My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 4, #7, August 17, 1998

A REACTION-ARY

A long while back, when I was teaching freshman English, my students would sometimes whine, "But what am I supposed to write about?" I suggested they expose themselves to unfamiliar ideas by reading the kinds of magazines that seemed designed for somebody else. The guys could read Seventeen and Ladies' Home Journal and such, the women might read Esquire and the like, and all of them could read political magazines with unfamiliar viewpoints. I told them to pay attention to their reactions, and then try to figure out why they reacted that way. What did their anger or enthusiasm tell them about themselves?

Because I always pay attention to my reactions, these are some of the thing I have come to know about myself:

I am a feminist, but I very much dislike a kind of reverse sexism, a celebration of the "female principle," that has been one of feminism's many offshoots. I don't deal well with performers and writers and singers who insist on their femaleness as the totality of who they are. I cringed when I read about a woman who does her poetry readings nude, pulling the poems out of herself as if she is physically giving birth to them.

I think the reason I find this annoying is that, sure, "I am woman," (and there are probably those who think I roar), but so what? I am also mother, librarian, writer, daughter of a city planner, and a person who has spent her life among academics, all things that affect my view of the world every bit as much as my femaleness. But even if ALL my experiences resulted from being born female, our experiences do not interest me anywhere near as much as what we think or do about them. And the way we make sense of our lives, I think, is not masculine, not feminine, but human.

Another thing I react to poorly is lowest-common-denominator female conversation. Women who don't know each other well always begin by talking about what they have in common, like children and relationships. Now, I'm perfectly capable of schmoozing about motherhood, and passing on helpful hints (try color-coordinating your baby's clothes with what he's going to eat that day--my son had beet shirts, carrot shirts, and green bean shirts). But I get uneasy when women I don't know well tell me private things about their husbands--their ailments, annoying personal quirks, and worst of all, their style of sex play.

I think most men would be astonished and angry if they knew how much their wives' friends know about them. For me, marriage is a private place where people strip bare not only their bodies but their psyches. We only do this when we trust each other not to betray confidences. Violating that trust is something you should only do with the closest of friends when you are in need of help or advice.

I'm with Dante on this one--for me, the deepest circle of hell, the very center of the pit, is reserved for those who betray trust.

Another reason that bothers me is that I am always uncomfortable with intruding, unasked, on anyone's privacy. It irks me when reporters and interviewers ask victims and survivors thrust into the media spotlight how they FEEL about what happened to them (especially when the reporters don't want to listen because they already know what answer they want--"Do you feel closure?"). I keep waiting for these hapless people to say, "That's none of your business."

To me, "How do you feel" is not a helpful question, unless the person asking it is someone you'd want to share your answers with--a good friend, a marriage counselor, a psychologist, someone who can DO something with your answers, help you deal with your pain. Otherwise, that question seems to me the rankest emotional voyeurism.

If instead they asked people what they THINK about what's happened to them, it would not be such a fierce intrusion. Indeed, the question could even be useful, because it invites people to analyze instead of wallow, to distance themselves from their trauma and consider how it happened, why it happened, and what to do about it.

You know, we all have beliefs and assumptions about the world which color everything we see and everything that happens to us. And yet because we absorb them as children, those beliefs are so deeply buried that we hardly know what they are. Those moments that provoke us to say "Yess!!" or That's preposterous!" or "That makes me mad," offer us unexpected pathways inside our hearts and minds where we can find those buried values and bring them into the open. Treat them as clues for the oldest and best detective story of all--know thyself. Pay attention.