven't come to a decision yet, but I am leaning heavily towards keeping things as they are.... mostly because changing branding would be quite a costly operation, and I'm poor.

There was on wee sentence of one comment that caught my attention, largely because it struck a chord with me.  That sentence was this:
I really dislike being dubbed 'female' because it does bring forth those negative stereotypes that you are somewhat battling against.
I've written about this before, but I think it bears a lot of repeating.

I used to hate being a girl.  A lot.  So, so much.  I despised it with every fibre of my being.

It wasn't that I identified more with the boys or that I felt I was a boy.  That's not it at all.  I was a girl.  I knew I was a girl.  There was absolutely no confusion as to my gender.

I just really hated being a girl.

Why?  Well, girls were presented in a very negative light to me when I was growing up.  Girls were weak, they were dumb, they couldn't play sports, they couldn't do maths, or science.  They weren't capable of forming any valid opinions.  Any opinions they did manage to form were to be immediately disregarded as inferior.  Hell, they were not even valid confessors to our own experiences.

Don't believe what a girl says.  Why not?  Because she's a girl, dummy!

In fact, I quickly learnt that a girl's only worth lay in her appearance and her ability to attract attention from the opposite sex.  Those girls who happened to break the mould and actually be clever were automatically presented as repulsive at worst.  At best, they were invisible, an ostracised little duckling clutching her books to her flat chest and pining after the jock.  I mention flat chests because girls with a little more up front were immediately regarded as being brainless.

I have personal experience with this.  I was constantly treated as an idiot by strangers because I happened to have rather large breasts for my age.  For the record, I hated those too.

The fact that I was a girl meant that I couldn't enthusiastically share my love of science fiction and fantasy, because girls didn't read that stuff, and most of my female classmates - if they read at all - bought into that narrative.  The fact that I was a girl meant that I had no one the chat with about how awesome video games were, because girls weren't supposed to like that stuff, and most everyone I know bought into that narrative.  Girls weren't supposed to like swords, or play fighting, or action movies.

In fact, because I was a girl, when my mother told a director (who had come to our little amateur theatre group to help us stage a production of Oliver) that I was a writer, he turned to look at me and said, "Oh? Romance?"  I was so insulted.  I'm fairly certain my expression screamed insulted disdain (mostly because my mother quietly admonished me for it) and I flatly replied, "Fantasy."

Because I was a girl, the automatic assumption was that I wrote romance, when in fact, speculative fiction was where it was at for me (and still is).  Again, I was a girl, and therefore not really meant to be into speculative fiction.

I adored all of these things, but I felt wasn't allowed to publicly do so.  Because I was a girl.

And I hated it.

It led to a very aggressive rejection of everything feminine.  I threw everything associated with the feminine out of my life.  No dresses.  No make up.  No boys.  NO PINK!  The feminine came to mean all the things I was told it was - weak, silly, untrustworthy, vapid.  And because I wasn't these things, I decided that female though I was, I was not feminine.

It has taken a long, long time and a good deal of self-reflection and deep, personal work to bring myself around.  It has also taken a fair few really wonderful role models.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I am realising that the feminine isn't the evil we've been led to believe.
Picture
Feminine isn't weak.  It is strong.  It has power.
Picture
It isn't vapid or stupid.  It is intelligent.  It is clever.
Picture
It doesn't hate swords, or play fighting.
Picture
And it is possible to be the whole package.

A few years ago, I started wearing skirts and dresses.  I experimented a bit with make up... but only a bit.  I'm still not all that fond of the stuff, and I know only the basics.  I let a large part of myself I kept hidden from the world out, a small piece at a time.  I had closed it away because I thought it was everything I hated; everything I didn't want to be.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to realise that there is absolutely no shame in being feminine, or embracing the feminine side of yourself.  Because feminine is not weak.  It is strong.  It has power.  It is not foolish, or vapid, or idiotic.  Being feminine does not mean being lesser, no matter how hard current society is trying to scream otherwise.

And don't be fooled.  Society is still screaming this bullshit:
Picture
Picture
Picture
It's a work in process for me.  There are deep-seated prejudices that I had spent so much time buying into I have to work hard to drag my thinking out of it when I'm confronted with them (the colour pink, for example).  These are prejudices that a whole whack of people buy into, whether consciously or not; which is why I feel feminism is so needed and why I identify as a feminist.

There is no shame in skirts and dresses, or in in make up, or jewellery.  Feminine is not weak.

So be careful about making assumptions about that girl wearing that dress.  The dress isn't the whole story.  She might just be able to kick your arse; because femininity isn't weak, or vapid.  It's high time we stop treating it as such.

Now I'm off to kick arse in another language.

Ciao!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    S.M. Carrière, a Celtic Studies enthusiast, writes fiction.  And this blog.

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    Book Reviews
    Events
    Gaming
    Human
    Life
    Rants
    Reading
    Seraphimè Saga
    Seraphimè Saga
    Skylark
    Television
    Training
    Travels
    Writing
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly