"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds"
I've been reading A LOT lately. And a lot of great books I had but forgot I owned, or didn't have the time to read last semester.
The truest gem I've found was one I picked up on accident. Letters to a Young Feminist by Phyllis Chesler, PhD. It's an extremely well written book that I think every feminist, and woman, and man, should read. It explains the call of Third Wave feminism. Where we've come and why there is still a need for us today.
In this book, she writes as a mentor. There are things with which I agree and things with which I do not. This is very important for me to love a piece of non-fiction. She has a lot of thoughts for feminist, and great ways of explaining things seen through a feminist analysis. She also has a lot of great general life lessons included in this call to action.
The twelfth letter stuck out, like much of this, as something I'm grateful to have read at this particular time. It puts into words a lot of my beliefs, but also things I think it's very important other people read as well. So I have included it.
In today's society where we have grandparents pushing us for marriage and "grandbabies," I think it's important to take our true selves into consideration. I can think of well over 1/2 of you on my friends list that have been searching for someone lately. And most of you not just someone to date and get to know. You're looking for something incredibly serious, even permanent, and putting people through the test to see if they get there. Not letting it grow. I don't mean everyone, but I do mean the majority....
Ignore the feminist undertones. Read it, and process it. Even if you don't accept it, at least consider it because I think it could make a lot of your lives easier if you stop pushing for others and not looking inward....
Also, I think this applies to friendship. And that a lot of the struggles that you, and I, have with friendship stem from these roots.
Anyway, I wanted to post what she said, so, here goes:
Is your love for another person more important than your love for God or country or family? If love is about union with someone or something larger than ourselves then know the following:
No true union can succeed with half-people. Union--and transcendence--requires two whole people. This idea may be totally foreign to you since you life in a culture (patriarchy) that eroticizes social and biological differences, or opposites. This makes your task an exciting and pioneering one: to forge relationships of equality and to come to your beloved(s) whole.
So much of what passes for love is merely economic dependence. Women tend to romanticize economic and legal dependence. Perhaps men romanticize domestic and sexual-reproductive service.
Love is not love if it forces you to compromise who you are. Love is a process and a discipline. It is not only what you feel for someone else. Like freedom, it is a path, a practice, which no legal contract can guarantee or enforce.
People may live together and not love each other at all, they may abuse each other, stifle all joy. For example, many parents who say they love their children do not behave as if this were true. Some people remain together because they are terrified of loneliness, or for the sake of the children. These are not crimes, but do not confuse such human arrangements with free love.
Loving freely means first "seeing" yourself and then your beloved for who she or he uniquely is, not who you need them to be. You cannot love someone and expect them to compromise some core part of their identity because you need them by your side at every major event in your life. Loving involves letting go--and going on, sometimes alone, to those places to which your soul is drawn.
[This is pages 89-90 on the book cited above, Letters to a Young Feminist by Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D.]
The truest gem I've found was one I picked up on accident. Letters to a Young Feminist by Phyllis Chesler, PhD. It's an extremely well written book that I think every feminist, and woman, and man, should read. It explains the call of Third Wave feminism. Where we've come and why there is still a need for us today.
In this book, she writes as a mentor. There are things with which I agree and things with which I do not. This is very important for me to love a piece of non-fiction. She has a lot of thoughts for feminist, and great ways of explaining things seen through a feminist analysis. She also has a lot of great general life lessons included in this call to action.
The twelfth letter stuck out, like much of this, as something I'm grateful to have read at this particular time. It puts into words a lot of my beliefs, but also things I think it's very important other people read as well. So I have included it.
In today's society where we have grandparents pushing us for marriage and "grandbabies," I think it's important to take our true selves into consideration. I can think of well over 1/2 of you on my friends list that have been searching for someone lately. And most of you not just someone to date and get to know. You're looking for something incredibly serious, even permanent, and putting people through the test to see if they get there. Not letting it grow. I don't mean everyone, but I do mean the majority....
Ignore the feminist undertones. Read it, and process it. Even if you don't accept it, at least consider it because I think it could make a lot of your lives easier if you stop pushing for others and not looking inward....
Also, I think this applies to friendship. And that a lot of the struggles that you, and I, have with friendship stem from these roots.
Anyway, I wanted to post what she said, so, here goes:
Is your love for another person more important than your love for God or country or family? If love is about union with someone or something larger than ourselves then know the following:
No true union can succeed with half-people. Union--and transcendence--requires two whole people. This idea may be totally foreign to you since you life in a culture (patriarchy) that eroticizes social and biological differences, or opposites. This makes your task an exciting and pioneering one: to forge relationships of equality and to come to your beloved(s) whole.
So much of what passes for love is merely economic dependence. Women tend to romanticize economic and legal dependence. Perhaps men romanticize domestic and sexual-reproductive service.
Love is not love if it forces you to compromise who you are. Love is a process and a discipline. It is not only what you feel for someone else. Like freedom, it is a path, a practice, which no legal contract can guarantee or enforce.
People may live together and not love each other at all, they may abuse each other, stifle all joy. For example, many parents who say they love their children do not behave as if this were true. Some people remain together because they are terrified of loneliness, or for the sake of the children. These are not crimes, but do not confuse such human arrangements with free love.
Loving freely means first "seeing" yourself and then your beloved for who she or he uniquely is, not who you need them to be. You cannot love someone and expect them to compromise some core part of their identity because you need them by your side at every major event in your life. Loving involves letting go--and going on, sometimes alone, to those places to which your soul is drawn.
[This is pages 89-90 on the book cited above, Letters to a Young Feminist by Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D.]
posted by Michelle. at 9:27 PM
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