The end of censoring myself

“I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go.”

I came across this Brené Brown quote one evening recently just after taking part in a Facebook group thread about authenticity and learning to be yourself fully and whole-heartedly, without regard for other people’s opinions. It seemed funny how this came up just then; and then I realised that I had myself been working on a blog post just days earlier, entitled ‘The end of censoring myself’. It suddenly felt as if an entire generation of women had had enough of being nice.

My blog post – the initial draft of what was to eventually be rewritten into this – had been triggered by something as random as a discussion about the sentiment of a car bumper sticker, also in said Facebook group. A friend had lashed out due to frustrations with people, in this instance feminists, who continuously got worked up about the wrong things yet seemed unwilling to support the cause vocally enough and share petitions and articles on request. I had questioned her, it had been a bit tense, we’d had it out and moved on – but I had somehow ended up feeling frazzled, even hurt. A month or two later, enough pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place for me to begin to understand what had happened: I was censoring myself, and she had called me out on it.

It took little more than the realisation for me to decide that I wanted to change. Like the woman who had started the authenticity thread, I knew that I was holding back – but why? Whom was I scared that I might offend? Whom was I trying to protect?

Then another timely piece of writing appeared. After a couple of years’ hiatus, feminist writer Flavia Dzodan returned to the scene with a piece that started like this: “This is about the difficulty of writing about difficulties. The things we do not say because they are not polite or because they are embarrassing. The things we do not talk about because of how they would reflect on those we care.”

There it was: the reason I’d been censoring myself – on Facebook, absolutely, but in many ways far more widely than that. Dzodan continues: “Writing as a woman on the internet is also writing for public scrutiny, to be evaluated in one’s “moral character”. Is this woman embarrassing herself and, by proxy the people in her life? Is this woman bringing “shame” to her family? Unlike men on the internet, we write not only as a reflection of ourselves but of our entire community. When a woman “goes mad” on the internet, she doesn’t just go mad (whatever that means) on her own, she calls into question the patriarchal structures that should have kept her in her place.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t really care what other people think; I’ve just been behaving as if that’s rude of me. But I’m going to write. I’m going to share, and I’m going to ‘like’. Going from A to B might take a bit of time - I’m not even quite sure what B is yet. But what I’m saying is this: if I annoy you, mute me; if you start to really dislike me, unfriend me; if things get uncomfortable, know that it’s coming from a good place. Know that it’s me, fully and whole-heartedly. The watered-down version is no longer in stock. I’m pretty sure I’ll put my foot in it before too long – but I’ll live and I’ll learn and I’ll be able to say that I didn’t censor myself.

All of this pretending and performing has to go. I’m not screwing around. It’s time.

The norm, the exception, and a fragile bridge

Is Dame Helen Mirren an actor or an actress? In the Guardian, she’s an actor, and a recent article on the subject explains why. While readers wondered why the profession of acting wouldn’t deserve the same kind of distinction between male and female as titles such as duchess and duke, the style guide editor explained: “We described Harriet Walter as one of our greatest actors. Calling her one of our greatest actresses is not the same thing at all.”

This is of course something he’s put a lot of thought into, and I’m sure there’s fine egalitarian reasoning behind his decision. The irony is that through his statement he pinpoints exactly why this is complex: if saying that someone is one of our greatest actors seems like more of an all-encompassing compliment than suggesting that they’re one of our greatest actresses, we suggest that the latter is the exception, that one can be our greatest actress without for that matter necessarily competing with male actors at all.

In a recent episode of Stephen Fry’s new linguistics show, Planet Word, he pondered how our linguistic identity affects our world view, and a guest on the show explained how the word for ‘bridge’ carries different qualities in different languages. Germans, for example, are more likely to describe a bridge as beautiful, slender, even fragile, while Spanish people tend to talk about bridges as tall, strong, and solid. Why? Because in German, the word (die Brücke) is feminine, while in Spanish it (el puente) is masculine. Further to making me want to avoid German bridges, this says a lot about our psyche. Just think about the implications of our linguistic make-up for our world view!

There is of course nothing wrong with distinguishing between traditionally feminine and masculine, and I doubt anyone would suggest that we should get rid of these distinctions altogether. What this highlights, though, is that these traditional values and properties are deeply ingrained in our culture, and if we are likely to judge a bridge by them, we are probably very likely to do the same with people. Moreover, the fact that there’s always a norm means that there’s always an exception. That the norm is more often feminine in regards to professions to do with care, physical weakness, childcare and tidying won’t come as a surprise to anyone, and I’ve argued the case for dentists and surgeons before.

I would never dream of criticising a bipolar homosexual (that’s Mr. Fry) for a lack of understanding for those deviating from the norm. In fact, I’m not trying to criticise anyone here: expressing cultural heritage through the use of our dear language is not only a necessary exercise, but one can prove very interesting. I am merely hoping to act as a spotlight on that cultural heritage. And I’m hoping that the next time you cross a German bridge, you will think about this whole thing with masculine and feminine, norm and exception, once and for all.