Someone once said “The personal is political.” I have yet to fully grapple with the meaning of this, but it rings and reverberates for me. This is about my “personal” and how it intersects with the inertial academic structure that I have sought to be part of. Somehow this hasn’t been terribly easy.
I try to forget that feminism, the fight for women’s equal rights, the fight for any “others’ ” rights is still necessary. I prefer to (at least pretend) to believe that we have moved beyond massive inertia of institutionalized sexism, racism and classism. That people in power are fundamentally good and out to help others. How could highly educated, intensely intelligent folks be anything else? I have been lucky that many of the people I have been privileged to work with are like this. Then I am reminded that I am totally and fundamentally wrong in this utopian ideal. That we are at our cores apes with base gross needs to protect resources at the expense of the “other” and in this shared biological burden we are both capable of and victims of immense cruelty. Myself included. And I get sad. And I ask myself, “How do I deal with this, in me and in others?” If I, with all my privilege and seeming belonging, can’t hold out and accomplish becoming a scientist what hope is there for descendants of slaves, for example. Fucking impossible. There is a responsibility there.
It is often in the back of my mind that less than 100 years ago I would have had 10+ kids, no education, no washing machine, and no time to indulge a penchant for intellectual pursuits. Quilts and the Bible, perhaps some gardening would have been my options for scientific and intellectual pursuits, if I had a spare moment. If my husband was kind. My grandma did not have birth control for most of her life and was one of 12 children, had seven herself (that lived). There is a heaviness there, and again a responsibility. I have been given a great opportunity, a precious one.
So here I am at a (somewhat) prestigious university in the final stretch of my PhD. A bit broken as many of us are. Feeling a bit like I do not belong, that I am other here. But again I am so much a geek and I love science so much that I cannot imagine belonging anywhere else. I have seen enough people go through it to know that this last year is usually a painful process. A bit like giving birth, being born. It often fundamentally changes you, for better or worse. Some fail, some leave, some resign to something less than true success. But the finality is inevitable, no matter how you feel about it. Graduate school must end and some other state begins.
Along with my own struggle to get it done, I often feel I need to get strong, fight or not fight or get enlightened or something to make this place I was born into better for people like me, for me, for us all. To make me better, to succeed. To not feel so upset about the injustices I percieve. So at least nice white girls can have a seat at the power table. So that I can stop hurting others. So that we can all stop hurting. So that we can save the planet from us and our greed. (The utopian ideals do cling.) So that I can be successful at becoming: becoming a scientist, a highly effective person, a role model, strong. For me this internal yet also outward struggle has always been part of the process of being in academia, however reluctant I am to embrace it.
In my process of attempting to take on power in the world there are always echos of the past. Echos of someone burdened to be pretty and cute and all the psychosis that brings. Of an abused young mother. Of someone who seemingly lost everything over and over, through poverty and death and loss upon loss. Of an inherently disempowered little girl child who has lost or never had protectors. Girls are not supposed to be in your face powerful, but demure and accommodating. We are supposed to “take it” (whatever “it” is dished out), and figure out how to smooth everything out, at least for the important men around us. Us apes.
Sometimes through the pain and loss and early imprinting of being a girl I wonder if I am undone, if I am too broken, too incapable to succeed. And I wonder if we are all broken in ways where we cannot help but have it leak out on others, to cause hurt. Clearly this is true for some around us, and I wonder if the trauma is irreparable in all of us to some extent.
So I ask myself, can one be too broken for power? Can one be too damaged? How can one hold power and not hurt others? Is it that one needs to become clean? Is there a process of spiritual purification that can heal me? It seems I do fundamentally believe this, but it is just another utopian ideal? God I hope not. Shakyamuni buddha taught that suffering is unavoidable, part of human existence (again, apes). That there is death and illness and loss. This is fundamentally true. He also taught that there is a way out of this suffering, there is a path. A path he worked very hard to realize. I just hope I can too.
My main problem right now is that seeking this path can often eclipse the “what I am supposed to get done.” That being the dissertation. Suffering eclipses all. But discipline is good, and impulsiveness needs to be squashed, so I tell myself.
A final thought:
I was watching a movie (Then She Found Me) yesterday about a woman who loses and then regains her faith (she’s Jewish), among other things. The movie begins with this “joke” which I find very disturbing:
“There is a Jewish story, an ordinary Jewish joke: A father was teaching his little son to be less afraid, to have more courage by having him jump down the stairs. He put his son on the second stair and said 'jump, and I'll catch you' then on the third stair and said 'jump, and I'll catch you', the little boy was afraid, but he trusted his father and did what he was told and jumped into his arms. The father put him on the next step and then the next, each time telling him 'jump, and I'll catch you'. Then the boy jumped from a very high step, but this time the father stepped back and the boy fell flat on his face. He picked himself up, bleeding and crying, and the father said to him, 'that'll teach you.'"
Other sources have this joke ending with “that will teach you: never trust a Jew, even if it’s your own father.” Which is more disturbing on many levels. In academia, I feel like that kid often. Is this the kind of lesson we really need to take to heart? I am hoping not.
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