burra maluca, That is interesting about the women not looking cleverer than the men.
I went to yoga classes which seemed to lead to a life time of being questioned about my actions like of sudenly being called pusilamanous for not standing up to men and to being told that i was mentally were the chinese women in the past were whose feet were bound were phisically, with my feet broken, because i did not tell men were to get off on the occasions in which doing so would have been a good idea. If you are called a coward for letting the men do all the informing or give all the opinions, then the idea that it keeps the peace and so is somehow good, loses some of its persuasiveness. In my case it was not so much that i thought it was good to keep the peace it was that i was waiting or a better moment to break it. There is never a good moment to raise up a storm, you just have to do it but i did not know that.
Another reason, apart from braveness for everyone talking, women too, is that everyone in a reduced group is likely to know different things the womans family can be very different from her husbands and that gives her different abilities and bits of knowledge that would round off the children say, and it could also be that the woman is a better student and so knows more, so if you were king say, of a country, the fact that half the population just renounced teaching what they knew or fighting for their ideals, when you wanted a population who could compete with any other in brilliance, would be very bothersome and frustrating, you want your population educated and half of the population have shut their mouths to keep the other half happy, really frustrating! A person of that worth gets cross if women are not talking and says they are not pulling their weight and that is a good arguement. I had that accusation turned on me, i was asked why was not i taking my place as a active teacher.
The truth is i had not noticed i did not talk of all of all i knew, of the seriouse things i knew, i just thought i had to wait for the right moment, that the day would come when constance and love had given men confidence, and they would share with me, in the sense that they would share a place in the tribune and let me in on the conversation. They did some of them, let me in on it if I talked of frivolouse things, which made identifying the problem harder, it was not as if i never talked. Another thing that made it hard to see what was happening is that men were not like this when i was a child i thought it was a hard patch not a reality that would accompany me to the end of my days. That the behavior of men changes to adult women makes it hard for women to understand the situation they are to fill, that is why Gloria Steinem says that it is old women not students who will march for the freedon of women.
Some peopel consider it a cop eout if you accuse others of shutting you mouht or say you could noht have foorseen the situation . HTtey are crazy if it was not easy to hold others down with tricks how come women have stayed in the shadows for so long and such an enormouse majority of poor have been always kept down.
It iswas my idea that some people dont want to let you talk because they see not place for themselves in coversations if there are to many conversers and it is my experience that all peole do contribute usefull things if they are given a chance at one moment or another and so it is just lack of experience that make some people fight to cut a lot of others out of the conversation. This iidea tha tit was lack of confidence that made men try to me out and that patients and love would change the situation. My reading of the situation was so wrong, they did not lack confidence. the day when they would have the confidence to let me talk would never come, they were not playing friendly relationships with me, they were playing my role is to take the reins and keep them, and that means holding you down and keeping you down, to borrow a phrase from mark childress?s novel the nove,l' Crazy in Alabama'.
Men and some women too, played tricks on me like looking sadly at me when they saw i was about to cap their argument, so i would stop what i was saying to in order to save them from looking silly, the normal tricks you play with t4eachers at schoool, like interupting you or changing the subject. They would accuse me of interrupting them when they were busy, if i spoke to them, they are always busy if a woman talks. Yawning if I insisted in talking so I felt scared of boring them. Insulting me, that makes me give up what i am saying to lick my wounds, mental wounds. Shouting, so that I will not dare to make a fool of yourself by shouting back and there is no way to continue iif you dont shout, if they shout the noise drowns you out. Getting physically violent is another ploy. In the end i learnt to shout like a mad woman even in the middle of the street so they could not play the trick of raising their voicies on me any more. Calling you a school marm if you get seriouse or a bore, and then a few years after they have shut your mouth forever crowing over your frivolousness because you never say anything seriouse. I think some women talk rubbish because they think its elegant i dont remember women being so given to not addressing seriouse hypothetical problems problems at school, so i can only think they have a strange reason for getting as frivolouse as many seem to get with time.
In order to reduce my credit and so have me more powerless my husband even always puts a sarcastic expression on his face if i talked of anything more serious than the roast, about the news or
politics atomic energy and such. It may be that no one will look his way and notice but every so often the children are bound to look his way and see that what i say makes him look very scornfull. That does not shut my mouth but it means the children despise my opinion too much to ask it. When i have told anyone of that trick of his they never seem to believe me, he mostly looks goodish and slowish, people dont believe he is up to anything tricks though if you want to believe he is slwish and
goofy just play
cards with him he remebers everythign and always wins. He also always acts as if he does not understand me, that is a wicked trick, in the end it made me feel as if words did not work and lack of confidence makes you express yourself worse and worse. He also used ordinary collecting ever silly remark i made and his forgetfullness about cleverer ones to do me down and so reduce the strength of any friendships i had and he started all these tricks from nearly day one when i was splitting my self to make the reationsh¡p work.
People talk as if it was the fault of the weak that they stayed down it seems to me that the weak dont simply lack the get up and go to try to work, or the head to study, they have to do something harder which is to break through the bondaries the strong put to stop them getting anywhere. The strong put into place a lot of very effective series of impediments to their bettering themselves, like not educating them and putting them to work so hard that they don't have time to educate themselves keeping them so short of money they canrtt get anywhere unless they are geniuses and later if they talk to them using such eradite vocabulary that people without a specialised education will never understand the concepts they are talking of because though clever
enough to understand the concepts they can't understand the vocabulary, which lack of comprhension is used as evidence of the fitness of a situation that benefits the strong evidence of the superiority of the strong. and when i married hi ¡m i thought that as he seemed quiet shy, and i thought knocked around by his elder brother i might have more of a chance that he would try to relate than i would with someone smarter.
It is a master servant thing, if you can be shut up, no one will know if you have a sensible idea in your head or not then they will be able to say, "i am boss because i know more", and it will seem to be true and if your role is to take the reins of the situation getting the support is a help and this claim to be more efficient has always been a manener of establishing the bosses right to his position.
In a worker, servant, situation you are paid for you humiliating position which makes it acceptable, also you go home to a family at night were you will hopefully be able to talk. Also in a worker boss situation you are aware of the situation and dont try to be loving and to establish verbal comunication with your boss, nor do you try to share the desision making with him, so you dont set up humiliations for your self trying the impossible. In a man woman situation, the woman is told she is to work for a good relationship and there is no hint tha tthe dice are weighted against her as the man considers her below him the films and books and neighbors pretend that this is a sharing position, this means a verbal one having vberbal confidence with the other trying to strike up conversation and so the woman tries all her life to give time to a creature who is trying to be aloof so as to hold the reins. Marriage is a cruel institution, so
ego satifying for one to have someone who pretends at least, to seek their company and so humiliating for the other always reaching out to be always rebufed.
Of course, if women give up sayign what they know the men have acheived their goal of taking the reins of the family if you stop talking though there will be nothing to show the competence of the women any more, so you will have peace you are no longer a threat to the males role of taking the reins in which are bound his whole masculine identy if he fails to take up the r4eins he is going to look weak and incompetent but it means you are not fighting for your daughters and will be leaving them in a very painful position, not being allowed to have an opinion in the end means that the men will take all decisions of any importance, that may be, in the worse cases, decisions about your children, averse ones maybe about which you can do nothing. and painfull in old fashioned language means tha twill make you very unhappy for a long time it makes you unhappy to see your children take paths that seem bad to you. You can't suddenly gain power you relinquished years ago, if you are known to be ignorant no one will back up your decisions, if you wish for an action that your husband disagrees with the group is important, if everyone says of course your husband is right he is much more competent than you, you will be on your own if you try to face him down. THtat hey should take a decision you consider harmful in a situation that involves those you love is very painful wil make you feel unhappy for a long time they also chose the friends you have and that is something wi¡hich brings a lot of lonlyness and unhappiness, the women in Portugal should fight to change this situation for their daughters.
Even men accept not always being the totaL boss among other men for example, they wont die if they lose a bit of position and things will be so much better for women and for men maybe when women are a little less crushed by what was meant to be a lovign relationsh¡ip and so happier.
Lots of people suddenly start to talk as if things that happen in the family must be all right, as if humanity is all good, when they talk of families, as if nothing very bad could happen in the family, while they are perfectly inclined to admit things can go very wrong in other situations. This makes it hard to complain about anything that happens in the family. agri rose macaskie.
1
