Big scary Femmeconne

[stephbg]

I've been asked to explain what exactly it is about femmeconne that I have found and indeed continue to find confrontational. I'm not certain right now that I can actually do that, but I'll explore some thoughts.


Thought: Externals/Physicality

e.g. talking about shaving/not shaving armpits, wearing makeup, and other similarly personal choices. I am quite comfortable with my own choices and actively curious about why others make theirs. No pressure whatsoever, no embarrassment. Similarly comfortable discussing the physical joys of womanhood. No problems there.

Thought: Communal living
Part of the femmeconne experience is the chance to come together to live as a functioning community of women, with shared responsibilities to feed, entertain, educate and support each other. At this point I start to feel a little claustrophobic. I've not lived in a shared household, and the concepts I've grown up with and have adopted are that you are responsible for your own self, space, and comfort. Group domestic activity is foreign to me, even a busy bee to clean up someone's garden. The last time I did this was at my Grandmother's house where parent and 5 siblings were all squashed in together sorting out the funeral and house. Older examples all come from childhood holiday camps, which were deeply feral Lord of The Flies arrangements. I was seven and alone at my first one. Afraid (with reason) of the older kids, cold, wet, hungry, and lost in the crowd. Not character building at all.

I digress.

Thought: warmth and love and support
This is an important one and I wish I'd started it earlier before my painkillers kicked in. I think I'm resisting the idea that I need support. Although right now I can certainly use my friends around me, in happier times I've not quite resented the abundance of love and comfort and support offered by femmeconne, but have protested that I didn't need it, so why were you giving it to me? Did you think I was weaker than I was?

Thought: practicalities
I know nothing about nor have particular interest in fanwriting, -podding or -vidding. Art maybe, if it stands up by itself (which argument should support the other media, but doesn't).

I know nothing about feminism or the academic language of feminism. I am deeply allergic to academic voices and experiences.

I did wonder recently about my complete comfort with rooms of senior males (a la the Computer Society). I find men simple creatures, with a limited number of social responses. Women have much more social ammunition up their sleeves, and so can surprise you far more easily.

I can't be trusted to help with children

I can't lift heavy objects.

I don't know how to make scones.

I can't understand a word spoken in the echoey hall.

What I would like to do is sit (or preferably sprawl) in one or two sets of arms and listen to the words going on around me, do some stroking, receive some stroking, but mainly feel that I can do this without having to understand all the noise and come up with a witty remark. I want to be a cat.

Comments

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

I support a Steph-cat :)
*cuddle*

Your vision is beautiful.

This bit:
why were you giving it to me? Did you think I was weaker than I was?

The sharing of support and love is not an expression of weakness, it is not in response to perceived weakness, it is simply a sharing of time and energy - an interest in you as a person and the life you lead with it's richness and difference - colour this in as many colours as people who attend, this answer is true for all of them.

Also - the space is meant to be flexible - echo-y halls are hard to deal with, but you don't need to help with kids, or lift heavy objects or know how to make scones (though if you're interested I have time and a newly fixed oven). You are you - your contribution is just as valuable as anyone elses. Several others experience constraints in similar and different ways - and they're all valuable. They all teach us about those around us - to consider the obvious - that we're not all the same. We all react differently, want differently.

I still find academia in general boggling. But I am enjoying studying so far - so I only hope that I don't become one of the voices you're allergic too :) *love* I say this, and yet am not actually worried at all :)

I guess in short, what I see here, what I read is: You. This is not scary - your reaction isn't scary, no matter what we did as a group of women sitting and talking and discussing and being - as a group of women only, it's likely there would be an element of confrontation to it, whether it's not being used to shared living experiences, or being around children, or communal meals or academic discussion, or fan associated stuff - pick and choose, it's all confetti. I also don't think that if you asked the rest of us, that we wouldn't also say 'we find it confronting too'. You can ask me if you like :) If it will help :)

*big hugs*

This is long, babbly and I'm sorry if I've completely misunderstood you - if I have, please add salt as needed and know I'm sending love.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I think Mynxii covered everything I wanted to say, so I'll just say "what she said" and then add something else.

You're not weak to accept love and support. One thing I have learned through every channel of my life (bondage, paganism, fandom, and others) is that you have to be strong to accept love and support. For some strange reason in our society it gets painted as a weakness. It's not. The urge to care and help should be encouraged in those who feel capable of doing so, and the need to be strong enough to accept help should be encouraged in *everyone*.

I need support and help. I've opened myself to it time and time again (and I'm not just talking about femmeconne,) and every time I have come out stronger and happier for it. It may be all romantic to be an Island, but I think that's a road to living too much in my own head. (Says the woman who spends all her time in books in her own head. How weird is that?)

Also, ont he listening thing? I actually started femmeconne so *I* could sit down and listen! I wanted to hear what women wanted to talk about! I know what *I* think! :-)

You're welcome to come and blob on the beanbag. You're welcome to lie in the sun the whole weekend and talk to people between panels. You're welcome to corner people and ask them difficult questions. It's what you decide you want it to be. (I might still ask you to do some dishes though, but if you do them with me I can promise some bad chris de burgh songs where I mumble through the words I don't know and sing the rest really loudly.)

PS, you don't have to stay every night, the doors aren't locked! I expect people to go home at night! We all have lives.

[mikey-ob.livejournal.com]

"I find men simple creatures, with a limited number of social responses. Women have much more social ammunition up their sleeves, and so can surprise you far more easily."

That statement triggers feelings of annoyance and anger in me. My anger connects to a sadness that people still operate with adolescent constructs about masculinity. In my experience masculinity has a deep sacred nature that is misunderstood in modern academic thought. I have an intuitive feeling that there could be elements of the animus, the masculine shadow in the feminine, that are remain unresolved in the psyche. These elements of the unconscious remain at adolescent developmental stages, and seek transformation to growth, but as they are shadow, they manifest as negative expression, and their external nature is reinforced by the shadow of others who remain in conflict - male and female. This state does not seem to allow the permission to explore the alchemy of transformation into more developed psychic understandings of the self, or self-actualisation, that is freed from the emotional ties and conflicts of earlier developmental stages.

[(Anonymous)]

I concur that many men are not simple, nor limited in their social response. I proclaim myself alert to social nuance, capable of navigating through complex social minefields of many sorts, and fully armed with a wide range of social responses. Possibly women are just more likely to want to directly assert their social position with other women (and vice versa), making it sometimes easier to just slip into a standard social role with the other gender -- but only superficially easier.

However, Mikey, I wish you could express your feelings about masculinity without getting Jung all over the carpet. 8-p

[callistra.livejournal.com]

However, Mikey, I wish you could express your feelings about masculinity without getting Jung all over the carpet. 8-p

Hahahahaha!
I probably shouldn't be laughing.
But LOL!!!

[mikey-ob.livejournal.com]

THAT IS BRILLIANT!

I lol'd.

[mikey-ob.livejournal.com]

Genuinely funny, are you pointing out a phallusy in my post? ;)

[prk.livejournal.com]

I'm afreud I may have missed the nuances of your post.

prk.


(I feel, however, that my very predictable response to a pun does somewhat demonstrate Stephanie's point about men having a limited number of social responses...)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a point! It was a poorly expressed conjecture!

[writerjo.livejournal.com]

Dear Mikey

Just found this and was rocked with one of the huge laughs of the week. And Michael has entered the room! Boom!

I guess I'm just like this. There people are having a lovely conversation about children and I bring out the heavy guns of the latest research which I live and dream by right now...and boom! The conversation is stoppered by this explosion of knowledge. Though your comment hasn't had exactly that effect, but mine so often does to my regret.

But I think Steph means that socially men often stick to the straight and narrow: the magical mystery tour ain't on show in many men as it is with perhaps more women. (You need close-up seats for that kind of viewing.) And Femmeconne is perhaps, the equivalent of taking those close-up seats and your interest is assumed. Perhaps Steph wishes to be the cat that sits on the psychotherapist's couch thinking about her last mouse, oblivious to the convolutions of the conversation above.

Here I make an inappropriate comment...I wish you could go to Femmeconne or to our school camps! I've often wished we could have you to talk to the men out here: ageing is especially hard on men who live on the land. Thank goodness Martin and my Dad are such thinkers too, but loss of physical capacity is felt in us all as loss of self. How could it not be? Anyway, have totally diverged here...

love Jo

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Well, I am planning percon in 2009, which will be open for all and a more convention-like atmosphere with similar topics to femmeconne...

[redbraids.livejournal.com]

Thank you Steph for exploring these issues related to Femmconne. I am going this year and am looking forward to it, but I have a lot of similar (although not the same) issues. Happy to go into in person some time.

I second Mikey on the men and emotions thing.... as I see it this is a matter of men not being seen to EXPRESS their emotions. Every man I have met, even the most visible emotion-less, has had VERY strong emotions simmering under the surface. Sometimes I need to look closely or _differently_ to see them. Other times they are only made visible to me in times of emotional stress. Or the occasional glimpse into the masculine private world, almost a men's space, which women do not usually see.

For my own observations some of the most immense emotions which I have seen have been by men; all the stronger for being generally repressed.

If Mikey is allowed to talk about Jung, I am going to bring Jane Austen into this :-) Ms Austen never once wrote a scene that had only men in it. Every scence is either a single woman, multiple women, or had a woman observer. This is because she never saw men alone of course, so would not have known how they behaved alone. Unlike Austen we have video, but it is not the same.

Another Austen quote is the letter in Persuasion which talks exactly on the topic of a man saying that he feels and loves as much as a woman.

Interesting topic and worth bringing up Maybe for Swancon discussion :-)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Aargh. Where did I say men don't have emotions?! NOWHERE!

[redbraids.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Didn't mean to imply that and really sorry if it came across that way!

I was referring to the _range_ of emotions that men are allowed by society to show, in a general sense. So, I was refering to your example from the computing world, where men may actually show limit emotions, but may not actuallly express deeper ones that they are feeling. I am going off on a slight tangent from your point here.

This is why I personally am going to give my own throughts on Femmconne in person as I know I am likley to not express myself clearly :-) I REALLY appreciate you being brave and bringing this stuff up for discussion.

I am going BTW, so if you do decide to go I would love to sit quietly some place and talk more about this all, if you were interested.

[wolflullaby.livejournal.com]

Don't you hate it when you say something off the cuff, and everyone dissects its meaning and argues it, and you are left dazed and confused because you hadn't put that much thought into its phrasing, and it wasn't meant to be analysed at such depth?

That happens to me all the time, and I find myself arguing for something that I don't feel that strongly about, and I get left feeling kind of daft. (not sure if that's how it feels for you, but that's how it often feels for me. I hope the above paragraph doesn't often, and seriously, I didn't analyse it too hard before I sent it out into the ether. ;) :P)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Oh lord yes. I'll be days sorting this lot out.

[wolflullaby.livejournal.com]

(there's a demonstration of how much I wasn't paying attention to what I was saying... I wrote often when I meant to write offend. :P)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I was happy to apply fuzzy logic to your grammar :-)

[redbraids.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! I would really like to talk in person as I want to hear what you say sequentially and not in the odd dis-jointed-ness on LJ!

[redbraids.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! This is what I don't like discussing things on LJ although I am happy to in person!!!

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Wow. I can point only to the lateness of the hour and strong medication to explain the vagueness and simplicity of my statement (there was no academic thought in the room at the time). I promise to address this in more detail when I have the opportunity.

In truth, the base concept for this is "I find groups of women scary as all hell," so I need to define (a) "scary" (for me), and (b) why.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it is just the discomfort we tend to feel when exposed to things we're not used to? I can't remember the last time I was in a large group of all one gender, but I'm sure I would find it odd, at least.

[writerjo.livejournal.com]

Dear Steph

I've wondered if the school of the air camps were basically femmeconne and you've confirmed it for me. Some extraordinary things happen in conversation there - which is why we are all prepared to put up with the occasional education crap from the school in terms of pressure. That closeness across very different people is a spiritual thing. We have men too though - Dads come in and out and we have the occasional Dad who is a Mum as well. The young unsprogged teachers. And the focus is not really on us but on the children.

I do lots of massage at those too!

Still, you've filled me with a yearning to share that kind of time with you all! I'm in town October 11-14, which might even be the weekend, but I want to help out a little sister at that time. Maybe one year.

Jo

blargle

[alias_sqbr]

My brain isn't up to a coherent response to this, but thankyou for posting. Sound a bit like my group of female friends at highschool (having spent time in woman dominated spaces, and male dominated spaces, I find I tend to be happier in mixed company. But mostly I'm happiest in geek dominated spaces :) )

[huckle.livejournal.com]

I have lots of responses to what you have said (basically we are on the same page here), hopefully we could catch up in person at some stage.
I find men socially straightforward, too - I would find a weekend away with men psychologically more comfortable than with women. I think Mikey was right when he said that it is to do with male and female shadows.
The issue that affects me the most in groups of women is: men are allowed to express in an open and direct way competitiveness, desire for power and social dominance. With women it gets pushed into the shadow mind and you get all sorts of oblique power games and, as you said, unexpected social suprises. Femmeconn is no exception. I find femmecon mostly wonderful because I get to catch up with lovely friends and maybe make new friends, but I don't find it an unusually supportive place.

[redbraids.livejournal.com]

I would love to chat in a quiet space with you, SBG, & others about all this! Really interesting stuff!

[azhure.livejournal.com]

*nods a lot*

I love the idea of femmeconne, and I've been tempted to go for the last few years. You listed a lot of the reasons that hold me back from going.

[bardiegrub.livejournal.com]

I find the communal living difficult too, and I am used to group households. However, I'm used to a small, hand-picked group of people I know well.

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

I may be wrong about this, but as someone who's never gone, I perceive it as space where playing the victim / endlessly agonising about how women are treated is encouraged, and I don't think that's helpful or useful.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Agonising? No. Getting informed and riled up about? Yes. (Among lots of other things).

This is what got femmeconners mobilised to organise fund-raising for domestic violence services (again, among other things).

Which is very helpful and useful indeed.