Our own prisons?

Sunday, November 28, 2010
11:34pm

I've spent my day, intermittently, reading Foucault, articles about Gone with the Wind and The Awakening and about feminism in general. The last article I read has left my mind busy, so I will relieve it some here.

It talked about the woman-angel and the woman-monster. The woman-monster was a monster because she was free, creative, and assumed agency in her own life. The woman-angel was an angel because she fulfilled the male-created notions of feminity. But not only did the woman-angel fulfill these notions, she internalized them so hard that she came to think she'd created and chosen them for herself. Thus, she became her own prison.

That disturbs me a little bit. I've always been as much of a free thinker as possible. My mind's always been my most prized possession, because that's what I can think and understand with, and I want no changes or alterations made to it without my consent. For example, when I had my wisdom teeth removed in high school, I was upset to tears about being forced into medically-induced unconsciousness. I cared very little, however, about having someone cut into my jaw. So anyway... I like to be the boss of my mind. This article makes me wonder how much that is possible. How much have I become that which was external, perhaps even rejectable, to me at one point?

I'm from a very conservative, old-fashioned little town. Of all my relatives, none are divorced. None are queer. None cross any non-normative lines of any sort, unless I fail to remember something glaring. (This is not, by the way a criticism, only a pondering.) The men have all worked labor jobs involving something mechanical. The women have all worked desk jobs. Yard work has been the responsibility of the men, save for one aunt when her husband lost his sight, and the housework has always been the responsibility of the women.

I frankly cannot imagine another way of being in my family. I cannot imagine doing something even remotely radical, like having a classically "masculine" job or just living singly and still being part of the group. It hasn't really dawned on me until very recently, but come to think of it... it's rather bizarre.

At Thanksgiving, my cousin, wanting to gain her mother's permission for a facial piercing, appealed to me. "Casie, you're the rebel, what do you think?" Seriously? I'm the family rebel? Perhaps a little, but it's not as if I'm over here cross dressing or... maybe it's the affront to religiosity? I don't think I've affronted anything, taken a turn, maybe. It's just interesting to me, how little we really do deviate from the paths laid in front of us. We can't think beyond certain known options, and so by selecting among the knowns, we think we've "chosen." But how free are we really? I could go into the whole freewill argument right now, but I'm mostly interested in how external rule systems become internalized, how we can become our own prisons and how best to avoid that. Of all the things I hope I never do, it's to put bars around myself, because I would be that crazy bird that beats herself to death off the cage in an attempt to fly away.