#habit shift

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #29 - Let yourself age

 - practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny.

Why: Everyone knows you never ask a woman her age. It’s rude. Because beauty is everything to a woman, and so ageing just cannot be acknowledged. Women have been taught to fear ageing since childhood. So few older women in media, be it in news coverage, as journalists, or as actors. A constant glorification of youth, with teenagers and twenty-somethings in the limelights and discarded as soon as they accrue just a little too many years. The never-ending pressure of advertisement and commercial for youth serums, for anti-age creams, for any sort of treatment that will save you from wrinkles and sagging skin. Apparently, nothing is worse for a woman than to display on her face and on her body the passing of time. That fear is echoed in all our mothers and their comments, in their “beauty” routines, in their desperate chase for eternal youth. But looking old, ageing, is not simply a matter of beauty. Looking old, looking your age, is showing on your body all the experiences you have lived through, all the wisdom you have gathered. Men don’t want women to grow old, because age makes us wiser, makes us more knowledgable, make us less tolerant of misogyny. It’s infinitely more profitable for men to push us to hunt, desperately for youth. If we’re busy looking for smooth and unwrinkled skin, we are not paying attention to our own oppression. If we’re lathering cream on our cheeks, we’re not acting for change and liberation.

How: We can shift our understanding of ageing. Instead of a curse, of something to be fought against, we can welcome it as the natural fact it represent. We can learn to appreciate how our joys etch themselves in the sides of our eyes and our lips; how our laughter lives on in our crow’s feet; how we’ve outlived the worries marked on our foreheads. We can treat grey and white hair as a testament that we’ve lived and endured and prevailed; that we’ve already been here for some years. We can learn to accept that we grow older; that we are no longer girls, but have become women. We can refuse to pretend that we are afraid of that natural phenomenon. We don’t have to waste money on useless cures for something that is not an affliction. We should seek out women older than ourselves, and value them instead of despising or pitying them for not being girls anymore. We can decide to grow into our strengths, into our knowledge, into our skills. We can claim every passing year as increased competency, as increased power, instead of a slow descent into decay. Yes, our bodies might grow weaker in time, and we might cede ground to illnesses, but this doesn’t happen as soon as we pass twenty-five, and it’s about time we stopped acting like it does.

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #28 - Don’t justify yourself

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: Men thrive on women’s attention, on women’s time, on women’s coddling. They love wasting our time, having us try to explain to them things they understand perfectly well. Because the status quo suits them just fine, by pretending they don’t get it nothing changes; because a woman who’s busy trying to educate a man is not living her life or changing the world, she’s simply holding a man’s hand and coddling him. And men don’t even consider that our explanations, our justifications, our arguments, our reasonings hold any value anyway. If it hasn’t been put forward by a man, it’s not really worth their time, or it’ll be branded illogical, hysterical or shrill. By justifying your decisions and your actions, you reinforce the idea that men have the final say; that everything you do or think have to have a man’s approval stamp; that you’re not capable of independent thought.

How: You are perfectly capable of independent thoughts. You can make your own decisions. You don’t need to confer with a man, to lay it all out for him, before you take action. And you owe no man a dissertation on your motives, an explanation of the reasons behind your actions, an argumentation of your own humanity. Don’t overexplain what is clearly understandable. Do not feel compelled to connect all the dots when basic empathy and logic are clearly foreign concepts to your listener. Trust yourself. Do not hesitate, do not waver just because a man pretends to not understand your reasons. Practice being accountable only to yourself. Do not let a man drag you into long, meandering discussions on whether you’re a human being.

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #25 - Ditch the misogynistic slurs

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: There’s no context in which using misogynistic slurs is not harmful to women. These words treat our body parts as shameful; they link us to animals and as such as lesser; they reduce us to sexual objects; they debase us for our imagined sex life; they suggest that the very fact of being female is shameful and a curse; they treat us with unhidden contempt.  Men use them to humiliate us, to belittle us, to debase us. For many women, these words were what they heard before being abused, before being violated by men. Men use those words to terrorise us, to teach us to expect violence. Women using those words just reinforce the idea that it’s fine to treat women as second-class citizen, as sexual objects. Words matter. How we call ourselves, how we refer to ourselves impact how we walk through this world. Using misogynistic slurs in a casual manner is tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot before we ever start walking.

How: Banish “c*nt”, “b*tch”, “wh*re”, “h*e”, “sl*t”, “b*stard”, “m*therf*cker”, “son of a b*tch” — and any other iteration which casts women as lesser human beings just for being women — from your vocabulary, whatever the context. Call out any man who uses it in your presence. Cut them out of your life if they persist. Educate your fellow women, your friends, on the harms of their usage. Stop thinking of women as lesser beings. Stop tolerating anything other than basic respect for yourself and other members of the female sex.  

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #27 - Learn from other women

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny.

Why: To summarise, men don’t understand, and women who teach need your support. Men do not understand everything as well as they would like you to think. They do understand the male perspective — which is arguably the standard perspective — but they don’t have room for anything else. They don’t want to make room for anything else. Men will teach you to perpetuate sexism; men will often teach you to hate yourself and discount your own capacities. They are fine with their unchallenged status quo, with the way men have always done things. You too can — if you’re lucky — do the things men do, but only if you do it the male way without complain or comment. No man has your best interests at heart. Moreover, men in teaching positions hold power over you (they can choose to keep knowledge from you if you don’t behave) that can very easily be mishandled. This leaves you vulnerable, especially given that learning requires you to be open and to make yours concepts and ideas which were foreign to you. Learning from men always means being on the lookout for the misogyny they entwine in everything; always having to take measures not to fall prey to wrapped perspectives; or even to physical harm if you encounter one of the most sinister specimens. And this being said, women teachers need your support. Misogyny often means that they are discounted by both male and female students as incompetent or whatever negative stereotypes are associated with women who know too much. Women teachers share perspectives, life experiences and body types with you and so are better suited to understanding what might be an obstacle to your learning.

How: Be an active participant in your own learning. When you can, ask your questions and ask for help from female teachers. If you’re pursuing new knowledge on your own, make the effort to look for and find women to teach you the skills you are trying to gain. Get your friends to join with you and encourage your female acquaintances to seek out female teachers. And don’t discount the experience and the skills of the women around you. Learn cooking and baking from your mother, from her mother, from your aunts or the old woman living down the street. Learn mending from that friend of yours who makes her own clothes. Learn how to change tires and take care of your car from a woman on the internet. Learn a new language from a woman across the globe who wants to learn yours. Ask another woman to mentor you in the class you struggle with at university. When women around you decide to carry out projects, offer your help so that you can gather experience from them. Ask them point blank if they’d be open to sharing what they know; don’t be offended if they ask for some form of compensation. Teaching is a huge endeavour and a time-consuming one, and no woman owes it to you. But if you do show respect and dedication, you might learn more than you expect.

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #20 - Cultivate your strength

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: Women are weak. Men are the hunters, the digger of trenches, the lifters of bags of cement. Ideal men are all toned and muscled and provided with a six-pack by general expectations. Ideal women are dainty, with thin waists and thin arms and need a man to carry anything heavier than a bottle of milk. It’s learned helplessness. Women are consistently shamed if they dare to train, if they show any sort of muscle that is more than staying “toned” and “in shape” (read “thin”, and starved into compliance). How often have you seen women training, lifting, and displaying any sort of muscle in ordinary media, other than in very specific sport competitions — and even then, these women are often the butt of jokes or dismissive comments, because of course how could they be real women? And in popular culture, “strong women” designates not women who have physical capabilities, but women who can withstand pain without complaining. Women are strong because they don’t cry or rebel when they’re faced with misogyny; a strong woman is never one who can swim or run miles, or carry her own firewood. It’s easier to control a woman who can’t fight back, who needs someone else to accomplish some tasks. Keeping us weak is an insurance for men that we won’t become independent, that we will always rely on them. We don’t have to, tho.

How: We are actually much more endurant than men. Our strength is not showy and fickle; it is profound and reliable. We just have to cultivate it. It’s not a one-day task; it’s an endeavour for a lifetime. @tejuina has the right spirit here: “wish women’s fitness was more about boosting our energy and getting our bones and joints ready for our old age and getting strong enough to punch men and less about losing weight while getting a bigger ass”. We should be strengthening our joints, stretching our muscles, making sure that we can rely on ourselves to keep going and creating the strength we need to help the women around us. It’s not about appearance. It’s about capacity, it’s about capability, it’s about prévoyance. We have to look forward, and our strength will never be a disservice. By cultivating our physical strength, we are investing in ourselves.

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #23 - Don’t apologise for existing

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: “Sorry, but…”, “Excuse me, I think that …”, “… if that make any sense … “, “maybe we could consider”, … Sorry, sorry, sorry. Women are always apologising for existing and having opinions. How often do those words pass our lips, “sorry” and “excuse me”? For things as mundane as needing space to pass by or a little quiet to work in? For things that require no apologising for, like expressing our thoughts, our beliefs, our opinions? For things as important as  refusing insistent male advances or putting an end to misogynistic jokes and exchanges? We are taught from infancy that we should be discreet and silent, that we should stick to the kitchen and the child-rearing. That we are stupid and vapid and just good enough to clean and reproduce. We internalise it to the point that we can’t seem to stop apologising for daring to open our mouths, whatever the setting. It’s not a question of politeness, or of good manners. It’s our socialisation in a misogynistic system which taught us that what we have to say is worthless, hence the “sorry” and “excuse me” which spill endlessly in our language. But we have nothing to apologise for. We are allowed to exist. We are entitled to our opinions. Disagreement is not the subject; we can be wrong and still not have to grovel every time we speak. We have a right to make mistakes and to speak out of turn and to say inepties. And more often than not, what we have to say is important and smart and brilliant and needed to be said. Our words don’t deserve an apology, they deserve ovations and praises.

How: So stop apologising for existing. Make the conscious effort not to tame down your words. It’s a long road, because you have to pry away a deeply-entrenched habit. Bannish “sorry” and “excuse me” from your vocabulary. Forget the words that dilute and weaken your positions, like “maybe” and “perhaps” and all their declinations into “in my humble opinion” and its variations, especially when you’re talking about a topic you’re trained in or you’ve done some research about. You have a brain, you can rely on it, stop shooting your own statements in the foot. Don’t sell yourself short. Let others deal with your brilliance (they’ll survive). You don’t need to make yourself palatable. Thank people for their kindness, patience and understanding if you do make a mistake, but otherwise don’t apologise. You’ve already done it enough for a lifetime.

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #21 - Comfortable clothing

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: Clothes are supposed to cover and protect our bodies from the elements. Keep us warm and dry, and lower the risk of injury from scratching or bumping into things. Because it offers support and because we are so eager to express ourselves, it can also be adorned with art. But the basic function of clothes is protection. Do women’s clothes today answer that requirement? I’ve touched on how absurd high heels and bras are, but most clothes designed with women as end-users in mind are nonsensical too. Thin fabric that gives out after a few wears and that hides nothing of our bodies? Short cuts that leave our skin exposed and unprotected? No pockets or decorative ones or pockets so small you can maybe stash away an acorn and that’s it? Skirts so short the slightest breeze shows our underwear? Underwear so lacy it always itch and so laced with chemicals it always burns our genitals? Dresses so impractical we never even consider the possibility of climbing onto things, of running, of bending down to retrieve something that fell down? Clothes so tight breathing itself is a chore? Clothes so costly they’re a scam designed to directly relieve us of our financial independence for the myth of ‘fashion’? Clothes so cheap they’re a scam designed to never last and trap us into an infinite cycle of buying more and more trash? Clothes that never fit right, that are never supposed to fit right, to keep us hating ourselves and shaming ourselves over our appearances, guilting us into diets and starvation? Clothes that turn us into objects to be gazed at, instead of helping us be protagonists in our own lives?

How: Forget sexy. Forget fashionable. Forget trendy. Look up practical, sensible, comfortable. Go for natural fabrics; cotton, linen, hemp, wool, material that last and put less strain on your skin and the planet. Prefer roomy clothes that let you move around and let your skin breathe. Banish anything which squeeze, constricts, strains, burns, itches, scratches, makes you feel exposed. Pants allow you to move around freely and raise your legs and climb up. Long skirts are best kept for days spent lounging inside, as they act as built-in blankets. Wear clothes adequate for the weather; layering is your best bet to stay comfortable. There’s no shame in wearing hoodies and sweatpants, large flannel shirts, or plain t-shirts. Clothes don’t have to be a reflection of your inner worth; they can just be a tool that you use to stay warm and dry. So look for pieces that do that first and foremost. You don’t need to wear glitter and sequins or expensive pieces to feel good. Mend your favorite pieces so they last longer. Make up your own style from what you actually enjoy wearing instead of trying to fit the latest trends. Wear the clothes that allow you to exist comfortably.

[floatingbook]

Habit shift #17 - Do you need a partner?

- practical actions that can be taken to fight internalized misogyny

Why: That’s how every fairy tale ends: “And then they lived happy ever after”. The french version is literally “they got married and had many kids”. From infancy, girls are fed the idea that “true” love is the endgame. It’s in almost all piece of media aimed at little girls; it’s the foundation of the home, what goes on between mummy and daddy; it’s a promise in the sickly-sweet dismissal of boys’ antics or outright violence (oh honey, it’s because he loves you). We grow older, and love and relationships are in every book, every magazine, every tv show. The badass rebellious teen in the dystopia falls for the brooding dark handsome boy; this famous woman is dating what’s his name; there is no tv show without at least one love plot. If you are not in a relationship, you are supposed to be dying to find one. Be nice to strangers and always look put together—you never know when you might meet the one; download dating apps—live with your time; bring a plus-one to every social function—a woman cannot be seen alone. Think about it; how much do you desire a significant other? Someone to get you off, someone who knows the real you, someone with whom to spend the long, dark hours of winter, someone with whom to grow old? How much do you want to shackle yourself to someone else, because you have been taught to? Who decided on this model of romantic love? Whom does it serves? Who profits from women’s dream of a partner? Who reaps benefits from women working always at their appearance, always trying to impress their entourage, always putting themselves on display? Who profits from women thinking they can never find true success, true fulfillment, without someone else?

How: Reflect. How much of your aspiration for romantic success are your own? Why do you want a partner? Do you need one like you need air, water and food? Would it simply be nice? Why does the thought of being celibate cause you distress? Does it even cause you distress? Can you be satisfied with yourself? Do you really need to share your life with someone? You have family, friends for the social interactions you crave; you have books and art for to occupy your evenings; you have your hands and their ten fingers for you sexual desires. Take yourself out on a date; you don’t need a romantic partner to eat good food; if you’re lonely, a friend is also a good companion for a tasty dish. Go alone to the movies, shopping; do groceries on your own, clean your place on your own; pet  a cat on your own. You don’t need accompaniment to carry out or to enjoy most of your life. Try it out; can you be enough?