Men Act, Women Appear

I thought I'd share an excerpt today from a book that I read last semester in one of my grad classes. First published in 1972, Ways of Seeing is a book made by John Berger and four collaborators, based on the BBC series with John Berger.

I'm sharing this passage here because it struck a chord with me when I read it and I've thought about it frequently since then. I'm currently reading some books in my American women writers class that, I think, could easily be analyzed using the arguments in this excerpt. I will probably write some more about that in the coming months.

Please note that this is not easy reading, but I think it is worthwhile reading. You may want to read it more than once. And please feel free to comment with your thoughts and reactions.

According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual - but its object is always exterior to the man. A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. 

By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voices, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste - indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura.
To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. 

And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.
She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. 

Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To acquire some control over this process, women must contain it and interiorize it. That part of a woman's self which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated. And this exemplary treatment of herself by herself constitutes her presence. Every woman's presence regulates what is and is not 'permissible' within her presence. Every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation - is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotions of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger. If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake. 

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

 
 

Overcoming Fear

Lately I've been forced to face some of my fears, which I'm sure one day I will say is a good thing. Of course, in the moment it doesn't seem so great. In a very short amount of time I've had to confront fears I've spent years trying to avoid. It seems manageable when you are only faced with an uncomfortable situation every once in awhile, but it's been a bit overwhelming having so many things come down at once. I'm trying not to let fear determine my actions and responses, but sometimes the flight impulse is so strong it is difficult not to run away and hide in hopes everything will go away. This has made me realize that I still have many deep seated insecurities I still haven't dealt with. For me, my greatest fear is that I will do something and not be good enough, that I won't measure up and people will look at me derisively. Sometimes I would rather not even try because I would rather never have tried than to attempt something and then fail spectacularly.

So this inner battle has been going on for about a month now, but two weeks ago I heard a story that has helped me immensely so I thought I would share :)

I was listening to an interview with Tom Hanks. When he was a student at Sacramento State he and his friends decided to try out for one of the school plays. He was the only one out of all of his friends who didn't get a part. So he went out and auditioned for a local production. They liked him and gave him a role. One of the directors of this play had a lot of connections in New York and Hollywood and liked Hanks so much he helped him find other roles, which started him on the path to becoming the successful actor he is today.

I like this story, because it shows that he had the confidence to simply move on from a failure and not let it hold him back. I'm sure looking back on his life, he is glad he went out and auditioned again, but he's also probably thankful he didn't get into the production with his friends as he would probably have never met the director who helped him begin his career.

This is the challenging part for me: taking a rejection or a failure and turning it into a learning experience, and therefore a success.

I will keep you posted as I continue on this journey of building self confidence :)

Know Thyself

Over the past six months or so, I've been doing a lot of thinking about identity. Specifically, I've been thinking about my own identity - what my values and goals are - and how I communicate those things to other people. The conclusion I've reached is that I don't communicate those things very well at all and I think the reason is that I don't know myself as well as I should.

I think that unless I am well-acquainted with my own inner workings, I will consistently behave in a manner that is inconsistent with my most deeply held beliefs. I know that sounds strange and at first, the thought startled me. But the more I've pondered it, the more I've found it to be true, at least in my own life. For while my subconscious values may influence the overall trajectory of my life, without consciously knowing what my values and goals are, I frequently find myself regretting hastily spoken words or executed actions, finding that, looking back, they do not accurately reflect my identity.

Another danger of not having a clear idea of who I am, I've discovered, is that in a moment of weakness I may allow others to impose themselves on me in ways I never intended. If I haven't determined what my values, goals, and morals are, then I am like a ship without a rudder and I will likely allow things to happen that I never wanted to happen. Even worse, I might do things I never intended to do, things that are completely at odds with my deeply - but perhaps subconsciously - held beliefs.

In an effort to avoid these dangers in the future, therefore, I have decided to start systematically examining my beliefs and innermost thoughts. Several months ago, I came across the following quotation and it struck a chord with me because it expresses something that is very true for me right now:

As we advance in the spiritual life and in the practice of systematic self-examination we are often surprised by the discovery of vast unknown tracts of the inner life of the soul. They seem like great plains stretching out in mystery and wrapt in mists that sometimes for a moment lift, or sweep off and leave one looking for one brief instant upon great reaches of one’s own life, unknown, unmeasured, unexplored. Men stand at such moments breathless in wonder and in awe gazing upon these great tracts upon which they have never looked before, with kindling eyes and beating hearts; and while they look the mists steal back till all is lost to sight once more and they are left wondering if what they saw was reality, or the creation of their fancy. Or sometimes they see, not far-stretching plains which fill the soul with an awestruck sense of its expansiveness and of how much has been left absolutely uncultivated, not these plains but mountain peaks climbing and reaching upwards till lost in the heavens, echoing it may be with the voice of many streams whose waters fertilize and enrich those small tracts of the soul’s life which have been reclaimed and cultivated and which many a man has thought to be his whole inner self, though he never asked himself whence those rich streams had their source. Now he sees how their source lay in unmeasured heights of his own inner being whose existence he never dreamed of before. In one brief instant they have unveiled themselves. He looks again, and they are shut out from his eyes, there is no token visible that he possesses such reaches, such heights of life. The commonplaces of his existence gather in and crowd upon him, the ordinary routine of life settles down upon him, limiting and confining him on all sides, the same unbroken line measures his horizon, such as he has always known it, the same round of interests and occupations crowd in upon his hours and fill them, the pressure of the hard facts of life upon him are as unmistakable and as leveling as ever, bidding him forget his dreams and meet and obey the requirements of the world in which he lives. And yet the man who has caught but a momentary glimpse of that vast unknown inner life can never be the same as he was before; he must be better or worse, trying to explore and possess and cultivate that unknown world within him, or trying—oh, would that he could succeed!—to forget it. He has seen that alongside of, or far out beyond the reach of, the commonplace life of routine, another life stretches away whither he knows not, he feels that he has greater capacities for good or evil than he ever imagined. He has, in a word, awakened with tremulous awe to the discovery that his life which he has hitherto believed limited and confined to what he knew, reaches infinitely beyond his knowledge and is far greater than he ever dreamed. –From Self-knowledge and Self-Discipline by Basil William Maturin

I desire to know myself in a deep way so that I can live a life that is consistent with my innermost beliefs - so that I can live a life of integrity. I think this is why I've become so tenacious in guarding the time I've set aside for my Sabbath. I do not want the "commonplaces of my existence" to prevent me from grasping my identity and living it out to its fullest. I want to "explore and possess and cultivate" the identity God has given me and I do not want to try to forget it.