leonineantiheroine:

judith butler, “against ethical violence”, giving an account of oneself

anti-hyper-mastery. pro-some-fragmentation. “…it does not follow that, if a life needs some narrative structure, then all of life must be rendered in narrative form.” 

"story demands sadism, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an end."

teresa de lauretis, “desire in narrative” 

leonineantiheroine:

Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1997), p. 188.

practically everything i said in the last week, not even that differently: 

1. there were a lot of trauma studies people in my various classes but trauma theory creeps me out because of aesthetics (“indestructible inner life”) and assumptions about subjectivity.
2. although i kind of like the 90swoman familiarity in a sort of “my mom would have this book next to her bed” kind of way.
3. i’m used to talking about radical vulnerability, not bodily integrity, although i am interested in reassembling—or maybe just assembling—a body. tumblr and photo booth are crucial. 
4. “generations,” i know, see: queer theory. 
5. i don’t know if the telling of the trauma story inevitably plunges the survivor into profound grief. (though all the therapists wanted to note that the end of the relationship didn’t happen until i started talking about phil’s death in therapy. but.) 
6. which trauma is the trauma and how many survivors are there? 
7. i am in no danger of resisting mourning out of pride, it’s possible i take pride in mourning, though pride is so gross, i prefer the commitment to being casual. anyway, that idea is really good, i can see its allure, and i don’t know if any of the literary trauma theory i’ve read accounts for it. luckily there are heavily aestheticized mourning practices.
8. we could call “reframing” “misreading” and i would like this better. 
9. i am still not into that new fiona apple song because i do not, in fact, want to feel everything, i already did and it sucked. however: feeling as an act of resistance, including revolutionary hysteria 

I can’t personally get into “feminist oversharing” because incitement to discourse.

ourcatastrophe:

in all seriousness, when I think about “oversharing” between women I think about being in my early teens and making up appropriate crushes so I would have something to talk about.  because otherwise I would be shut out, because we had to trade vulnerabilities, but what actually scared me — the fact that I didn’t understand and couldn’t conclusively label my sexuality — was both too much of a secret to share and paradoxically might not even be understood as me showing vulnerability.  and I think about how “appropriate” meant so much more than even just a dude, it meant masculine, it meant not significantly shorter than me, it meant exclusively heterosexual, and actually, it meant white.  it was understood that that was the acceptable range of dudes I could have a crush on.  and I think about how that shaped my understanding of my sexuality for many years and it took me a long time to realise that I had other options that were better.  like, “sharing” does not just uncover what is there, sometimes it constructs things, and sometimes those things are not great. 

it wasn’t a “mean girls” situation or anything, girls weren’t out to manipulate or hurt each other, and everyone was dealing with this stuff, a number of us turned out years later to have radically different sexualities than we really talked about then.  and there were also a lot of times that I was able to talk through shit that was really helpful to me, that I never would’ve been able to discuss if there was a clear boundary of Appropriateness — I’m so thankful that I grew up in an environment when it wasn’t really necessary to constantly be on my guard about who knew about my mental health issues, for example. but when girls talk about only wanting to hang out with the guys I think this is mostly what they are talking about, freedom from the injunction to overshare, freedom from disclosure. 

I also have mixed feelings about venting and confessional writing and it all comes down to the same thing: emotional sharing needs to be understood as not just freedom but sometimes an expectation or demand or constitutive force. 

1. when i think about “oversharing” (which is never how i think of it), i don’t think of it as being just between women. although i do remember a lot of situations in my twenties when i was in groups of women who wanted to talk about how they lost their virginity, which is an entire construct that i am opposed to, and feeling like i had to make my story fit some preconceived narrative and this making me miserable. also it’s entirely possible that i trotted out my entire “i don’t believe in virginity as a construct” and bummed out everyone at the birthday party. so if feminist oversharing is bumming people out by vocalizing your feminist principles, then i can personally get super into it. but trading untruths does suck and i mostly got new friends and a new life so i could…speak. and be silent.      
2. but also men sharing is a definite thing. also, since some men don’t really or regularly share with each other—as noted, the reason some girls would prefer to hang out with them, especially as a group—they do the majority of their sharing with women, which can be a burden. receptacle, “safe haven,” etc. 
3. sharing definitely constructs things. (there are all of these essays by second wave feminists about how much they hated consciousness-raising because the most self-confident women always took over and defined the parameters of what could be said for the rest of the group or because they actually liked their husbands but felt like they couldn’t admit it.) of course, silence constructs things, too. it’s all a complex negotiation, which is why reinventing. 
4. being forced to share, or having one’s vulnerabilities not treated as vulnerabilities, is terrible. i wish i could remember what the links were from when others discussed this before.
5. “venting” is a word i never use. probably because it connotes communicating about something for the sole reason of making yourself feel better. i mean, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make yourself feel better. but “venting” could also be a form of politicized speech which is just not being recognized as such. and speaking politically won’t necessarily make you feel better, and a lot of times it will make you feel worse, and bum out the other party guests, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. 
6. i also hate the words “oversharing,” “sharing,” and maybe “confessional” as well. they all sound like therapeutic jargon, which i am aesthetically opposed to. but maybe hating these words is self-hatery, since they’re all coded feminine. and i don’t hate femininity. 
7. regardless, i don’t think that i think about emotional sharing in terms of freedom. oh, wait, yes i do. 

sl33pcr33p:

hysteriarama:

I feel major feminist boredom when talking about rape. Like it feels bad, it happens a lot, we get it, but I don’t know how to talk about it and not feel tragic in a really trite way.

Whatever violation is borecore

Puke on my face

OK THIS IS IMPORTANT TO ME BECAUSE

i can talk about almost all of my traumas and do reference them in a bored way like, oh yeah this because rape, or blah blah my dead dad, or alcoholism or abuse or whatever it’s all boring because it just is

i am because that is

but it really bothers other people like hand wringing like “i’m so sorry” like pats on my shoulder like so trite and like i don’t want you to be weird about it i just want to be able to talk about it because it doesn’t really matter to me in a context of tragedy, it just is, and we should talk about it because it is, when it’s relevant, not for pathos and not for oppression points or whatever

i hate when people use their traumas for pathos, unless you’re doing it to get a dude to shut up, because shut up dudes

and i think a lot of it is because i never really recognized them as traumas and by the time i did they were so ingrained in my psyche that they don’t feel out of place or like i should identify them in a way that is separate from the healthier parts of my life

it just is

it all just is

and it’s boring

also important. “i don’t want you to be weird about it i just want to be able to talk about it.” this is totally part of why i casually mention my miscarriage and the psych ward so much. so that it is okay that i can mention my miscarriage and the psych ward casually. and so that anyone/everyone can. relevant. also, yes to using it to get dudes to shut up, since fuck you, you actually have no idea and you should know that you have no idea and that your not having any idea is a privilege. 

hysteriarama:

If I can’t find rape boring it’s not my revolution.

I have to go fix my hair.

i was telling my ex-boyfriend about being sexually assaulted (??????) in 7th and 8th grade and he kept getting angry at me for being too blase and asking, over and over, “why didn’t you tell the teacher?” and i was like “huh? i was in love with one of them” and “it was complicated” and “because i was 12” and “i don’t tell on people” (to one of the nuns?) and “you know that this happens to girls all the time” and “go watch welcome to the dollhouse” and “why are you trying to control me after the fact?” of course, this is the same person we called “bummer narc” behind his back and who called the cops on me, so.

point is: don’t tell me i’m not feeling appropriately about what happened to my body. not to mention that feeling bored about what happened to your body could also resonate in all kinds of different ways—see feminist boredom tumblr discussion 2012—none of which one should get harassed about. i just fixed my hair, too. 

tonight i told my maybe-marxist friend about wanting to read capital for real this summer and his wife said she knows of a feminist women’s group reading marx and that we should join. i have never considered that anything this great could happen. 

we also discussed our friend origin story, and how when i was a junior editor i told jennifer baumgardner that i was working on a beauty story for nylon about refusing to depilate and did she know anyone to interview and she was like “i had a co-worker at ms. who had really impressive body hair.” i sent an earnest email to L., who agreed to be interviewed about the politics of not shaving her arms and legs. tonight her husband said, reverently, “it was beautiful.” 

this is the karl marx sticker that has been on my many refrigerators since barbara gave them to us, as a gift of course, in fetish class in 2009. 

the only way to respond to a decadent crisis is with decadence

• the two days last weekend i spent in bed.
• a drink on monday night with leon, who suggested craft bar, which we were standing next to at the time, but is still impressive in its resistance to graduate school stereotypes, and comes a mere week or two after josh asked, post-brunch, “want to get a glass of champagne at the bar?” more than one. 
• later, drinks at aliza’s to finish up the vodka from the brunch she had for her father. when i arrived she was like “i guess i forgot that most people can’t have brunch in the middle of the day on a wednesday” and i was like “i can have brunch in the middle of the day on a wednesday.”  
• a quick sake that tastes like body fluid last night. i came home early, though, which is uncharacteristic enough to be decadent. 
• made an appointment for a keratin treatment at one of the fanciest salons in new york and said yes when they asked if i want to see my stylist tomorrow, even though that means i can’t change my mind, which, given my current financial situation, edges close to reckless on the willful-reckless scale, but i can’t really function if i’m unhappy with my hair, and now i won’t be unhappy with my hair for a minimum of 6 months.  
• emailed my father and asked for a loan, though before this past christmas i had never taken money from my parents, not as a loan or a gift, during any part of my adulthood, i left the few holiday-related checks uncashed, even during those three months i was a magazine assistant, since i did not want to be indebted to anyone, materially or psychologically, but medical bills change things, and i already spent several weeks being quietly taken care of in a huge house, plus that trip to florida, so it’s a little late for that kind of pride, better to productively and necessarily test my own boundaries.
• got my nails done. overtipped, always. 
• plans in tribeca tomorrow night. 
• decided that it might be an axiomatic truth that the only way to respond to a decadent crisis (2010-2012) is with decadence. on friday i’m having dinner at a friend’s who i think is a real marxist, and who cooked an extravagant organic meal of pork chops and salad and french fries with lots of wine and dessert the last time i was at his apartment, and i think i should run this theory by him. in related news: the next thing i want to read is capital but it’s over a thousand pages, so maybe the timing is wrong, and i’ll just look at the annotated copy of a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia sitting next to me. 

jenny holzer, from the survival series, 1983-1985 

lazz:

it’s important to me to act like a hysterical accident victim  -david wojnarowicz