The Feminine Phenomenon of XXposure (Part I)

For a very long time, my worth has been intimately related to my body. I know when this relationship developed; it was a slow process that took time. But, I am not sure how or why this connection occurred.  And, in the end, I am not sure that it is a relationship that can be undone.

Sometimes I wonder if this occurrence is peculiar to my own personal experience, or if it is the experience of Woman. But then, the experience of Woman is peculiar. I suspect, my own personal experience is the particular expression of that peculiar phenomenon embodied as Woman.

What I find so strange are the memories of the "before." I remember when I did not question my worth; my "being-there" (Dasein) determined value. And I had no consciousness of my body. It was simply ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit), and an extension of my will. I played; I climbed; I caught snakes. I cut Barbie's hair; I built blanket forts; I jumped on my bed. I asked where babies come from; I asked why that girl in kindergarten was a different color; I asked why God always "was" in Sunday school.

But then, the hammer broke. And everything changed. Suddenly, my body waged a revolt. 

I remember one day in school. I was wearing white jeans and a long powder blue sweater that fell at the top of my thighs. I wasn't aware of the attack my body had forged against me until I went into the bathroom. And there, the first victim, little white princess underwear dripped crimson. I tried to clean up the bloodshed with the toilet paper in the stall. Then I returned to class. But the war had already begun, and the defiance of my body bled through those underwear, through those white jeans, through that powder blue sweater. And having recruited peering and jeering eyes, my body launched a full attack upon my psyche. 

Then, there were my breasts, two large undulating pendulums that ordered the snicker of every boy and giggle of every girl. 

I was twelve years old. 

From that moment on the war waged on until my entire Being suffered complete corruption. I gazed upon a body growing more and more alien until it was no longer me, and no longer mine. And I watched as this foreign object was felt and grabbed and pinched and, finally, raped. And I watched as this foreign body was stared at, pointed at, and judged. Until finally, in complete subjugation, I peered out from this prison: a beautiful statue.

For many years I protested the war by hiding that artistic form under formless clothing. I severed that still thinking head and placed upon a sheet. 

And then, something else happened... A truce?

One day I pulled off the curtains and gazed upon the line and curves of this Aphrodite, and recognizing the immense power in those lines, set out to use her for my own empowerment. 

And so I rejected those formless draperies and chose instead dress that extenuated every curve and undulation. I painted the smile of Mona Lisa upon that body's face, and I colored in dark piercing eyes. Then I watched as so many spectators came to gaze upon this figure and let every hand reach out and caress that fine marble. 

But empowerment has a flaw: desire. 

How I desired this body to be desired. For in those moments, when one approached, I breathed life into this form, and let a voice cry out. And in many languages and literature from all of history I made this puppet cry out, "hear me, love me!" 

But desire deafens the mind. And upon filling their appetites, and feeding desire, one by one, the spectators leave. Only to be replaced by another audience, and another. Every night another show, where patrons gaze and grasp at Truth. 

And then, when some nights, there appear so few admirers, I begin to fret. I gaze upon that body, and study every small chip and blemish from so many years of (ab)use. I erase the smile, and paint something new. I tear off the clothing and place upon it a new dress. I stand back and judge with a critical eye, and never satisfied, I place the figure once more upon the pedestal.  

Biopsy.

"Biopsy," the word cut through the static of the phone like a plow clearing snow. "When?" I asked. My doctor transferred the call to her receptionist, and the appointment was scheduled for the next morning. I "lit up like a Christmas tree," and as a child unable to choose from all those gifts, the gynecologist insisted on taking three. 

And suddenly, in the silence of my life, that great Light, God, that all seeing eye, gazed through those hidden folds and crevices of my femininity and upon the mouth of my womb. And I was but a specimen, lying still upon the table, to be examined and sampled.

I had no breath to cry out, "Why!?" I was not Jonah running from fate. I was the great whale, and I swallowed up that great Divine Light.

And it burned. 

What If...

God is the omniscience One, the all seeing eye of Apollo. That eternal gaze that burns ever bright. And through great windows that unspeakable light breaks and pierces our bodies and casts the stories of our life upon the walls of our souls. What if we, too, could turn for just a moment and see those stories that we tell.

God is the omnipotent Creator, the ever frenzied desire of Dionysus. That eternal pursuit that wields explosions ever vibrant. And upon great canvases that awesome artist splatters our bodies and colors the images of our life. What if we, too, could wield for just a moment and paint those hues that form our murals.

She's just hormonal...

Today, I thought about my previous piece of writing, and how I began it. I referred to my current medical situation, in which my hormone levels are off the charts, and thus causing radical mood swings. I am the embodiment of the term, "hormonal."

In fact, how often have I, with my girlfriends, either in recounting a situation in which I was extremely "moody," or at the moment noticing the emotions of another woman, do we make the quick calculations that tell us: aha, I/you/we are pre-menstrual. And reduce our current emotional state to our biology. We refer to ourselves and other women as "PMS-ing" or "hormonal." And men have even more colorful terms for our situation.

While in more contemporary times woman has embraced the natural ebb and flow of her cycle (dictated by her anatomy), and particularly the freedom she has during these "hormonal" phases, even within this new found sense of empowerment, there lies a subjugation.

Take for example, my previous piece of writing, or the entire journal that I have created in which to express this crisis of the feminine. From the outset, everything I assert is couched among the declaration of being "hormonal." I put forth assertions regarding the continued oppression of woman, that even through feminism, in the form of repression of our anatomical organs: our ovaries, our uteruses, our cervixes, our vaginas, but what weight do these assertions carry in light of the confession that I am currently in a "hormonal" state? And here I refer back to all the conversations I have had with girlfriends in which we proclaim, "Oh, I'm PMS-ing!" which is intended to discredit the emotional state of the time, but also discredits the intellectual state.

Historically, woman has been viewed as the inferior sex. Woman is weak. Woman is fragile. And the recommendation to avoid especially intellectual affairs has been asserted in light of this. Modern feminism sought to defeat this fallacy. Woman is intellectually capable. Woman is strong. Woman is equal.

And yet, we, women ourselves, in contemporary times, assert our biology as an excuse for behavior.

I cannot be held responsible for my actions. It is my biology that causes me to act irrational. I cannot be held responsible for my words. It is my biology that causes me to speak thus.

Woman is fragile and subject to her anatomy. And so, cannot be held responsible. Woman is not in control of her faculties.

Lorraine Bobbitt is not guilty.

Eve did not sin.

Woman is sinless. Woman is pure. Woman is holy.

So that woman carries no burden, we cannot be held responsible for any action or behavior, and  have no control of will. And here we can see the reasoning behind the hystery of woman: that woman cannot vote, cannot own property, and in the end cannot have any authority over her own destiny.

But, as a result, what a burden it is upon man. For then the care of woman is the responsibility of man. Her social well-being is the responsibility of man. The future of our species dictated by woman is the burden of man--the holy tabernacle is placed in the hands of man.

And how did man fair?

Indeed. In this light, we can deduce that every coitus in the generation of every future generation has been an act of rape.

For, if I am incapable of reason, action, and will, then the very mutuality of sex is undermined. And every sexual act becomes violence against woman.

Over and over and over, how many rapes have we endured, survived, repressed?

And yet, I am hysterical. I am Woman: Woman is enslaved to her biology.

...

I ask my reader (in light of this deduction): is my current intellectual "rant," and this current journal in which I express the feminine crisis which is the result of my biology unjustified and illegitimate?

"Hystery" (a rewrite)

The doctors have said that the severe fluctuations in my hormones is causing dramatic shifts in my mood.

Yesterday I was overcome with uncontrollable crying, so much so that I had to be sent home from work.

Last night I was driving home in the snow storm. I had gone to visit a friend, a quiet respite, a safety net. But then, I grew anxious; I was a burden. So in the midst of the blizzard I ventured home. At one point, rounding a curve, the car slid off the road and into a snow bank. After some effort I was able to back out and continue on my way. "If only I could have been driving faster," I thought.

In a fit of rage I told an ex lover that I hated him, which led to a infantile argument. He called me daft, pitiful, callow, sad, and in the end laughed at me. I called him a heartless asshole. I regret it. I don't hate him. I was simply overcome by so much pain; I was an angry vicious dog lashing out. I was so desperate, desperate for some sort of recognition of my anguish, from a source I knew would affirm what already haunts my mind: you filthy whore, you magdalen, you worthless piece of flesh, used up and unwanted. I don't blame him, he played the role of accuser perfectly.

I looked hysterical. I am hysterical.

Hysterical. Hysteria. Hystereikos, meaning "of the womb." Hysteria, meaning that madness particular to women.

How hysterical we appear in our fits of hysteria...

Isn't it odd that we identify a suffering that is particular to women. How strange that, historically, it is woman who succumbs to hysteria--a madness of the uterus. And how dangerous a uterus that might break loose and run free. Liberty of the female sexual organ leads to madness: hysteria.

In modern Feminism, such beliefs have been criticized and ultimately aborted. And understandably so, since that suffering particular to woman is also in the same breath characterized as inferior. Woman suffers "hysteria" and this hysteria serves as evidence for her weakness and inferiority to man. Thus, as a means of liberation and equality, feminists dissect the idea of hysteria and conclude it to be nothing but another implement of male oppression over female.

As a means of combating this implement, it has been the typical response of the feminist to instead argue against hysteria. The feminist argues that there is not a suffering particular to woman, and so removes evidence of inferiority. In effect, the feminist performs a psychological hysterectomy on woman, which while appearing liberating, in fact does nothing more than reduce the uterus to an excess appendage--like the appendix, easily removed without any effect to the body. In other words, under the guise of liberty woman is yet further oppressed. She mutilates herself and removes the very anatomy that makes her female, and declares this self mutilation a victory.

Huzzah, female castration for all women!

But this is no liberation. Now, by virtue that we possess a uterus, that suffering is somehow not suffering at all. And the womb is "just a womb." Inferior. So that one woman may go without her womb, the lunacy suddenly lies not her in mourning her loss, but that she mourns at all.

How sad that even our feminism has been burdened by the great Cock, crowing his conquest of all hystery, striving for equality through a masculinization and denial of our wombs. The feminist who asserts we are "more than just a womb" or that we are equal, despite our wombs. We can spit out children and work that 9 to 5. And at the sacrifice of our wombs--and the children who bore forth from them--we declare ourselves equal and seek to bury emotion, hide our hysteria.

Our feminism has taught us to become like men. And this we declare equality.

How are we equal, when our very bodies are still subjected to repression? Now, not just men, but women alike view the female reproductive system as something to remain hidden, overcome, harnessed. Women declare equality, by the blood of their wombs.

"Just a womb"

Just the fount of humanity. Just the herald of the future. Just Divinity encompassed in human form--the form of woman. Just holiness, sacred creation. Just the cradle of life... Woman is Truth ("..who has reasons for keeping secret her reasons")

Woman, and humanity, have been duped. We have been convinced of the lie of the womb, that it is inferior. That it is nothing. An appendage to abhor and resent. And how dare a woman confine herself to define herself by "just a womb."

No. No. I must reject that interpretation offered by feminists on the backs of misogynists.

There is a suffering unique to woman. There is a being unique to woman, and it derives from her womb. The anatomy of woman evolved through eternity to gives rise to the embodiment of love and sacrifice, two ideas completely alien to the very engine of evolution itself. Alien and unique, thus making woman a unique expression. The fallacy lies not in the recognition of this uniqueness but rather in the supplication of it.

I am Woman, embodiment of pure sacrifice. I am Woman, the life of my species. I am Woman, the Mother of every future generation. I am Woman. I am this womb. I am hysteria. I am Woman, I am the gender blessed by Divine madness. I am the gender kissed with holiness, the house of creation. I am woman, the sacred body through which life emerges. To be called woman is to be called the zenith of life, where the darkness and goodness of life bears forth, where woman is the penultimate sacrifice--sacrificed to her hysteria, to her womb, to the future.

The womb: that natural symbol which represents the eternal foundations of the world, love & sacrifice...

But in this way the womb is dangerous. The womb is subversive. It points to our inevitable individual demise as it bares forth new faces primed for the future. And it scares us... So we deem it inferior. We repress and suppress the womb, and woman by extension. And so for equality demand the woman become like man, lest she fastens the power of her womb. And we tell girls to fear the womb, and all things associated, and those complexity of emotions which reflect the complexity of the world. Repress the womb, daughter. Repress the womb, for it is nothing, just an appendage. Repress the womb, for it is dangerous...

The Other Woman

I remember first encountering Simone DeBeauvoir during my twenties while at the university. In various philosophy and literature classes I was treated to works such as Ambiguity of Ethics, A Very Easy Death, and her tome, The Second Sex. Neither fond of Existentialism nor Feminism, I didn't much care for her, and her writing itself made me cringe. At the time, I was frustrated by her seemingly shadowing and echoing of her lover's, Jean Paul Satre, philosophy while at the same time asserting Feminism. And I loathed her Feminism--a cold and sterile speculum attempting to shine light on the truth of our wombs, attempting to capture womanhood--motherhood--without herself ever having been a mother, and clearly disdainful of it.

In the end, the largest fault I found with DeBeauvoir's thinking, in regards to Feminism, was the nonsequitor of her argument; that is, that woman is and has been the "second sex" without any historical precedent or cause. In other words, unlike any other form of subjugation, the supression of woman simply is and has been, without event or seeming justification--and that the solution to this subjugation is education. For me, she built so strongly and captivatingly a case for this mysterious subjugation (and it is indeed mysterious) that her posture of education as a remedy simply fell short of the crisis. It's not as though one is correcting a historical fact.

I was angry with DeBeauvoir with not instead seeking further into the depths of this mystery. As a philosopher, DeBeauvoir, it is our charge to delve into the crevices of Wh(Y).

I never forgave her...

And now, what chance is it, that after shortly moving into this grand abode, I begin moving the mountains of books (which have been for so many years in storage) into this space, and among the first, I find DeBeauvoir's The Second Sex (along with Judith Butler's Gender Trouble). That at this moment of crisis--the crisis of Woman--this book appears?

And is it any wonder that, in this crisis, I once again pick it up and begin reading?

...

My how the years form a woman. I think back to my younger self, a self so confident and naive in her gender, and am envious. Before years spent atop that large, erect ivory tower gleaming in the sun. Before years spent climbing the hard and thick walls of that steeple. Before years spent riding atop the long one-eyed barrel of the Great War machine... To say nothing of all those tiny little pin pricks.

I am still critical of DeBeauvoir (out of respect for her as a fellow philosopher I am obligated to be), yet much more understanding and forgiving. Understanding of the context in which she writes, and how revolutionary her works were at the time. And so forgiving, for she does not have the century of education in Woman to so draw from.

(aha, and there, perhaps her assertion for education has made a liar of me yet.)

I am also profoundly impacted by her work, and this feeling of realization of a problem to which she points (the problem of Woman) which has yet, even in a Century, to be understood or fully grasped, but rather danced around, again subjugated, and all at once repressed, in the name of "Feminism."

For in our attempts to fling off the chains of our subjugation and find liberty, we have done nothing but don male prosthetics and declare the death of our gender. In an attempt to evade the mania that our gender derives from the subjugation of our wombs, we perform hysterectomies upon ourselves, and declare ourselves cured.

But I don't feel cured at all.

In fact, I feel more alone, more alienated. I feel wholly Other...

Cowardly Lion

Last night I was driving home in the snow storm. I had gone to visit a friend, a quiet respite, a safety net. But then, I grew anxious, a burden. So in the midst of the blizzard I ventured home. At one point, rounding a curve, the car slid off the road and into a snow bank. After some effort I was able to back out and continue on my way. "If only I could have been driving faster," I thought...

The doctors have said that the severe fluctuations in my hormones has and is causing dramatic shifts in mood.

Yesterday I was overcome with uncontrollable crying, so much so I had to be sent home from work (customers do not like their lunch with a side of tears--but you can taste the despair! Mmm'mmm good!). And in a fit of rage I told an ex lover that I hated him, which led to a infantile argument, in which he still refused to acknowledge any harm or wrong doing and instead call me daft, pitiful, callow, sad, and in the end laughed at me. I called him a heartless asshole... Regardless, I should have left it alone, but I was so desperate, desperate for some sort of recognition of my anguish...

Instead I looked hysterical.

Hysterical. Hysteria. Hystereikos, meaning "of the womb." Hysteria, meaning that madness particular to women... How hysterical we appear in our fits of hysteria...

How funny it is that my gender engenders an inferior suffering. Women do not suffer. We are "hysterical," or "hormonal," or "PMS-ing." We do not suffer, we are enslaved to wandering uteruses.

And by virtue that we possess a uterus, that suffering is somehow not suffering at all. The womb is "just a womb." Inferior.

And how sad that even our feminism has been burdened by the great Phallos, striving for equality through a masculinization and denial of our wombs. Women speak about how we are "more than a womb" or that we are equal, despite our wombs. We can spit out children and work that 9 to 5. And at the sacrifice of our wombs--and the children who bore forth from them--we declare ourselves equal and seek to bury emotion, hide our hysteria. Our feminism has taught us to become like men. And in this we declare equality.

How are we equal, when our very bodies are still subjected to repression? Now, not just men, but women alike view the female reproductive system as something to remain hidden, overcome, harnessed. Women declare equality, by the blood of their wombs. And so castrate themselves for their body and insist this body has absolutely no bearing on their identity.

"Just a womb"

Just the fount of humanity. Just the herald of the future. Just Divinity encompassed in human form--the form of woman. Just holiness, sacred creation. Just the cradle of life...

Woman, and humanity, have been duped. We have been convinced of the lie of the womb, that it is inferior. That it is nothing. An appendage to abhor and resent. And how dare a woman confine herself ton define herself by "just a womb."

No. No. I must reject that interpretation offered by feminists on the backs of misogynists. Woman is defined by her womb. And that womb is not inferior, but something beautiful and Divine. To be called woman is to be called that which houses creation. To be called woman is to be called that sacred body through which new life emerges. To be called woman is to be called the zenith of life, where the darkness and goodness of life bears forth, where woman is the penultimate sacrifice--sacrificed to her hysteria, to her womb, to the future.

No. The womb is that natural symbol which represents the eternal foundations of the world: love & sacrifice...

But in this way the womb is dangerous. The womb is revolutionary and wild. It points to our inevitable individual demise as it bares forth new faces primed for the future. And it scares us... So we deem it inferior. We repress and suppress the womb, and woman by extension. And so for equality demand the woman become like man, lest she fastens the power of her womb. And we tell girls to fear the womb, and all things associated, and those complexity of emotions which reflect the complexity of the world. Repress the womb. For it is dangerous...