The "Trauma Feminist": Addendum on "What is a Feminist?"

Excuses and Explanations Regarding My Absence and Lack of Feminist Posts
This section is bolded in case you want to skip over my excuse-making and get right to the meat of the post...

Ever since I've written my initial What is a Feminist?: A Discussion on Discourse entry, I've felt a little guilty. For multiple reasons.

Let me state that I never mean to offend anyone due to my own ignorance on a matter (although, of course, ignorance is prone to offending). And that this blog is not only reflective of my viewpoints on feminism and what I've studied, but what I'm currently studying and trying to understand. I've only, honestly, been acquainted with feminist studies for a little over a year now - and in that time, I've not taken one gender/women's studies class. Which makes me feel like more a feminist-hobbyist-dabbler-late-bloomer sort of deal. A handful of women I worked with at Feminist Voice (club on my old campus) were genuinely surprised I was not a Gender/Women's Studies major with the amount of time I tried to devote to these issues in my spare time (an interesting concept when you note my schedule this past year), and by the end of the year, I was surprised too. However, I was determined upon graduating, and figured I could make it a plan to study in the future. And I certainly do plan upon it (hi grad school, please accept me) and am trying to do so in my spare time now. In the meantime, I'm sure I unintentionally offended a few. Which brings me to my second point.

The second reason I feel incredibly guilty is that I actually did follow through with the criticism on the entry. I may be stubborn and defensive, but I try to be open-minded. And when I talked about things further with a few individuals, things began to click into place for me more. And then I never updated about it. And I entered what Hyperbole and a Half would call a guilt-spiral. While what initially held me back from updating about it was sheer busyness/preparation for moving across the country became something bigger when I finally began to settle in. I kept thinking to myself: "Isn't it a bit late to be updating with discussions you had a month ago?" My mother (and a handful of other people who know me closely) have noted I have this amazing capability to be extremely critical of myself in a way that no one else would ever expect of me, and I feel like it was one of those situations. I was very disappointed in myself for not keeping up with this blog, and so, just winced about it internally every time I thought about going back to the blog.

I've also done the stupid thing of "once I get a job/once I'm done catching up with all the job applications I should be sending out, I'll totally update my blog again." When you are unemployed for awhile, you learn that applying for jobs becomes a full-time job and so I have no idea why I set myself under this delusion that the work of applying for jobs would end. Which is why I reshifted my priorities yesterday and why you will see a lot more blog entries.

And so, I would like to take the time to thank whomever anonymously asked me that question about my blog via Formspring. You've pushed me past my internal little wince-hump, and hopefully things will go more fluidly from now on.

The "Trauma Feminist": An Addendum

As mentioned briefly amongst my litany of excuses up there, I did do some follow-up on my initial entry that did seem to spark some polar reactions. I know several women I'd talked to after writing the entry turned to me as if I feel this way too! I'm glad someone else said it! And then there were other women who came to me and said, "It's a fine line, Victoria. I know you don't mean to sound offensive, but you're bordering the line of sounding like one of those white feminists who just doesn't want to deal with race at all - and I know that's not you. Can we meet up in person and talk about it?" And then some women completely ignored making a comment out in the open, but instead had slight reactions towards me elsewhere to display they were displeased.

So, acknowledging all these factors, I pondered the dynamics of what to do next now that I both a) had a chip on my shoulder and felt very much like a lost, confused deer and b) felt mildly justified since I clearly wasn't the only one feeling this way since a handful of women had come up to me going "I feel this way too." So, I decided to take up my friend, Dawn Haney, who said to me, ""It's a fine line, Victoria. I know you don't mean to sound offensive, but you're bordering the line of sounding like one of those white feminists who just doesn't want to deal with race at all - and I know that's not you. Can we meet up in person and talk about it?"

And so, a few days before I left Colorado completely, we did. It's funny, because in retrospect I'm not sure she actually said anything completely different to me than she did in the comments. And yet, I walked away feeling like I had a much more sound grip on how to approach it than I felt I did before. Which perhaps fuels into Dawn's hypothesis that something about how the internet and blogging lends itself to dissidence, unchecked opinion, and some sort of general rage. I'm really really poorly rewording what Dawn had said to me quite eloquently in person. Regardless, it seemed having someone to react off of and repartee with in person was a lot more effective for me than typing a long rebuttal comment and waiting, trying to understand and trying to not be offensive and trying to make my own points.

What she essentially said to me in person is pretty much what she said to me here:

"I do want to say something about my understandings of women of color's frustrations with feminism, particularly within the sexual assault and domestic violence movements. Let's look at your statement above: "Come on, we're all women fighting for women's rights, can't we all just get along? As if the patriarchy doesn't tear us apart enough, we seek to tear each other apart?" The problem for women of color is that they are hearing the exact same thing from the men in their lives: "Come on, we're all people of color fighting for our rights, can't we all just get along? As if racism doesn't tear us apart enough, we seek to tear each other apart?" Women of color get pushed to "choose" between allying with other women or allying with other people of color. It's an impossible choice. One of the things that I've learned from women of color is that this impossible choice is *traumatic*. When I start to see the multiple oppressions faced by people as trauma, and their reactions to these oppressions as trauma reactions - it makes more sense. I know about anger, and that when I finally find the words to express my rage it comes out like a volcano. I know how healing it is to have someone validate my rage as real. On the flip side, I know how pissed I get when a man says, "You should tone down your rage" or "I've been hurt too, why do you have to make it a man/woman thing?" In my experience, it's *especially* as a trauma feminist that we have to listen carefully to the infinite kinds of traumas experienced by people. When I do that, I find some of my fiercest allies among women of color who just want to be validated. Just like you and me."

But perhaps there was one word she used with me in person that she didn't write in that comment that made all the difference for me: safe.

She told me that when women of color are expressing their anger about these situations to me it's because they feel safe to express it to me, around me, in my company. If they didn't feel safe around me, they wouldn't be expressing this rage - they express this rage to me because it is one of the safe places [feminism] they can. They are looking for me to understand so that I can help make more safe places for them.

Explained in these terms, with the word "safe," it all made sense to me. I reflected upon the struggles I've had personally with my own PTSD, and how much safety has made a difference. Around my mother and girl friends who know me closely, I've had no problem venting and yelling and unintentionally taking things out on them when really I'm just frustrated with my own set of emotional problems and want them to understand because I feel safe around them.

In contrast: zoom in on me trying to get my own student-constructed major passed in front of an Older White Christian Male, and he starts demanding, But why is Creative Writing and Social Change so useful that it could be its own major? Couldn't you just do the same thing with an English program? A Journalism program? and as he goes on with his battalion of questions, stern and defensive, encouraged by the school administration to not let many of these SCMs get passed... I shrink into my chair, the words clustering behind my tongue. I can't say anything. While I could normally roll off a whole list of reasons why Creative Writing and Social Change deserved its own sector of studying, my mind went blank. Something in me got triggered and threatened. I felt small and instead of being the strong, opinionated Victoria I am and try to be, I began to cry. I left that meeting feeling wholly defeated, embarrassed, ashamed of myself... and angry at the bottom of it all for the man who just made me feel like this.

I didn't feel safe there. And I couldn't be at a place to emotionally feel safe there where the other person had the same demographic setup of another person who had repeatedly traumatized and threatened me in the past, and similarly, this person didn't try to understand me either. He just yelled at me about how he couldn't understand.

An uncanny resemblance?

Fortunately, in that scenario, I had a small handful of teachers willing to go to bat for me - partially believing that yes, creative writing and social change should be its own area of study... and partially afraid that if this didn't get passed, I would follow through with my promise of dropping out of college entirely. Similarly, Dawn saw what I was doing and tried to be the medium to help me understand the validity of another branch of feminism, and why it has metaphorically "dropped out" to have its own viewpoint heard.

I'm aware that that metaphor is on the border between "awful" and "awesome." Just roll with it? Please? Haha.

Point is: I appreciate when my friends keep me in check like this. And I've now gained a different perspective on how to approach feminism and feminist discussions. While I may not be overtly aware of how all of my biases may manifest, I will now ask myself, as a Trauma Feminist, does everyone feel safe in this discussion? is someone shying away from the conversation or getting angry with the conversation because they do not feel safe? and most importantly, what can I do to make this a safe environment for everyone to speak and be heard?

All in all, actually, this tends to remind me of a quote from a book that I've never read, but that which one of my closest friends tends to love dearly: Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie.

"In second grade there were classroom rules hanging from the ceiling. The only one I can remember now seems like it would be a good rule for life. 'Everyone must feel safe.' Safe to be themselves, physically safe, safe to say what they think, just safe. That's the best rule I can think of." (13)
- Rachel Corrie

why are your blog and formspring one in the same? Are you still planning on focusing on issues of gender equality? Do you feel as if you have drifted from that aim at all?

My blog and formspring aren't one and the same. I don't link all my answers from my formspring to my blog, just ones that are relevant to my overall mission. I do still plan on focusing on issues of gender equality, but I also stated in my blog that I would be addressing mental health/emotional issues, non-profit issues, and language issues. I.E. Anything I feel helps me on the path towards my main goal of one day establishing a non-profit based on providing writing therapy for sexual assault survivors.

Right now, I've notably been addressing more mental health issues. The only reason there's been more formspring updates and less content is because of the stress I've been under with my move (settling in, trying to find a job, etc.) which isn't very conducive to writing or reading. I've been bookmarking a lot of stories from women's media sources and definitely have a handful of blog entries lined up that I plan on getting to within the next few days. Especially because of that blog carnival tomorrow ;)

I will actually be writing an addendum post tonight on my "What is a Feminist" post. And then will begin my draft for the wonderful "THIS IS WHAT A YOUNG FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE" blog carnival tomorrow. I certainly appreciate that you're reading along, though, and am glad you brought this up. Hopefully, as this blog matures, the intertwining of these issues will be done more flawlessly and cohesively, so you can see where I'm coming from.

Thank you for the question!

Ask me anything

what is passion?

I think I love this question if only because no one's asked it of me before and it's so intrinsic to my nature. Brilliant. Let's hope I do a good job of explaining it, rather than feeling speechless in approaching it because it's such second nature.

Passion is being beyond boundaries, it is effortless and freeing. It is the natural you. It is indulging yourself in what really motivates you, excites you, engages you, makes you happy. It is irresistible. It is the part of you that will never tire, always aching for more. It is hunger seeking satisfaction, always. Is is steady in its searching, although perhaps intense. It never surrenders. It wants, it loves, and it never abandons you even in your darkest times. It wants you to succeed, for passion will liberate you and give you meaning, place you truly within your own life force. And it wants you to feel its presence and use it with all your best intentions (as your passion will always have this in mind). It is electrifying, stimulating, and symbiotic. It aims to connect everything in you that remains loose, unconnected, frazzled, and beaten down - it aims to make you healthy and whole, satisfied.

Ask me anything

thoughts on marriage?

I think marriage is great for the right people. Let me elaborate: I'm a really cynical person when it comes to relationships, and especially marriage. The statistics speak for themselves: 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and evolutionary psychology taught me most of them end within the first 5 years, and then even more within the first 10 years. However, I'm also a sentimentalist, and I've seen cases where people are married for years upon years and are still in love with each other - and I think that's awesome, and that those cases are a sign that marriage can truly work. Perhaps my opinion on marriage then is that it should be more respected than it is: recognized for the importance it was originally given, that you are bound to it and this person for life (and that that should be taken seriously rather than lightly). Or maybe people need to grow more patience with each other and really work to solve their problems as the years come along. I couldn't really fairly say, as I've never technically been in a relationship.

Personally, I think if the situation were to arise for me, I'd prefer a civil union. I feel like it'd be more honest - that while true love remains through all the tough times and the changes, not all of us find our true love the first time around even if we think we do. I like the flexibility of it - and with this divorce rate the way it is, it almost seems like the more honest option. But I also think the right to get married should be open for anyone who wishes to get married, and that the fight against allowing gay marriage is ridiculous.

Ask me anything

Writer's Block; Finding the Right Way

The next few blog posts written here will perhaps seem a bit confessional, but I promise they completely have to do with the mission and integrity of this blog. And I hope they can be of some use to other people as they are generally experiences I would not wish to repeat and would not wish anyone to blunder upon.

For the past year and a half, I worked as a writing tutor at Fort Lewis College. It is perhaps the job I loved the most out of all the jobs I've had. Not specifically for one reason or another - for to say I didn't love my other jobs for certain reasons would be a lie. However, I loved this job particularly because of how naturally it came to me. How soothing it was.

It was second nature to me: to consistently re-work the phrasing of my own articulations, to analyze the details in a definition, to expand my vocabulary. To help others with it was a true joy - it trascended me. It was: let's help you get a good grade, let's make this essay sound awesome, let's put your concept into something that sounds beautiful. One could say my love of reading fueled this, as it's been shown how much reading enhances vocabulary. Even in arenas as trite as the SATs, I realized how easy word acquisition was for me. How once you become an avid reader, it becomes easy for you to assimilate new words into your vernacular - you begin to look at words as a small thrill, an ambiguous challenge. The meaning of it becomes derived from the sentence(s) surrounding it. Meanings breed within you until one day you realize you're talking with words you barely even realized you knew - ones you perhaps heard someone use in a conversation or a commercial or maybe ones you saw in a summary of a book... Or does that just happen to me? Either way, it was catharsis.

And I couldn't even tell you how exactly it registers as catharsis to me - either because it was something I knew and loved, or simply because of the level of neurosis that was required in successfully attempting it. The structure, the beautiful hierarchal decadence of words to choose from. The specificity, the elaboration - how easily a phrase could be remembered, a political speech passed down for decades, what quotes are regurgitated for their ingenious articulation. For me, it was simply too easy to see how words controlled the very functions of our beings and our place in the world, how things got passed on. Words were (and are) seductive to me: they could make or break you. Audience, point of view, etc... It was all formulaic.

To reduce the sentiment, there is a scene in White Oleander where Astrid talks about her mother, Ingrid, being a writer and how she "could agonize for hours ver whether to write an or the." And there was something so compelling about that.

However, there's a breaking point to it - the irony of irones. You can't think about it. For god's sake, do not think about writing the perfect draft your first time around - I would always tell people that, "Don't think, just write." And actually, I think I got that perfect little summarized bit of advice from the movie, Finding Forrester, but it seems so apt. The more you think about your wording, the structure of your written intent, etc... the more it seems to fall to shambles. Because writing is about feelings. And freedoms definitely don't follow convention, so why should writing?

Write it first, then think about it.

Yet, ironically, I became unsynchronized. For all the papers I edited, I knew I hadn't written a creative thing in months (and now, for over a year). For everything interesting thing I read, I anxiously would realize how long it'd been since I read a full book. Something had changed.

College.

My college experience could be described, at best, as a strange and erratic occurrence. I graduated in three years after transferring twice and attending three different colleges (and somehow, amongst all this, took a semester off). I took 44 credits within my last year and worked a minimum of 10-13 hours a week. I left my initial college with its hippie agenda to only fight to construct my own major at a college in Colorado. To add to the fun statistics: I've lived in four different states in the past three years of my life.

How does this all add up? And what does it have to do with the sudden disappearance of my complete connection to writing?

Environment. It'll make or break you - and my writing and reading, two of the things I love the most, began to reflect that this past year.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in New York, and feeling extremely bitter about the bitterness surrounding me, I decided I needed to leave the state. I couldn't handle my hometown, which happened to be located in one of the most expensive counties in the United States - and I was disgusted with how pampered a lot of kids my age were, and was also annoyed with their mindless self-indulgence. It all felt horribly fake to me. And it was this set of feelings that led to my second mini-transition in life: going to Hampshire College in Massachusetts.

Hampshire College is a private liberal arts school located in the valley of Western Mass, and has a reputation for being ridiculously liberal. There are no grades, no tests, no majors, and no credits - instead, it advertises a self-designed curriculum and a supplementary system of "Divisions (Divs)" to keep their accreditation. Having spent most of my high school years feeling being shoved into situations I didn't like that usually involved a mass amount of standardized testing, and trying to get into the county's one public arts school for Creative Writing (and failing), I thought: "this school is perfect for me! I've always known exactly what I wanted to do!" And sure enough, I got in, and everyone (even the Hampshire alum who interviewed me) thought this would indeed be the perfect school for me.

I lasted one semester there, my sanity unravelling to such a dangerous extent that my friends were begging me to not go back (the only thing that really did tempt me to go back was being accepted into a 300 level poetry class taught by Martin Espada). And so, I was in limbo, living in NY again for a month with my friend and her family as I prepared for a move to Chicago, where my mom had moved my senior year of high school.

I lasted about only half a year in Chicago before moving to Colorado in what would be the most delusional pseudo-masochistic thing I have ever possibly done to myself. While the two years I spent in Colorado were rich with life experience and were likely more good than bad, I can't help but regret them a little - in the sense that I wish I knew then what I know now. But that's likely a typical human dilemma.

How did you end up all the way out here [Colorado]? I would frequently get asked. And I always cringed before offering up the answer. I felt the true no frills answer made me look pathetic, and I always have hated the idea of my own vulnerability and/or naivety. But here it honestly is: I found out about Fort Lewis College through an ex who was supposed to go to Hampshire College (and whom I met through Hampshire), but lacked the financial resources to do so. When I ended up hating Hampshire College and he ended up not going, we were pseudo-long-distance dating, and he kept trying to persuade me to come out there. I finally caved and gave the school a chance and ended up liking it. I had decided to not stay in Chicago for personal reasons, and needed to transfer somewhere - of the three schools I applied to, I was accepted to two (one in Chicago, the other: FLC) and was rejected from the other. It seemed I was going to Fort Lewis - but, when I broke the news to him, he broke up with me.

Like an idiotic wounded gazelle, I trekked forward unto Colorado anyway, trying to ignore the limp I was carrying with me. The next two years could've been equivalent to my experience at Hampshire, except in slow motion. At Hampshire, I had a lot of problems with the people surrounding me (at the college specifically), and at Fort Lewis, it was the same thing - I just didn't realize it. People at Fort Lewis all seemed so laidback, happy, fun - and yet, I found myself completely... disinterested? annoyed? The thing that was so persistently on the surface kept dragging me away from the thing nagging at me from beneath they surface: they were all running away from their problems just like I was. The only difference was - they ran away from their problems with partying, drinking, marijuana, and a mysterious amount of shoplifting - and I dealt with my problems by writing epic-length poems, going on walks, and talking about my problems persistently to anyone close to me. This isn't to say I never tried their way - it just never worked for me, something that was reinforced while I was there.

So while people at Fort Lewis had large parties and talked about... whatever average college students talk about at parties, I kept in my own bubble knowing that if I was extricated from it, I'd bore everyone else at that party around me by talking about things like writing and feminism and school. While they went bouldering, skiing, and climbing, I cursed out the winter weather from inside my rear wheel drive car and practically heaved my way up a tiny mountain going "I GREW UP ON SEA LEVEL. I WAS NOT MADE FOR THIS. oh thank god we're at a resting point." While they had fun, I began to ambitiously load up my credit level, going "I need to get out of college. Wherever I transfer, I will inevitably hate it. It's just college. I need to be done with college." Plus, I was kinda a little done with Durango.

You may perhaps see a theme with my decision making: "I WILL DEFY LOGIC AND ENVIRONMENT, AND PRETEND I AM IMPERVIOUS TO ALL. BECAUSE I AM VICTORIA. RAAAAAAAAAAAR."

And thus, continuing in my theme, I enrolled in 44 credits my last year of school while working a minimum of 10 hours a week, ignoring everyone who called me "insane." It took about two months into the year for everything to come crashing down - homework assignments became laughable, going to class was questionable, migraines and nausea were persistent, and I literally started screaming and throwing books against the wall. Not only did I really hate school at this point (as I really had my whole college career), but I hated that it was destroying the things I loved. That I couldn't look at a book without thinking of a deadline. That I didn't have the time to write anything other than something that was going to be judged and handed a letter grade. That I was so nauseated and had such pain from the stress, my migraines were chronic and lack of nutrition dropped me down to 103 pounds at 5'6". I took an incomplete in one course to only spend my winter break working 20 hours a week and doing the work to get the credit for the course, completing a 47 page paper on "Feminist Sociolinguistics." And then propelled myself into basically the same schedule the next semester, minus four credits. Which then lead to hospitalization due to severe insomnia, continual sickness, and "crawling towards the finish line" as my therapist put it.

I'm still detoxing from the experience. To sound even more insane than the aforementioned paragraph, I still do not regret my decision. I needed to be done with undergraduate studies and Durango, so I finished it - at a pace I would recommend to no one else other than me (and I wouldn't have even recommended it to me). The environment was all off - ever since some trauma that occurred my senior year in high school, I began to see things more fluidly and it became stressful for me to adhere to deadlines and the type of structure an undergraduate education promises. I found it hard to relate to people who ran from all their troubles when I realized I needed to stop running from all the trauma I had endured throughout my life and face it head on, so I could actually emotionally mature. And in the intensity that is me: PTSD, anxiety disorder, bipolar, borderline ME - that meant, all or nothing. So I threw all my emotions in... to end up, months later, still really emotionally depleted. It was evidently a bargain I was willing to make.

How is any of this relevant?

I now live back in Massachusetts again - ironically in the same area Hampshire is located. And this time, it's relieving. The two years I spent in Durango were years I spent realizing the problem wasn't me, it was what I was surrounding myself with. My emotional intensity isn't a problem: it's surrounding myself with people who can't handle emotional intensity that's the problem. My workaholism isn't a problem: it's about finding the people with the same work ethic as mine so that we can positively support one another for both the good and bad sides of workaholism. I had a lot of situations in Durango where people felt the obvious solution to my problem was that I needed to party or go to a gym or do this or that. No, the obvious solution to my problem is I need to live in a positive environment that encourages, fosters, and excites the person that I am rather than draining it and telling it to not exist.

I feel the need to bring this up if only particularly because it has a lot to do with what I'm struggling with trying to start a life post-undergrad, and a lot to do with what a lot of my friends are struggling with when it comes to making decisions: "do I follow my passion or do I follow what's logical/economically feasible/expected?" Having spent weeks in MA applying for over at least 50 jobs at this point and not really hearing back from anyone, it's safe to say I've grappled with this issue still. Until recently. Last week I was randomly and excitably put into the second round of elimination/interviews with two different nonprofits in CT. I sat on this for the weekend, and then decided to take myself out of the running for both positions. Many people, who are watching me struggle a lot financially lately, can't help but wonder WTF.

In making this decision, a strong factor was remembering a quote I had read somewhere about telling if you had a positive or negative relationship with a person. It said, think about how you feel after you leave hanging out with a person - do you feel energized, excited, refreshed? or do you feel drained, tired, depressed? If you feel the former, you're in a positive relationship. If you feel the latter, you're in a negative relationship. Seems simple enough - but I don't think many people take that into consideration when they're making decisions, largely due to a perceived "obligation" in one sense or another. I realized that in taking these jobs, based off what I knew from them already, that I would leave feeling emotionally drained and stressed, something I don't need after this past year. It didn't seem worth it to me.

"I'll go bankrupt for my passion," is what I concluded to myself and other people.

Emotional needs are just as important as physical and financial needs. And everyday, I try to remind myself and other people, that even logically you will likely end up being more successful following your passion than doing anything else you might be settling for. There's a difference in attitude. And that attitude can make or break you.

Use me as a walking, living, breathing example. Listen to what your body and heart are saying you really need. Do what feels natural.

that last question isn't meant to sound rude but seriously, how are you planning to pay the cost of living by "not being someone who does the easy thing"?

Are you crazy?