Being a Woman

My mother had called me last night to tell me about a book that she is reading about. The book is about womanhood by a Japanese American author. She is a woman in her 50's, and I think that her views are a bit old fashioned, but there are still some meritt to what she says.

My mother and I got into a converstaion about the contemporary society and the loss of womanhood. The things that had engendered women had become lost in our society. Women are now expected to make and do like men. Make a lot of money, be active, and even lead a life that is not centered around families.

These are exactly the things that had offended me about American feminism when I was in high school. I hated the idea that women who were home makers were subservient to career women. According to American feminism, the specific customs and qualities that engendered myself, my mother, and my girlfriends were the very things that disempowered us. Things like, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and doing these sorts of chores around the house were things that belonged to us women. But it was shameful to participate in these things, let alone to enjoy them.

It's as if us women who came from another land, with different skin tones (other than white), we have an idea of gender and womenhood that is more practical. The idea of womanhood was something that came with our upbringing. Something that I had resisted as a child in Japan, when I had to learn how to speak Japanese, the girl way: when I had to play soccer in an all boy's club, because no girls wanted to play. But as I learned to become more acustomed to the society norms, I started to appreciate the things that made us women. When I graduated from college, I remember my brothers having to learn for the first time, how to cook and do laundry. How strange, seeing them go through the awkwardness of learning, and seeing them enjoy the practice.

It was Donna Haraway who wrote in Cyborg Manifesto, that she would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. I think the idea of being a machine or a self anointed divinity gives me the cringe. One conjures up an image of a skinny white woman in suits, and the other is a fat old woman with long wavy hair. But especially the idea of a cyborg, who is genderless, that is half human, half machine, half man, half woman, is horrifying. It strips me of the qualites that I had cherished in my mother, my own culture and myself. I had not considered my own gender, what kind of woman I am. I'm not thinking that I can make my own gender identity. It is what I am. What am I? I am many things.

Here are my heroes...

Etsuko Matsuo
Eleanor Roosevelt (well, I still have to read her autobiography)
Janine Antoni
Meena Satnarain
Andrea Zittel
Teri Rueb
Eliza McKenna
Jennifer Weiss
Elizabeth Diller
Octavia Butler
Ruth Asawa
all my girlfriends

My grandfather