I like my work but not what I transfer onto it.
The reason I wanted other work was so I could have work upon which I had transferred nothing.
People believed one was destined for only one piece of work, the way they believe their spouses are their destined soul mates. I disagree with this and resent the idea that I should suffer with what I have transferred onto this work just in case it might be my soul mate.
In any case, I transferred onto it what I did in Reeducation, whose lemmas were should, should, and should.
You should be someone else.
You should not like to write.
You should not care where you are.
You should be worried about boys.
You should be afraid.
You should, should, should.
You should produce like a machine.
You should be weaker. You should be so affected by everything that you cannot produce like a person, much less like a machine.
All of that is ridiculous, however, and normal people do not believe in it.
But it all comes down to the idea that one cannot be or should not be who one is. The way to counteract that is to remember that it is not only all right, it is actually recommended to be who one is.
Remembering this also makes one a faster producer of such objects as are desired by others, so there is really nothing to lose.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I think women are required to be affected by everything. I now see what my dream’s metaphor was (re. recent comment in moderation).
When I think back over my experiences — certainly in Australia if not before — I realise how much attempt there was to discipline and punish me in not allowing me to express my own authority (over myself, in one instance, or over others in the case where I was expected to teach). Women are denied authority, and the message is, “if you want to succeed in this arena, you must be super sensitive to others, because it is by their judgements, no matter how arbitrary, that you will stand or fall.”
I think I am very traumatised by this denial of my authority in the past. Having the rug pulled out from under you all the time, in order to discipline you to think differently about things takes its toll.
The problem is that this way of “teaching” me has made me less adapative and not more so, over time.
Yes, I am very traumatized by it and it has also made me less and not more adaptive.
I’m glad it’s not just me, of course, but how is it that so many women do not seem to notice this?
Footnote: it was of course this which was so traumatizing about my argument with “S.” — that he thought he could decide what I did with my time, my car, my trip, who I slept with and where and when, etc.
I’m glad it’s not just me, of course, but how is it that so many women do not seem to notice this?
I am entertaining a theory that the reason why more women do not seem to notice this is that you and I had a couple of different circumstances that caused us to take a different psychological route in our early development, compared to most women.
In effect, we were both born naturally precocious, but with parents whose emotions were unstable. We used our natural intelligence to defend ourselves against the emotional outbursts, but this strategic detachment caused us not to learn the natural feminine patterns of social adjustment that are internalised by most women. So we didn’t internalise the emotional states around us, but defended ourselves against them.
Now, much later down the road, we are still on the outside of those finely tuned emotional adjustments, and do not experience them as being necessary, nor even a part of ourselves. We are emotional aliens concerning the socially constructed nature of gender. We can see what is going on objectively, but we are unable to experience it as natural, because we haven’t internalised it.
Whereas more “normal” women would submit to coercion and become more malleable, we do not have those original seeds of behaviour in us. Rather, the opposite.
That makes a lot of sense.
I figured out the other day that something like this is what makes other women dare to do things like marry truly machista men. I wouldn’t dare because I can see how destructive it would be to me. I wouldn’t survive psychically, I tend to think. Yet these women do, and I always thought it was because they were stronger than I. But no: they just have a different structure, it isn’t a question of being stronger or weaker.
Yeah, that is the thing — not to look upon other’s structures as stronger or weaker, in a prejudgemental way, because you never really know what they are capable of. Also comparisons are odious, as they keep you preoccupied with others and their strangeness when you should be just focussing on, and enjoying yourself.
I think those who do make judgements about strength or weakness from the vantage position of a particular ideol0gy tend to also make assumptions about the naturalistic (automatic) applicability of their ideology to life in general. Think about the woman who looks like she is really struggling, for instance. Is she really weaker than the other women out there, or is she pushing hard against a mountain, (which the others are not), and the mountain is pushing back?
Let us put aside all naivety about strength and weakness, and how it might be judged on the basis of appearance.
I sometimes wish I had learned how to be “feminine” in that way, as it appears to facilitate life. But then I know people who did internalize it and they suffer.
To suffer without insight — ie. to practice “the feminine way” — isn’t good. You would blame yourself for things that were not actually your fault, having lost the strength to think things through independently. It’s a false paradise.
Well, it is exactly what Reeducation tried to teach. You’ve said it in a perfect nutshell!