Iām thinking about writing, and werewolves, and whether or not I am capable of creating āfeministā art.
Or rather, whether or not anything I create can be āfeminist.ā
Thereās a very good post on here somewhere about why female werewolves are rare in fiction. Werewolves are everything women are not supposed to be: large, physically strong, appetitive, hairy, and nearly uncontrollable.
Iām thinking about werewolves, and Iām thinking about myself: how, when I read posts labeled āfeminism,ā I instinctively silence my responses to them, because of course, itās wrong to speak over people talking about their experiences as an oppressed group. I donāt realize until later sometimes thatāwait. I am a woman, and I should have a seat at that table.
But it still feels wrong. I am a woman, but in a different, lesser sense. Artists, poets and Tumblr bloggers talk about what it is to be a woman. What women experience. The perspective women have. The relationship women have to life, love, and their bodies. But it is all just as alien to me as it would be if they were talking about belonging to a group I donāt belong to.
āFeministā art and discussion tells me what womanhood is and is like, and Iām both a woman and not a woman at the same time, because Iāve never experienced what āwomanhoodā is supposed to be.
A lot of it is about this commonality that women are supposed to have with each other based on their gender. Male-dominated environments and the presence of men are supposed to be alienating, othering, and the presence of other women is supposed to bring this secret relief, this fundamental common understanding of one another. Women are supposed to be kind and relentlessly supportive and theyāre supposed to recognize you as having membership in this exclusive category called womanhood. Men are supposed to be, in general, threatening; women are supposed to be, in general, safe.
Iām supposed to be hyper-conscious of menās expectations of me, conforming to them because of this patriarchal pressure. Iām supposed to have grown up trying to be smaller and quieter and less ambitious because I am a woman and expected to be that way. This is supposed to have been a formative influence on the way I shaped my own identity. Iām supposed to be full of stifled anger and appetite, Iām supposed to constantly carry the weight of Female Trauma that all women share, Iām supposed to be both traumatized by being a woman and empowered by some deep sisterhood I share with other women. Iām supposed to understand the feeling of being relentlessly self-conscious and self-appraising because of the judgment of men and to feel relief from that in the presence of women.
And it makes me realize that, as an autistic person, I didnāt, and donāt, have full membership in the category of Woman in some way. The way people talk about the presence of this feeling of commonality and safety with other women makes me see its stark absence in practically every interaction I had in a female-dominated space growing up. I knew I was different. They knew I was different. I was always aware that I was missing something, that I was āother.ā I still feel that way a lot of the time.
I had a lot of male friends growing up and got along better with them, partly because they didnāt seem to have the same acute ability to detect something wrong with me. I was so obviously awkward and deficient when I was interacting with girls, and they treated me like it. The rules were different with guys, and there werenāt as many opportunities for me to demonstrate that I was some kind of freak.
The pervasive social pressure that hurt me growing up came almost exclusively from other girls. I wasnāt one of them in the way others were. Makeup and living up to a standard of āattractivenessā was a way to show I wanted to belong. Everything I ever did to try to change the way I looked and acted and dressed was to earn approval from my peers of the same gender.
Iām not trying to prove that feminism is bullshit or something. Iām saying that my experience is so different from what i hear over and over is the Experience of Women that I have started to mentally categorize myself as a not-woman every time feminism comes up.
So, what if Iām interested in a āfeministā take on werewolves? How could I write a feminist story? How can I draw on the effect my gender had on my identity formation when the fact that I was an Obviously Autistic Weirdo seemed far more important to how people saw me? I can write about the intersection of womanhood and wolfhood, but when I write about what the wolf within means, I donāt think it will come out as something that will be intelligible as a āfeministā narrative.
The werewolfās bestial form has something to say in it about how the female body is alienated from those that live in it. But I canāt say it, because my relationship with my body is...again, not shaped by the same pressures Iām told itās supposed to be. I feel alienation, and itās a totally different kind than what feminist literature talks about, and it separates me from other women all the same.
I feel like if I ever talk about what it means to be a woman, or write the kinds of female characters I feel I want to see, few people will relate to it or like it.
I donāt know. Thereās just something in my head about how āfeminist artā has to be generalizable and palatable in a certain way and the idea that thereās a certain way a story or poem can be āfeministā means certain types of women donāt really fit a āfeministā narrative.
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