Womanhood, Societal Expectations and Performativity: A Call to Let Women Be

The How I See Myself and How Others See Me project seeks to explore a number of implicit and explicit realities for those who identify as women, or those who have been socialised into girlhood and womanhood. I wanted find out who and how are we on the quest for self in a world that brutalises us simply for being. Black, beautiful, trans, gay, straight, bi, pan, fat, slim, poor, rich, loud, proud, quiet and shy all seem to be (only a few) prerequisites for gender based violence and harm. What does it mean to be a woman in a world where we are treated like a minority, despite being about 50% of the global population?

Though humanity stems and blooms from wombs and womanhood (not synonymous), women still fight for power and control over our own existence in a world governed by misogyny. We are told by misogyny-controlled society, media, marketing, and even family and friends what it means to be, and look like, a good woman. All over the world, women bleach their skin to cater to spoken and unspoken preferences of lightness and whiteness. All over the world, an estimated 736 million women are subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their lives. And we know reports are lower than is honest too. Evidence shows that violence against women disproportionately affects women in poorer countries and regions. All over the world, we have problems. And a problem for one or some, is a problem for all of us because it represents the systemic devaluing and erosion of womanhood.

Empowered largely by the theories, ideas and words of Jean-Paul, Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde and Angela Davis, I wonder to what extent our social identities were constructed in response to societal demands. Especially for those of us who straddle a few marginalised groups like Black women, trans women or working class women. I say social identity because who we look like isn’t always who we really are. And it often depends on exactly who is looking at us too. Who we are is defined by a combination of self-perception and the other’s beliefs, desires, prejudices and expectations. Identity as a concept is a murky, messy and responsive science mixed with layers of body, memory, objects, senses, the other and the world around us. As Merleau-Ponty puts it in Phenomenology of Perception:

“When I turn towards perception, and pass from direct perception to thinking about that perception, I reenact it, and find at work in my organs of perception a thinking older than myself of which those organs are merely the trace. In the same way I understand the existence of other people. Here again I have only the trace of a consciousness which evades me in its actuality and, when my gaze meets another gaze, I re-enact the alien existence in a sort of reflection.”

It is this reenactment and reflection I look to explore to unpick our ideas of who we are, say we are, want to be and/or feel we have to be in world that doesn’t often truly see us. Toni Morrison, when recollecting Harriet Tubman’s story in her Women, Race and Memory lecture said:

“How can a woman be viewed and respected as a human being without becoming a male-like or male-dominated citizen?”

For me, it’s the way she forces us to reckon with the idea of manhood, maleness and masculinity (not synonymous) as the standard of human. Though Morrison said this in 1989, it feels pertinent now. Like time and progress has largely frozen when it comes to sexism. We’re still wondering how to make womanhood and femininity (again, not synonymous) respected, not dismissed or infantilised. 

She continued to, when talking about reproductive justice, say: “Rigorous intellect, commonly thought of as a male preserve, has never been confined to men—but it has always been regarded as a masculine trait. Relinquishing reproductive control to God is, in fact, relinquishing it to men.”

Society links power, confidence and intelligence with men and sensitivity, care and devotion to women. This is hard to understand, because time and time again evidence shows the balance of these characteristics is largely dependant on personality. Of course influenced by socialisation and expectation, but many people who identity as women are intelligent, confident and powerful too. We must separate these qualities from masculinity and allow people of all genders to simply be. Maybe we should rethink not only the concepts of masculinity and femininity, but our associations with the values of both. I focus on women, due to my lived experience as a woman of colour. But we know that gendered expectations affect men too. bell hooks (who we will return to later) beautifully writes:

“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”

Society relies heavily on dismantling the emotional capabilities of men and devaluing ‘emotional’ beings aka women. Creating an unequal yin and yang of compassion (yin and feminine) and confrontation (yang and masculine). Unlike the ancient Chinese philosophy though, society doesn’t place equal power on both. I struggle to understand the sexist philosophies that separate emotion from logic or rationality. Emotion is so uniquely human, it is hard to imagine a logical world without it. It is what separates us from other animals after all. How are we supposed to reason or argue without feeling? We are not maths. So the idea that being unemotional could be superior to being emotional is difficult to understand. In fact, I feel it is only ever said to maintain and further patriarchy. And the louder women get, the more ‘they’ need something to push back with. No matter how ridiculous.

Gender rules slow down societal progress but strongly benefit a capitalist, sexist and loveless culture. One that devalues women, stymies our strength and hates it too. It’s perhaps why I chose the line “I am not your strong woman” to start my poem. Because a strong Black woman is never woman enough for society. And I am a woman. Audre Lorde wrote A Woman Speaks in 1984. It is a poem of affirmations, lamentations, musings and declarations about what it meant to be a Black woman in America at the time. She celebrates the power of Black women and Black womens’ voices and explores how women of colour are seen as too strong, but are also underrepresented and underestimated. What a dichotomy. In the third stanza,

“I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the moon’s new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.”

Lorde beautifully addresses her power while also addressing the abandonment by the white feminist movement and a country that envisions a future and rewrites a history without marginalised voices. I appreciate this poem so much for how Lorde positions black womaninity as magic without dehumanising us. And I I hope How I See Myself and How Others See Me does that in some way too. 

This ethnographic project is one small way of holding and nurturing our power. Using our voices, faces and stories to tell everyone exactly who we are. This project highlighted just how many of us wear literal and figurative costumes to look the part of daughter, mother, grandmother, sister, professional, creative, religious, quiet, subservient, matriarch, friend, shoulder to cry on, advice giver and energy lifter. It is truly an anthropologically feminist exercise that explores what it means to be an individual woman yes, but also explores the ways in which our stories are united by gendered expectations. I wanted to discover what it means to be a woman when we are socialised so explicitly into what, who and how to be. I realise due to the multiplicity of our experiences that there is no one answer. There is instead a woven tapestry of fabrics and patterns made up of each of our lives.

It’s funny because of lot of my personal time while doing this project has been spent reading non-fiction. I am typically a fiction reader, but I felt there was a lot about the world that some of the fiction wasn’t teaching me. I have spent the last few weeks reading bell hooks’ All About Love. A book of hers I’d never read before, probably because I couldn’t associate love with my brand of feminism very well. So I’m thinking a lot about my attitude to, and relationship with, love. Positioning it alongside my anger, sorrow and confusion about society. In this book, after sharing her favourite definition of love (oddly hard to wholly describe I learnt) she writes:

“Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love…When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist.” 

Love and abuse cannot coexist. Women of all backgrounds, but particularly from marginalised groups face systemic abuse from society, family, romantic partners, the media and the police too. These systems (often built off of patriarchy) cannot love us. So many of us teach ourselves how to love by finding our voices, freedoms and community. This project is an act of love, self-love, resistance and disruption. For that, I am proud.

REFERENCES/ TO READ:
https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures

The Black Unicorn, Audre Lorde
https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-black-unicorn-9780241396865/9780241396865

All About Love, bell hooks
https://www.waterstones.com/book/all-about-love/bell-hooks/9780060959470

Women, Race and Class, Angela Davis
https://www.newbeaconbooks.com/african-american-non-fiction/women-race-and-class

Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre (1943)

Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon (1952)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception, English 1962

ALL TONI MORRISON <3