“I have to do it, I have to take care of everyone. I can’t say no when people need me to take care of them. But I never have time to take care of me,” a young woman announces proudly later in the show.
There is no law that can legislate this away.
More on the Same Topic
Clarissa's Blog 
The older people get the more their characters become set in a particular way and the harder it is to change basic character structure. It may even be that much of what becomes deeply misshapen in the character is not due to patriarchal violence but due to some features of masculine awesomeness. In other words, not the bad aspects of patriarchy, which would lead one to shrink away or get upset and angry, but the more beguiling and seductive characteristics of the systems promoting male power. This would mean that one is not so much frightened into submission, but drawn, which may well solidify a self-denying character structure more effectively than threats or fear.
In any case, one can apply rational thought to a threat, but not to a seduction or a state of being mesmerized in the presence of awesomeness.
This may be a problem with women not being naturally negative enough — not being sufficiently, and from the core, suspicious, or defensive or antagonistic.
If this is so, then only an extreme situation, which makes life seem not worth living in a submissive or deferential state, can awaken those negative components of the character, to start a fight for one’s survival.
I am lucky because I had such an experience where I was pushed to my limits and it seemed as a if a gene that had been switched off suddenly switched on for me. It was the strangest thing because I went from not understanding how I was implicated in my own sad state of affairs to suddenly having what seemed like heat detecting goggles on my face, so I could see the outlines of people plotting in the dark. I just suddenly noticed, “Oh, wow. I’m in a battle! Who would have thought it?”
And immediately I saw this, I was capable and prepared to fight, but before that switch turned in my mind (after many years building up to this) I would not have been able to see anything. I was too mesmerized by an idea that I had to play a role.
I’m lucky that I was able to begin to turn the tide in my mid to late twenties, or I suspect it may have been too late.
LikeLike
And to add a bit more, the only way I could truly manage to overcome my state of being spell bound by masculine awesomeness was to create my own awesomeness. I mean I had to create something that was so intense that it would mesmerize me differently, not in relation to others and their achievements, but in relation to myself. There was a stage in my life when I exposed myself to a lot of violent imagery to strengthen will will. That actually worked, I think, although facing death and violence is a costly way to achieve one’s self-liberation. Actually there were certainly no other remedies apart from home grown ones at my disposal. I’d tried absolutely everything else, especially talking.
LikeLike