My mother suffered terrible trauma and abuse growing up and throughout her life. She told me stories of how she woke at dawn to feed the horses and all those sorts of things, how her father called her âjoeâ because he wanted a boy, and she would strive to meet his approval.
She abused me my whole life, and up until my mid teens I was always one of those âIm not a feminist!â Types, I proclaimed a distrust of women, I was âone of the guysâ. It took so long to unravel that, but I did, and when I tried to introduce her to feminism with Miss Representation which is probably the tamest feminist documentary in existence, the result was a massive blow out that I should have seen coming. We didnât finish it, she constantly bemoaned Geena Davis for being âsuch a feminist!â and I lost my patience and called her out. I was hoping that a documentary about common struggles of girls due to patriarchy, like self harm, depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, anxiety, sexual assault.. because I had grown up and experienced all these things I thought she would... feel... something? She knew about all of it, I thought it would be relatable enough for her to be receptive.
Nope. The internalised misogyny was too great.
She spent my entire life invalidating my pain, refusing to acknowledge it, gaslighting me. Ignoring it completely. Ive no idea how a person can point their eyes at you and not see.
I spent so many tumultuous years trying to force her to âseeâ me, to speak me into existence, to make me real by acknowledging my pain, increasingly unstable and desperate. I stood in front of her and cut my arms open, I smeared my blood on the walls, I screamed for her to see what she would not see. Itâs safe to say that I never would have reached that point had she not driven me to such lengths, where I did whatever I needed to do to avoid dissociating. She actually made me crazy by making me feel crazy, invisible, nonexistent.
Some people are too far gone, and girls are abused by even âgoodâ parents by most standards. Parents who arenât obviously abusive, but who abuse secretly, invisibly, their female children, because theyâre female. Theyâre trained to invalidate their daughters, theyâre taught that womenâs pain does not exist. They will look right at a thing and not see it. Like that bit in Stardust, that spell. âSeek all you like. You shall not see the star, touch it, smell, or hear it. You will not perceive her even if she stands before you.â
I think this is something not spoken about enough in the public discourse. We teach women to be the soldiers for patriarchy, to do menâs work for them. Mothers being complicit is essential for the cycle to continue. We have to disrupt it.
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