Comparative anxiety in Bulgaria and Australia

The Mall of Sofia was welcomingly bright and shiny, and I strolled about with no particular purpose, enjoying the respite from the Bulgarian winter. All of a sudden I spotted a chocolate shop, and, lured by the advertising of Belgian treats, I wandered inside. Waiting for me to approach her was a thin girl with long hair and no trace of a smile. I hovered near the counter, wanting to ask for assistance, but anticipating the rude indifference common to many customer service personnel in this part of the world. In the end I pointed to something behind the counter with more confidence than I felt. "I'll have -- that!"

My boldness had an interesting and unfortunate effect on this girl. She felt unable to relate to my assertiveness, and I could sense a strong bout of self-critique from the way she moved her body. It became painful to watch her torturing herself so I was glad to leave, but she reminded me of the kind of anxieties I was brought up to entertain in my early childhood.

Australians are comparatively assured in comparison. They have a lot of social, political and economic systems to fall back on. They're part of the Western tradition of capitalist democracy, considered to be the least imperfect political system by many. Meanwhile, Bulgaria has a system of corrupt politicians with high levels of poverty and widespread discontent. Grumbling is a way of life, even a civic responsibility. 

Having lived in Sydney since the age of seven, I have learned to be more relaxed and less anxious than the average Bulgarian I meet. I am probably more self-critical than the average Australian, and can relate more to other immigrants and their own watered-down anxieties. Not a lot of people share my cultural mix (mostly due to there being so few Bulgarians), so I sometimes have to make room for it. A space like this one is good for such purposes.

Same old, same old

bell hooks made two interesting assertions in her talk with Gloria Steinem yesterday: The patriarchy has no gender, and also that the patriarchy is present in all the men she is aware of, that she could possibly seek a relationship with. bell hooks is a brilliant woman - what follows the second statement is a questioning of her own interest in starting a [heteronormative] relationship.
The more men I meet, the more I am convinced that men are not for me. I still hold up hope (never say never, right?), but in practical terms I am looking for a woman to have a relationship with. But is the patriarchy, similarly, present in all women? ... Is it present in me?

Making it personal

I've always been a fan of the first-person narrative. It feels more honest to acknowledge my subjectivity than to try to pretend I have a universal point of view. Attempts at objectivity, in my view, are simply attempts to match that dubious gold standard set by countless generations of writers before me, themselves misguided. It's an unpopular view I hold, and I'm aware that by regularly highlighting my postmodern stance I alienate a lot of people who might otherwise enjoy my writing, but it wouldn't be me to neglect this feature of my work.

I wouldn't be the same person if I didn't know that one of my favourite authors values the view that postmodernism is to blame for many a modern ill. I would be a more popular one, and perhaps a less humble one. Recently a friend of mine wished me a good night by expressing relief that I 'shared her thoughts.' I don't believe it's possible for two people to have the same mental processes, since my present-day thoughts are a result of everything that's ever gone through my mind in the past - a unique series of events which no-one is able to replicate (let alone fathom).

Yet we persist with the 'objectivity' lens. It's the hallmark of choice for much quality journalism, the primary narrative tool of scientific discourse, and unlikely to go out of fashion anytime soon. This post addresses it because it keeps popping up here, there and everywhere, preventing me from fully enjoying a piece, and robbing its readers of vital insights that can only arise when one admits to being beautifully limited to this funny thing called being a human being. Instead, countless talented writers struggle to erase the signs of their uniqueness. Isn't the reliance on cliches a testament to the mentality that believes in a universal truth? Objectivity is a disingenuous thing, the concern with it eating away at a writer's belief in the power of their own voice. It's much braver to lose the fake consciousness and learn how to celebrate the first-person perspective as the key to the deepest truth you can tell - the truth of yourself.

Streetside Glances

"Eye contact is also a way of expressing power. Men may stare at women and women are not supposed to stare in return but to decorously cast down their eyes."
- 'Beauty and Misogyny' by Sheila Jeffreys

Ever since reading the above quote, I've decided that it's my prerogative to stare back at any man who makes aggressive eye contact with me. I do this despite the strain it puts on me. I am making a point. Most of the time the men don't take my defiance into account in their wider paradigm on gender equality. But sometimes they do. The last time it happened, the man in question apologised wordlessly, looked down and away. As a feminist performance artist, this is the kind of reaction I'm after. It makes all the uncomfortableness of the unflinching staring back worth it, and reminds me that I am making a difference.

*

Heads Up

I recently made friends with a remarkable woman who helps survivors of psychiatry safely discontinue the taking of antipsychotics or antidepressants, and helps them stay healthy. I noticed that she often droops her head, as if ashamed of her mental differences. I've resolved to always look for ways that my mind is fruitful, imaginative and useful (it always in, in some way, even when that way is not obvious to the outside world). I have as much to be proud of as the next person in terms of mental capacity, if not more. I write beautiful prose and exquisite poems. I do my best to contribute to society in whatever way I can manage. I am special. Just like you. So I keep my head up, look people in the eye, and subvert the narratives which privilege non-survivors.

Psychiatrists would like it if I paid more attention to their in(s)ane theories about how to manage my mind, but I think they're the ones with the problem. It would be a gross perversion of nurture if they were the happy, secure ones, and I was not. I choose to be happy and, yes, secure, in and of my own mind. If they don't like it, that's just another of their problems.

Why I lost 30kgs and put it back on again

So there I was, enjoying my lighter physique, experiencing a boost to my health and feeling more vital. And then they started to look at me. Men, with their predatory smirks and cunning 'male gazes'. I felt more self-conscious about my body than ever. I was conscious of representing myself as a sexual object and not knowing how to operate outside the ideology that led me to do so. I was worried that my new, 'more attractive' appearance made me more vulnerable to sexual violence. It made me more vulnerable to problematic heterosexual circumstances. I didn't want this.
And so I gained the weight back. I'm newly invisible to the average male, and this invisibility protects me. Why lust after my body when there are so many other bodies that are much more appealing? I suppose I'll never be immune to the libidos of some who have a fetish for big women, but they are part of a minority I rarely experience.
I don't know how healthier women do it. I don't want to dispense the 'keep your distance' defence at every step that I take. I don't want to feel that I am a one-women army, disarming or ignoring a million micro-aggression per week. When you are reduced to sexual object status, you start doubting your right to your own agency.
It's not good for my health to have added 30kgs to my weight, but I felt it was what I had to do to keep my sanity. I had become accustomed to doing without the vicious male sizing-up, and this brief interruption of that narrative was unwelcome. Of course, I still value the healthier habits I adopted, but I don't have the luxury of attaining them. Not just yet. Maybe in a decade, when my fertility is no longer, and I become invisible due to my age, I can safely resume sounder eating and movement practices. For now, I have no wish to wage a war every time I situate myself in a public place.

Structuralism & Sexism

I have taken many a personality test in my time. One of the most popular of these is the Myers-Brigg test, which has sixteen results and splits the world into archetypes based on four categories - extroversion or introversion, sensation or intuition, judiciousness or perceptiveness and thinking or feeling. This post is primarily concerned with the last category.
Thinking vs. feeling is a binary which deeply implicates gender. Throughout modern history we have the commonly accepted rationale that men are the traditional custodians of rational thought, while women are to be found embodying the realm of the emotions. Women have been described as 'hysterical' in innumerable contexts. Less extremely, as 'too emotional', 'unable to reason', and so forth. 'Too reasonable' or 'too logical' don't work as insults, on the other hand. Our patriarchal societies prioritise thinking over feeling, putting the characteristic associated with males on a pedestal and reserving emotions for those so-called inferior beings, the women.
We separate the thinking and feeling personalities just like we separate gender into female and male - without a second thought. But it's actually impossible to separate the two because both thinking and feeling are part of the same process. Thinking has an emotional valency, and emotion cannot happen in the absence of mental processes. To act as a human being is to perform both simultaneously - however we haven't figured that out, because dualism and structuralism still make up an awful lot of popular theory. When will we wake up?

A culture of conflict

A preoccupation with violence
A romance with war
A fetish for fistfights
I simply want more

The annals of peace
Lie unperused
While we hold
A moment's silence
For the soldiers' abuse