Highlights from the Contemporary Women’s Issues Workshop
It was a huge contradiction [to distress] to be at the recent Contemporary Women’s Issues Workshop with over two hundred women who were claiming being female and deciding to take on [confront and do something about] sexism fully and powerfully.
Diane [Balser] talked about female subservience patterns and how we as females don’t escape being in a subservient role, even if we get in “powerful” positions. We have received an enormous amount of training to be silent and subservient, and the patterns remain and need to be discharged “even as the institutions weaken.”
I worked on subservience patterns throughout the weekend. As a white, Catholic and Protestant, raised-middle-class girl, I felt the only paths to closeness and connection were to be extra helpful and accommodating, admit I was “wrong” or “bad” (“atone”), and say I was sorry when I didn’t feel sorry. I was able to protest and rage against that in my sessions.
Another highlight was seeing, in the many demonstrations, powerful, brilliant women struggling with the subservience patterns. It was clear that the struggle is not individual; it is systemic.
A third highlight was meeting with the LBTQ gang of women on Sunday. One thing I wanted them to know as a Queer younger female was how I try to “look good,” as if things are fine and okay, and not show what’s hard. This is a result of sexism, male domination, and Gay oppression.
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 204, July 2021)