Some people progress in their development while others regress. See this example of somebody who infantilizes herself and stunts her own growth between the ages of 17 and 25:
You see, I had an abortion in 2004 when I was 17-years-old and [my parents] found out about it nearly a year later when my mother read my diary. They confronted me about it, and while we eventually got past this rough spot in our relationship, we didn’t really ever discuss all our feelings with one another. At the time, I was so furious that my privacy had been violated that I had absolutely no regard for their feelings. In fact, I didn’t even think they had a right to have feelings. It was my abortion and my secret and it had been shared without my consent. If they were sad or upset then well, that was their punishment.
It has been eight years since that all happened, and while I can still relate to the teenager in me who was so enraged, I have come a long way in forgiving my parents and finally understanding that the friends, family, and partners of women who have abortions also have complex reactions to the abortion and deserve an outlets through which to process them.
I don’t blame this woman for “growing down rather than growing up” (I’m using Annis Pratt’s apt terminology). With this kind of horrible parents one doesn’t stand a whole lot of a chance to develop into anything but a beaten down, zombified creature. The story of female Bildung over the course of the last 100 years has been this: a woman tries to grow and liberate herself from the constraints of her patriarchal environment, discovers that the task is insurmountable, and willingly infantilizes herself. This is how stories of female development (or, rather, stunted development) always end:
I’m so glad that I finally got a chance to clear the air with my folks. As it turns out, they’re pretty insightful people, and I learned a lot from what they had to say. I also got a chance to apologize for being defensive and resentful when they needed love and support.
The poor idiot has her privacy violated in the most egregious way, and she is the one apologizing because she allowed her personal issues to matter more to her for a second than her parents’ need to cannibalize her existence. Instead of parenting them, she dared to take care of herself and has now repented of this grave sin against the patriarchy.
I have read over 100 female Bildungsromane in the past 6 years and, starting in early XXth century, they are all like that. This tendency towards self-effacement and stunting one’s own growth becomes more and more pronounced with every victory of the women’s liberation movement. Simply put, a heroine of a 2013 Bildungsroman sacrifices her growth and stunts herself far more easily and willingly than a heroine of a 1913 Bildungsroman.
Clarissa's Blog 
This sucks. 😦
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This is always very sad to watch.
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Publish your diss. Your thesis `This tendency towards self-effacement and stunting one’s own growth becomes more and more pronounced with every victory of the women’s liberation movement` is extremely intriguing.
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I’m awaiting decision right now! 🙂
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Recently, I had an unplanned pregnancy, which I was planning on terminating, but mercifully ended in miscarriage. I’d sooner eat my own fist than tell my meddling mother about all that. I’m going to be twenty-four in fifteen days, my life is my own and she is not entitled to any sort of thing from me. I learned my lesson from the last time I told her something private and personal, and she made it ten times worse.
I’m just glad that my diary is thousands of kilometers from her. 🙂
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These so-called parents violate her privacy in the most egregious manner ever and then have the gall to scold her for what they discovered while violating her privacy. This is the equivalent of beating a person and then scolding her for making one’s fists ache while one was beating her.
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And the mother recommends reading a child’s diary as good parenting, since it allows the parents to get to know what their kids are up to. Terrifying.
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The saddest thing is to see adults who have been subjected to this as children and who still repeat with zombified voices that this was done for their own good and they are grateful. This means they will do the same thing to their own children, and the horrible cycle will continue.
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Can you recommend a good bildungsroman?
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I really really like Irlanda (http://www.amazon.com/Irlanda-Espido-Freire/dp/0979995442/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376856678&sr=8-1&keywords=espido+freire) because it illustrates everything I say here in a very terrifying way. And the translation is good.
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I read the article and I think that she’s apologizing for not going to parents for help at age 17. That’s a little different than apologizing for their reading the diary. Though I am also confused by why she thought reading a 18 year old’s diary was somehow acceptable.
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It is not acceptable to read anybody’s diary irrespective of their age. And if she didn’t go to her parents for help, they should be the ones to apologize.
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My memoir is about defying parental control, but to say no, no, no, isn’t pretty. Contemporary feminists do not find it pretty. I didn’t find it very delicate when I wrote it. Mostly, you cannot appear to be on the side of good moral judgement if you defy your parents’ control and evaluations of you. You give up claim to the trophy that contemporary feminists desire more than anything. They want to be considered on the side of goodness and perfection, which means not evincing a propensity for self-defense (it is too violent) and playing the victim in a much more subtle way. In truth, there was nothing unreal about my victimhood. I did not play any role and I kept fighting against it in a grotesque manner.
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Exactly!!! This is being published on a super famous feminist website. And not in order to ridicule it but in order to applaud it. A woman’s great feminist achievement is that she realizes that she shouldn’t have disposed of her own body as she wished and is now groveling and begging her parents to forgive her for that. The next logical step is to sign over the right to dispose of her property and her person to her father. Until he hands her over to a husband, of course. Maybe the father should also whip her for good measure.
I’m disgusted by all this.
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I’m long past being disgusted. I had that sensation several years ago when I realized that even feminists didn’t understand me. I mean, the fight for one’s psychological freedom can be aesthetically disgusting, but it is still a fight worth having.
It pays to realize that contemporary feminists are wrapped up in a religious paradigm and the gold they have in sight is that of feminine resolution to their problems, through embracing morality and God. Only they have to do it non-defensively and in a way that proves they are superior to men.
Blah.
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This is yet another story with strong religious overtones, you are right. She confesses her sin to the Father, does penitence , and gets absolution. Who needs political activism when you can kneel and pray instead?
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Heh. I see you are right in a way I hadn’t considered. But actually the reason why these kinds of narratives FEEL right to most people in the Western world, whilst mine FEELS all wrong, is because of the extent to which Christianity pervades the culture.
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This would explain why I get your story and don’t get theirs. I consider it an enormous piece of good luck that I grew up in a society where it would never occur to anybody to visit a church.
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Yes, I can see you have had certain advantages, even in the materialist ideology of the Soviet Union, which set you up to have a very practical attitude about looking for work. In my case, I had ultra-idealism, people dying all over the place for it. It’s the opposite of anything practical. 🙂
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See, these parents made it clear that they didn’t want to educate their kid about basic sex ed stuff and they disapproved of sex before marriage. They wanted their denial. So the fact they’re all shocked and pissed off their daughter cut them off from the loop is almost besides the point. Retrospectively, they acted like, “Oh why didn’t you come to us” which is such nonsense. It’s a very satisfying play: They have their official message, the daughter sneaks off and does her thing, she takes care of her own stuff without disturbing the parents, the parents snoop, and then they get the luxury of being outraged after the fact without having to cope with reality or having a satisfying power struggle.
The daughter understood that all too well.
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That might be the creepiest, ickiest essay I have ever read. And the comments are just as bad. Disgusting.
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I don’t even understand the point of the essay or the comments or anything really. My pointy head sees no points.
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Well, it is true about the religious structure of all this. I don’t fully understand how they think but Christians are fundamentally different in some way / have bought into a set of really self-destructive ideas …
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Everybody in Western culture seems a bit tipsy on the Christian ideology. It gets in through your pores, especially if you are not inclined to think deeply. I think at a certain level — the level of the spiritual middle-brow personality — a certain amount of Christianity might seem like a benefit. In fact, it might actually be good. I reserve my judgement. If you are not female, it might give you a sense of self-esteem under very trying circumstances and even if you are female, but perhaps rather spiritually low-brow, you might find in it a boost. But once you have higher needs, it becomes a form of corruption and poison. It seems Schwyzer will probably never really know what’s wrong with him, as is the case for a lot of people who are highly developed but nonetheless have internalized a form of mental corruption.
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Schwyzer is in California, the pill-popping “I’ve been seeing this psychotherapist for 15 years and he totally helps” state. The guy doesn’t have a shadow of a chance to figure anything out.
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No, I don’t give him much chance of that, but not for the reasons you give (although they are legitimate). I think that Christianity has become too deeply embedded in his system.
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Of course, but when you are zombified with pills and psychotherapeutic chanting of “Everything is good, don’t worry be happy” it is impossible to find the strength to generate insights into anything.
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I would never allow myself to be zombified. Imagine the lack of defensive ability that would lead a person to that? But these days we are taught that it is pathological to be “defensive”, so people open themselves up to any kind of manipulation. Still, on the question of Christianity, I know from experience how deep the roots can go and how it can mess you up. It takes you in the wrong direction, into a sacrificial mode. Sometimes you don’t even know it is working on you like this. People who stay on that track get very confused at a certain point when they find out that all their efforts haven’t been rewarded. They’ve put in a lot of effort accommodating others’ needs, and there has been no two-way street. Life doesn’t work like that. How disturbing.
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I wrote this monster text in protest of the benign resignations of pseudo-feminists and other onlookers who would require that parental whims be catered to, in all their gory.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/jennifer-armstrong/killing-substance/ebook/product-18478992.html
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Also, this paragraph is telling:
“I have read over 100 female Bildungsromane in the past 6 years and, starting in early XXth century, they are all like that. This tendency towards self-effacement and stunting one’s own growth becomes more and more pronounced with every victory of the women’s liberation movement. Simply put, a heroine of a 2013 Bildungsroman sacrifices her growth and stunts herself far more easily and willingly than a heroine of a 1913 Bildungsroman.”
As I have mentioned already far too many times, the status of Australian women seemed far lower to me after my migration in the 80s than the status of (white) women in Rhodesia. Technically they had more rights under the law, but they had no personal authority. Quite sad.
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I personally think your take on her finding peace with her parents is disgusting. I think you need to dig deeper into your own fucked up misconceptions first then, maybe just then, others.
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I don’t think you understand what this girl is saying, or what Annis Pratt is saying about growing up vs. growing down. It sounds like you just wanted to use a bunch of big words and references. Moving past your teenage angst toward your parents is a very huge part of growing up into a rational and stable human being. Should she have stayed mad at them for the rest of her life for reading her diary? How is that more mature?
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She should have demanded they apologized for what they did to her. She should have also informed them that her body is absolutely none if their business.
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You clearly didn’t read the whole article. It’s not fair to the original author for you to pick and choose parts out of it to use in your blog without allowing your “viewers” to see the entire piece. It’s pretty pathetic on your part, actually, and makes it seem like you’re just projecting and looking for a reason to attempt to sound like you know what you’re talking about. These specific parts of the article must have triggered something about your own life, because everything you’re saying is so incredibly far off from what the full interview was saying it’s ridiculous. Way to select only the pieces from the article that almost work with whatever it is you’re trying to say.
For your viewers, so they can read the full article for themselves rather than just the tiny portions you allowed them to see:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2013/08/16/seven-questions-i-asked-my-parents-about-my-abortion/
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You are the one who doesn’t read a post before responding to it. There is a link to the Feministe article within my post, so your fantasies about what I “allow people to see” are misplaced. Please try to pay attention or you will continue making yourself look ridiculous.
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Hm. I’m not seeing said link.
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It’s at the very beginning of the very first quote.
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Back to the question of the religious attitude, it is the attitude these people have to authority: they really do look to authorities as gods and want them to be godlike. They are also very obedient to rulebooks and instruction sets. Whereas with another attitude, one could look at instructions as something to use, and authorities as people with particular expertise or powers, but not elevate either to this exaggerrated status…or insist on staying in that “sacrificial” mode.
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this is an absolutely ridiculous and hurtful attack that isn’t grounded in reality. her story, and others like hers are really important to breaking down the stigma associated with abortion. it can be a very lonely experience and she’s working to help others not feel so alone. having that hard conversation with her parents is one that so few people have the courage to do. did you read the whole essay? because she clearly is looking to forgive them and make their relationship stronger not looking for some sort of approval. this is a real person you are attacking that faces real challenges in a misogynist society that is constantly telling us that we should be ashamed of ourselves for wanting sexual freedom and making the difficult choice to have an abortion and not have agency over our bodies and experiences. you are perpetuating this kind of rhetoric and it’s fucking disgusting.
also, i’m not sure if you understand what patriarchy means in the modern context? you made reference to old literature and for some reason decided to use terminology that was referencing old works discussing gender norms in 19th and 20th century literature, so maybe you read the word patriarchy in an old piece of literature? patriarchy in the modern sense is actually referring to a system of oppression carried out through male domination.
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This is a more profound definition of the patriarchy than the childish one you adduce: https://clarissasblog.com/2012/05/28/what-does-the-term-patriarchy-mean-to-me/
And I’ve got to say, if you are HURT by an analysis of another person’s writing, you have issues. This is definitely not a normal reaction. Are you sure you are old enough to participate in discussing such complex adult issues?
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lol. how do you come up with this shit? have you ever read any feminist theory? or do you prefer spending your time creating archaic definitions and calling people childish? it is hurtful just as any other form of sexism is hurtful.
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I’m getting a strong suspicion that a link to my post has been published on some website for 11-year-olds.
Sweetie, you need at least to start middle school before you discuss complex issues like this one.
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T, please tell me why should a woman’s parents have any choice in her abortion? Discussions about abortion are, indeed, very important, but in this discussion, abortion is incidental. What is discussed is the parents’ reaction to finding out about their daughter’s abortion, and I don’t understand why the parents’ opinion on something that does not concern them matters.
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” What is discussed is the parents’ reaction to finding out about their daughter’s abortion”
– As well as the manner in which they found out.
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“she clearly is looking to forgive them”
For what? Something they (at least the mother) don’t feel at all guilty about?
Forgiveness only works in two ways
1. the person you forgive is truly remorseful (which is not the case here)
2. a way of moving on and not letting the offense control your life (again not the case here.
If anything she’s trying to get the mother to forgive her which indicates she probably has a lot of unresolved feelings about the abortion. Talking to the mother this way before she’s resolved her own issues is pointless. I think she’s still lying to herself (quickest way to turn your life into hell yet known).
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“Forgiveness only works in two ways
1. the person you forgive is truly remorseful (which is not the case here)
2. a way of moving on and not letting the offense control your life (again not the case here.”
– EXACTLY. You cannot give something nobody is asking for and not look like an idiot. Forgiveness can only be granted to those who ask for it as I keep reminding people.
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How does this story break down the stigma in getting an abortion?
What’s she’s saying subtextually is, “I’m sorry I made the decision to be sexually active. I’m sorry I made an adult decision about whether to be a mother or not without your input. I’m sorry I got angry that you snooped in the diary of an adult (remember she was 18 when they snooped — old enough to vote) and found out afterwards.”
What her parents are saying is, “We should have snooped earlier and more often.”
This woman would not be able to make this gesture of self abnegation for a wider audience had she not seized her own authority. This is not a family where they look at things head on or talk to each other. They had a vague notion of “values” and left the actual sex education to the school. They talk around what they would have done, or should have done, and THEIR feelings and sentimental musings, not hers. They can have all the feelings they want, but in the end, it’s not about them. The abortion debate consistently centers everybody else’s concerns but the woman who is/was pregnant and that’s what this well intentioned interview exemplifies.
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