We should all be feminists

 

– Are you I worried that men would be intimidated by you?

– It is exactly the man I would have no interest.

I feel you. I have been there thousands of times, and precisely asked that question. My intelligent feminist side sometimes can’t help falling for the basic cultural instinct of perceiving my purpose in life as finding a man, getting married and laboring children. And I have noticed that in the country I leave, the way my brain works and my personality (sometimes marked by «masculine» adjectives such as rational, harsh or direct) might be an obstacle for that goal.

This is why I smiled so sincerely listening to the answer Chimamanda Ngozi gave to her friend, because even though I had never phrased it like that, her answer is so right for me as well! It makes no sense to polish my girly-personality in order to pretend to be someone I am not. That would never ever last. Maybe I am the one cherry picking here. And it might take me some time to find the right guy for me. For sure he must be smart, not intimidated by the true-me at all and have a couple more aesthetic attributes on my wish-list 🙂

The Argonauts

To devote yourself to someone else’s pussy can be a means of devoting yourself to your own. But whatever sameness I’ve noted in my relationships with women is not the sameness of Woman, and certainly not the sameness of parts. Rather, it is the shared, crushing understanding of whatever it means to live in patriarchy.

The Argonauts, Maggie NELSON

From Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf.

Even though I consider myself an open-minded person, Maggie’s book has shaken my structured brain. It was terribly confusing at first. I may justify it with the fact that I chose to read it in its original language, and that I am used to Spanish’ gendered nouns and adjectives. You have to add up my ignorance about the writer and her story, and you get as a result that I was totally perplexed by the presentation of the characters, and it took me more pages than I would like to admit to realize what kind of relationship Maggie and Harry had. Then I felt ashamed for my own surprise, and for letting my subconscious set the grounds of normality on behalf of myself, like I couldn’t think beyond the «normal» type of relationship unless I am specifically told about it.

After going back to read some pages again, which now finally made sense, I was totally committed to the story and the cause. I did not feel guilty anymore by my initial reaction, but like someone that still has a lot to live and comprehend about life. In the Greek mythology, the Argonauts were heroes sent in a dangerous and impossible mission of finding the Golden Fleece who, despite all the obstacles, rise victorious thanks to the support of unexpected allies. Not only some of the romantic passages were eye-opening for me, but also the ones about motherhood and purpose fulfillment. I had never empathized with life stages in this way before, and just the courage that implies exposing both her mundane and complex situations makes her deserve the title of Argonaut.