roadsidelions:

“Anyways I keep thinking I’m over wanting that approval and sometimes I feel hopeful but it’s late and attachment is so complicated. This is also the story of my privilege, Adrienne Rich talks about the same thing when she says, “we have liked to think of ourselves as special, and we have known that men would tolerate, even romanticize us as special”. There may be ways in, there are sometimes ways in, they are unacceptable and I use them all the time and when I don’t I resent my marginalization.

I am continually tempted to compromise myself in ways that would be fulfilling and intolerable, sometimes I know it and I do it anyways, sometimes I don’t, sometimes I don’t realize but I do it all the same, and that says so much about what I value, and that says so much about the power I wield and the ways that I’m lucky and humiliating.”

This very very excellent post by hysteriama on male approval. Have been thinking all night about the link between male approval and feminist oversharing and the public vs private. Is there a difference between oversharing for male approval and feminist oversharing? Does it matter etc. And what does it mean when I go through long periods of feeling intensely, stubbornly private about everything?

And, tangentially, something about bridge burning - sometimes my signature move. It seems related somehow to privacy/male approval in a way I haven’t figured out yet. The tendency I have to revoke intimacy/access to information/permission etc.

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8. golden-notebook said: the public/private dichotomy and patriarchy is painful because i am complicit when i internally think someone is “oversharing”„ there’s a historical parallel with victorians and how women writers were seen as “prostitutes” for “showing” themselves
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10. kathleenjoy said: oh god oh yes bridge burning and male approval yes yes that is what I do. “You can no longer have any part of my life. I will cross the street if I see you.”
11. roadsidelions posted this