@#$%!

My apologies for the previous post. I confess that my admission was a tad bit TMI, and maybe I should have kept that fact to myself. But it was truly just one of those days... in a span of two hours, I had held a lighthearted conversation with an elderly gentleman on the bus, I had experienced anger and frustration with a coworker, and went through a crying fit because I felt fat and inadequate. In the midst of all of this emotional upheaval, perhaps something positive did come out of this rather odd experience. Eventually my head was clear enough to think about all of the ways that I had censored myself this morning. I censored myself when I resisted the urge to tell the elderly white man that I spoke with on the bus that I had intentions to attend the MLK March on the 19th out of fear that he would get the initial impression that I was an extremely pro-Black militant. I censored myself when my coworker not only failed to show backbone in admitting her mistakes, but tried to pin those mistakes on me. I censored myself when I told everyone that my puffy eyes and red nose were the results of allergies as opposed to feelings of discontent. Why had I chosen to do that to myself? I knew that I wasn't militant, I knew that I didn't feel nearly as placid as I looked during that encounter with my coworker, and I knew that I am one of the few people that I know who don't suffer from allergies. So why was I censoring myself?

I thought back to a few of the courses that I took as an undergrad. Of the innumerable studies that I read as a psychology major, a prevalent finding was that women, to varying degrees, are very docile and passive creatures. At the time, it was difficult digesting that. I grew up around too many strong-willed women who seemed to not know what it meant to be neither passive nor docile. I'd never been aggressive, so I knew that there had to be some truth to it. Women are more likely to curb their tongue, watch their actions, and yield to the aggressive party in a conflict more quickly than their male counterparts. Today, I did not want to settle on the assumption that my passiveness was resultant of me being socialized as a girl. I wanted to believe that there was something greater that spoke to me being anything but an emotional woman. It just sounded too cliche. But in all actuality, that is exactly why I did what I did today. Despite the fact that I have so many outspoken friends, I was trained by a traditional mother and grandmother that a woman is to be seen and not heard. This opinion was often reinforced by the majority of my female educators, none more than my high school principal who actually made the declaration during a senior assembly. It wasn't until I got to college that I became familiar with feminist attitudes, and by that time the ideology of the submissive woman had become so ingrained in my psyche that the thought of assuming the role of aggressor and defending one's femininity just seemed to be a risky foreign concept. A woman was to be nothing more than someone who merely existed to quietly acquiesce to the masculine right while simultaneously denying her own presuppositions of what is fair and what is of her own personal benefit. So perhaps this is why I chose not to tell the elderly man about my participation in the upcoming march. As opposed to being a Black person, I did not want him to think that a woman was using her voice to acknowledge the actions of an era that aided in the disestablishment of Jim Crow. But perhaps it was for a different reason that I chose not to explode on my coworker this morning. I didn't want to give those around me the satisfaction of assuming that I was a typical woman who can't control her emotions. It's for that same reason that I chose to lie about my tears so that no one would get the impression that I was soft. I'm pretty sure this isn't healthy. I'll admit that one of the things that I have to work on in the new year is to find a way to release the anxiety attached to expressing myself emotionally. In the words of Audre Lorde,

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood... when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak."

PEACE