A green garden with flowers on black paper. In the middle there is a target with a drawing of a man's face on top of it. The man's eyes are blacked out. The excerpt from my journal describes an anger that I carry.
"When I am objectified by a man, I want to gouge his eyes out to make him feel the same pain and fear as me."
The garden is representative of the innate nurturing characteristic of women. This piece illustrates the constant imposition that straight-identified men often put on women. This face is different to every woman, but each of us has, at one point in our lives, been confronted with one of these predators. I've placed this man's face on the target because I want to reverse the roles. I want to make him feel as vulnerable as I often do. Each occurence of the letter "i" is highlighted in red to bring attention to the fact that the intruder does not go unnoticed.
This anger arises from the constant objectification of women that is built into our social structure, our constitution and the global community. Women are viewed as second-class citizens, and the heat-breaking reality is that because de-moralization is so pervasive in our culture, most people aren't even aware of the damage that occurs every moment.
i came across this passage in 'Women Who Run with the Wolves' by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. i think you're both swimming in the same collective subconcious.
ReplyDelete"While the cause of much human suffering can be traced to negligent fostering, there is also within the psyche an innate contra naturam - 'against nature' force that opposes the positive. It is a derisive and murderous antagonist that is born into us, and even with the best parental nurture, the intruder's sole assignment is to attempt to turn all crossroads into closed roads...
"There is a dark man who inhabits all women's psyches, the innate predator. He is a specific and incontrovertible force which must be memorized and restrained. To restrain the natural predator of the pysche it is necessary for women to remain in possession of all their instinctual powers. Some of these are insight, intuition, endurance, tenacious loving, keen sensing, far vision, acute hearing, singing over the dead, intuitive healing, and tending to their own creative fires. [The intruder/predator] represents a deeply reclusive complex which lurks at the edge of all women's lives, watching, waiting for an opportunity to oppose her.
"All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness. Like a shrewd tracker, the predator senses any interest in him, that is, willing to be prey."