Secrets of Womanhood
To lay bare -
a breast to a lover
bones to another.
To bear –
witness. Turn faith into Truth.
the Burden of humanity
Weighing in
Under the labor of eroticized curves.
Sole responsibility of the one.
The Other.
The sexed.
Notes: This poem first came about when I began thinking about secrets in the context of love, the self, interpersonal relationships, community, and humanity. We even have a cultural obsession with secrets – the catch 22 of human nature. Simultaneously, anxious over the uncertainty of the future, the drive to know the Truth; yet, ignorance is bliss and oftentimes we are better left not knowing everything. I started thinking about all the ways you could classify types of secrets. There are secrets of knowledge, imbued with power (both interpersonal relationships and social hierarchies. Very Foulcaldian, if you will). There are secrets within our selves – the darker side of our selves, aspects of our own human nature that we often cannot bear to face. Secrets exist within relationships, which sometimes we keep based on fear of what the other will think about us or how they will judge us or sometimes because we love them and are afraid of hurting them. This led me to consider the opposite of secrets – what would describe that? To be completely open to another person, to our selves, and to the social self we present to others. Would this simplify or complicate our understanding of the world, of each other, and of our selves as individuals? This is when the first stanza appeared in my thoughts.
The remainder of the poem was influenced by my studies in gender and the reading I have been doing for my comprehensive exams. I’ve always been fascinated by the statement that women are the bearers of tradition and are socially responsible for preserving culture, especially during times of social change. This is why in developing countries, (or for lack of better term, “modernizing” countries) oftentimes, women are controlled, particularly as traditional notions of womanhood are symbolically tied up with the control of women’s’ bodies (valuing motherhood, disdain for a woman’s sexuality. etc.). I understand now why this statement is so true. Women bear the primary responsibility for socializing children into the culture. Particularly in traditional patriarchal societies – women teach and embody the social norms and cultural values. Men record them. (The majority of my understanding this has come from reading psychoanalytic feminist theory and postmodern feminist theory).
Then I began thinking about faith and the Christian tradition in Western culture. How this tradition still carries of lot of cultural weight, even in our modernized, secularized (or not so secularized) world. I began contemplating the (I’m assuming, much discussed) notion of original sin – the fact that a woman was the one that sought knowledge and that the origin of sin can be traced to the origin of woman (and therefore, feminity). That knowledge is equated with sin and seeking knowledge (i.e. eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden) results in punishment and has serious consequences.
Lastly, I find this whole process, even though it resulted in a sleepless night, to be important to my graduate studies. In the spirit of bell hooks, creativity and critical thinking oftentimes constitute a false dichotomy. Especially in the process of writing, you cannot separate the two. To do so, imbues a sense of power and privileging one form over another.
One last note: I am not completely satisfied with the title as it seems a little trite or corny to me. I have alternate options – like “To live life like a Woman” “The experience of a woman” But these too aren’t quite right. Perhaps the title will still need some work.
