“Black women’s experiences are much broader than the general categories that discrimination discourse provides. Yet the continued insistence that Black women’s demands and needs be filtered through categorical analyses that completely obscure their experiences guarantees that their needs will seldom be addressed” (64)

REFERENCE: Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics. The University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140, 57-80.

Crenshaw’s article works as a continuation and extension of the ideas I previously discussed. I found her article especially interesting as an argument for the consideration of intersectionality in social and political doctrine because she used specific examples of court cases where the court failed to acknowledge intersections of race and gender in Black women’s discrimination claims. She also creates many interesting analogies that makes her argument all the more captivating and interesting: they were so creative that at points, I forgot I was reading an academic paper. Even though I didn’t include it in my notes, I also liked how she incorporated a personal example from her own experiences as a Black woman. In a nutshell, she had been invited to this prestigious men’s club by a Black male friend. It hadn’t been until somewhat recently that Black men had been allowed in the club. When her and her two male Black friends reached the club, she was told that she had to sneak in through the back because women were not permitted inside. This example shows just how complicated the lives of Black women are: when one challenge is overcome, another one is put in their way. She was not discriminated based on her race as she admits she would have thought was going to happen, but instead was discriminated against as a result of her gender. Crenshaw’s example shows how Black women have to deal with many different levels of discrimination: gender, race, and a mixture of the two. The difficult part, as I discuss later in this post, is determining what the discrimination can be classified as. Is it an issue that affects all women, both Black and white? Is it an issue that affects all Black people, including men? Or is it an issue that specifically pertains to Black women?

That is the challenge.

Anyway. Now that I’ve told you a bit about what this article has to offer, I leave you with my notes:   

“I want to suggest further that this single-axis framework erases Black women In the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex dis crimination by limiting inquiry to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group” (57)

Just as discussed previously, Black women are often erased from research concerning gender (a large majority of feminist research centers on white women) as well as race (while I can’t say I know from my own research, Crenshaw suggests that the experiences of Black men are privileged in academic circles).

“This focus on the most privileged group members marginalizes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination” (57)

“‘The plaintiffs are clearly entitled to a remedy if they have been discriminated against. However they should not be allowed to combine statutory remedies to create a new super-remedy’ which would give them relief beyond what the drafters of the relevant statutes intended. Thus, this lawsuit must be examined to see if it states a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a combination of both’” (59)

This statement from the court in the DeGraffenreid v General Motors case makes me so angry! Especially after reading Mackinnon’s article, the idiocy of this statement is even more apparent. Just because white women and Black men were apparently not discriminated against does not mean that you can throw the discrimination against Black women out the window! I’m honestly shocked. Discrimination is discrimination. This might sound a little far-fetched, but what if there was a serial killer who went around specifically targeting disabled Asian women? How could you POSSIBLY look at a case like that as just an attack on women, Asians, or disabled people separately?   

“The court’s refusal in DeGraffenreid to acknowledge that Black women encounter combined race and sex discrimination implies that the boundaries of sex and race discrimination doctrine are defined respectively by white women’s and Black men’s experiences. Under this view, Black women are protected only to the extent that their experiences coincide with those of either of the two groups” (59)

“The court’s preferred articulation of ‘against females’ is not necessarily more inclusive—it just appears to be so because the racial contours of the claim are not specified” (60)

This was really interesting to me. The assumption tends to be that talking about female oppression and other feminist issues is an inclusive practice because other intersections like race are not being assigned (feminism is not just for white women, it is for all women…that sort of thing). Crenshaw, however, is making a point for the adverse being true. Just because the court in the case of Moore v Hughes Helicopters did not attach race to the claim does not mean that Black women and other minority groups are being included. It’s actually often more exclusive to talk about “all women” and make generalizations about the female experience because often these claims are made with white women in mind (which I’m probably guilty of!).

“For white women…there is no need to specify discrimination as white females because their race does not contribute to the disadvantage for which they seek redress” (60)

“In one such case, Payne v Travenol, two Black female plaintiffs alleging race discrimination brought a class action Suit on behalf of all Black employees at a pharmaceutical plant. The court refused, however, to allow the plaintiffs to represent Black males and granted the defendant’s request to narrow the class to Black women only” (62)

It seems to me that Black women just can’t win. In this example, the courts decided that the Black female plaintiffs could not represent Black males and made their claim geared toward Black women only. Even though these women ended up being somewhat successful once the class was narrowed (I say somewhat because their original intention to represent all Black people in the company failed), this example when compared to the other cases makes this situation even more problematic. When Black women make a discrimination claim, they have to be careful in how they approach the matter: are they representing women, the Black community, or Black women? Because there seems to be a big discrepancy across these court rulings in terms of how they are choosing to address these issues. Crenshaw comments on this discrepancy shortly after the above comment:

“Even though Travenol was a partial victory for Black women, the case specifically illustrates how antidiscrimination doctrine generally creates a dilemma for Black women. It forces them to choose between specifically articulating the intersectional aspects of their subordination, thereby risking their ability to represent Black men, or ignoring intersectionality in order to state a claim that would not lead to the exclusion of Black men” (62)

“Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women’s experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double-discrimination—the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women—not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women” (63-64)

When it comes to legal matters, courts need to be really careful in how they treat discrimination claims. The consideration of intersectionality is paramount in these situations. Courts need to be careful in figuring out if these claims have to do with gender as a whole, race, or a combination of the two. But they absolutely cannot be dismissive of Black women as their own unique group with their own unique issues separate from white women and Black men. It’s a difficult balance and the solution to this problem is certainly not obvious, but all I can say is that an ignorance of the impact of intersections will get these double (sometimes even triple or more) minority groups into serious trouble. Especially in the DeGraffenreid v General Motors case, courts cannot just completely dismiss Black women on the grounds that the discrimination claim has to be “one or the other”…an issue of race, or an issue of gender. It’s completely ridiculous. The only thing I’m still sort of grappling with, however, is when the court dismissed Black women from representing the total Black population in the workforce, as their claim could only apply to Black women specifically. Is this the right thing to do? It seems to me that there needs to be extremely careful assessment of these cases to determine all of the details to what the discrimination involves. I think it might be a little ignorant also to assume that Black women cannot represent Black men in certain situations, but it all depends on the specifics of the case.

“According to the dominant view, a discriminator treats all people within a race or sex category similarly. Any significant experiential or statistical variation within this group suggests either that the group is not being discriminated against or that conflicting interests exist which defeat any attempts to bring a common claim” (64) 

So let me get this straight. What Crenshaw is trying to say here is that in order for there to be “discrimination,” all members of a specific class, race, gender, etc. need to be treated with the same discrimination. This is so incredibly stupid to me, especially in this day and age! Sure, the article was written in 1989…but still! If I was a manager somewhere and I was specifically racist/sexist to Black women, not to black men or white women, then I would not be reprimanded because I’m still treating the Black men and the white women well? Does that make any sense to anyone?! I’m still discriminating against a group of people! Just because it’s a more specific group of people does not mean that it is not discrimination!

“…the paradigm of sex discrimination tends to be based on the experiences of white women; the model of race discrimination tends to be based on the experiences of the most privileged Blacks. Notions of what constitutes race and sex discrimination are, as a result, narrowly tailored to embrace only a small set of circumstances, none of which include discrimination against Black women” (65)

“Because the scope of antidiscrimination law is so limited, sex and race discrimination have come to be defined in terms of the experiences of those who are privileged ‘but for’ their racial or sexual characteristics” (64-65)

It took a bit of thought and further reading to understand this “but for” concept, but once I did I thought it was so interesting. Crenshaw is explaining how antidiscrimination doctrine is often centered upon this notion that certain groups “but for” their race or “but for” their gender would be otherwise treated equally. As a white woman, I would fall into this category: “but for” my gender, I would be a part of the dominant society. This “but for” concept, however, is not open to multiple oppressions. It leaves room for one or the other, gender, race, ability, age, etc., but not for a combination. So as a result, Black women are typically left behind, or forced to choose if “but for” their gender, OR “but for” their race, they would be treated equally. But of course, they cannot make that choice, which underlines the biggest issue with antidiscrimination doctrine. Ironically, antidiscrimination doctrine discriminates against the inclusion of other combined intersections in the identity of a person with regards to their legal and social protection. My eyes are rolling out of my head right now at the idiocy of this.

“When feminist theory and politics that claim to reflect women’s experience and women’s aspirations do not include or speak to Black women, Black women must ask: ‘Ain’t We Women?’ If this is so, how can the claims that ‘women are,’ ‘women believe’ and ‘women need’ be made when such claims are inapplicable or unresponsive to the needs, interests and experiences of Black women?” (67)

I feel so guilty right now! This whole time I’ve been writing specifically about and for white women, never stopping once to consider other groups. It’s just so difficult being a white woman myself: a lot of what I do comes from personal experience. And it’s doubly difficult considering my geographical location: I could count on one hand how many Black students were in my high school. I can’t really speak for all of the Niagara Region, but Niagara Falls is certainly predominantly made up of white people. I think this is even more reason for why I need to move away and experience other places. I’ve been living in this bubble for so long: aside from a few girls I’ve met here or there, at soccer and in a seminar or two, all of my friends are white. It’s time to branch out and learn about other people!

“Feminists thus ignore how their own race functions to mitigate some aspects of sexism and, moreover, how it often privileges them over and contributes to the domination of other women. Consequently, feminist theory remains white, and its potential to broaden and deepen its analysis by addressing non-privileged women remains unrealized” (67)

“Statements such as ‘men and women are taught to see men as independent, capable, powerful; men and women are taught to see women as dependent, limited in abilities, and passive,’ are common within this literature. But this ‘observation’ overlooks the anomalies created by crosscurrents of racism and sexism. Black men and women live in a society that creates sex-based norms and expectations which racism operates simultaneously to deny; Black men are not viewed as powerful, nor are Black women seen as passive” (67)

This is so important! And once again, I feel extremely guilty because the ideas I’ve developed around feminism are very similar to those mentioned here. But Crenshaw is right! Black women and men do not carry the same social discourses as white women and men. At the same time though, I want to know: if I was to write a paper about my own experiences, to avoid generalizing would I have to write specifically to white women? I feel like if I did this, it would seem racist! I could include other races as well, but being a white woman is it really my place to write about Black women? My hands are tied here it seems…

“Rape statutes generally do not reflect male control over female sexuality, but white male regulation of white female sexuality. Historically, there has been absolutely no institutional effort to regulate Black female chastity. Courts in some states had gone so far as to instruct juries that, unlike white women, Black women were not presumed .to be chaste” (68)

I’m honestly sickened! I know Crenshaw is talking about this in an historical context, but it’s still difficult to read…Black women are assumed to be chaste, but white women are? Where did that even come from?!

“Although patriarchy clearly operates within the Black community, presenting yet another source of domination to which Black women are vulnerable, the racial context in which Black women find themselves makes the creation of a political consciousness that Is oppositional to Black men difficult” (70)

I honestly would have never thought of this. What I think Crenshaw is saying here is that Black women find it more difficult to oppose the patriarchy of Black men as a result of Black racial oppression in general. Since Black men are already oppressed, challenging their patriarchal dominance over Black women is a lot harder than it is for white women to challenge white men. Because white men are the most dominant members of society, white women can challenge their patriarchal rule without fear of backlash. But this is of course not the case for Black women opposing Black men.

“The controversy over the movie The Color Purple is illustrative. The animating fear behind much of the publicized protest was that by portraying domestic abuse in a Black family, the movie confirmed the negative stereotypes of Black men” (71)

My mind is being blown right out of my skull right now. I always knew that Black women faced social problems doubly more difficult and complicated than white women and Black men, but I never thought about all of the many dimensions of these problems. It is problematic for a Black woman to protest the dominance and/or abuse of Black men because it is seen as a reinforcement of racial stereotypes! I’ve found that when people think of the Black community in general, and the negative stereotypes that are often associated, it tends to be focused around Black men. Black women are forgotten! What’s even worse is that these negative stereotypes surrounding the Black community that are more often than not targeted towards men are assigned to the population as a whole. Black women are not included in the equation.

“It Is somewhat ironic that those concerned with alleviating the ills of racism and sexism should adopt such a top-down approach to discrimination, if their efforts Instead began with addressing the needs and problems of those who are most disadvantaged and with restructuring and remaking the world where necessary then others who are singularly disadvantaged would also benefit” (73)

“Moved by the energy of the synergistic interaction of the variables whose relations it exposes, intersectionality pursues an analysis that ‘is greater than the sum of racism and sexism’ (Crenshaw 1989, 140)” (1024)

REFERENCE: Mackinnon, C. (2013). Intersectionality as method: A note. Signs, 38(4), 1019-1030.

Mackinnon’s article serves as an argument for the importance of considering multiple intersections in the study of different groups as opposed to investigating them separately. She focuses on Black women specifically to demonstrate how considering Black women’s race or gender on their own does not accurately represent them. Black women are not the same as white women, or Black men. In Crenshaw’s article, which I will be discussing in my next blog post, Mackinnon’s ideas are explained in greater detail and with more examples.

For this post, I have once again reverted back to my favourite quotation-and-analysis style, with a few quotations standing alone:

“[Intersectionality] embodies a particular dynamic approach to the underlying laws of motion of the reality it traces and traps while remaining grounded in the experiences of classes of people within hierarchical relations where systems of race, gender, and class domination converge,’ criticizing a rigidly top-down social and political order from the perspective of the bottom up (Crenshaw 1991b, 1246)” (1020)

“Intersectionality fills out the Venn diagrams at points of overlap where convergence has been neglected, training its sights where vectors of inequality intersect at crossroads that have previously been at best sped through” (1020)

Great analogy! I really have nothing else to say about it than that.

“All the Blacks were men, all the women were white, but Dafro Jefferies was brave. Instead of denying the discrimination against her, seeing only categories of race or sex with invariant internal content, privileging the white experience of sex and the male experience of race and thereby precluding Ms. Jefferies’s experience of discrimination from legal recognition, a panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the combined ground of race-and-sex discrimination to which Ms. Jefferies claimed she was subjected must be recognized as a legal claim” (1021)

In this example, a Black woman named Dafro Jeffries claimed that she was being discriminated against in the workplace. Even though there are women in her workplace as well as Black people, all of the women were white and all of the Black people were men. So even though her gender and race were being represented, the experience of a white woman is of course different from the experience of a Black woman, just as the experience of a Black man is different from the experience of a Black woman. This is an excellent reminder for why it is necessary to consider intersectionalities: the article argues that to understand the concept, we must begin with Black women, and I can certainly understand why. Not only must Black women bear the burden of sexism, but they also deal with racism. I think what the concept of intersectionality argues is that sexism and racism (as the main example in this paper) should not be investigated separately. In order to truly understand the experiences of Black women, Aboriginal women, Hispanic women, etc…they need to be investigated as their own unique group. It’s not just about gender and it’s not just about race: it’s about how these intersections…well…intersect! Am I making sense here? I feel like I understand it so I hope that’s coming across in my explanation.

“The conventional framework fails to recognize the dynamics of status and the power hierarchies that create them, reifying sex and race not only along a single axis but also as compartments that ignore the social forces of power that rank and define them relationally within and without. In this respect, conventional discrimination analysis mirrors the power relations that form hierarchies that define inequalities rather than challenging and equalizing them. No question about it, categories and stereotypes and classifications are authentic instruments of inequality” (1023)

Woah okay! This is a lot to take in. Here is where I pause to reflect, and by reflect I mean read this over a few hundred times and then attempt to write it in my own words to make sure I understand! Is MacKinnon trying to say that these rigid categories that we designed, including but not limited to class, race and gender (even just including these ones and leaving out ability, age and culture, to name a few, is discriminatory!) are almost discriminatory in themselves because certain categories are privileged over the others? Like in the example I just used: people tend to gravitate towards investigating the function of gender, class and race in society but other intersections such as ability and age tend to not be taken as heavily into consideration. By creating these categories, even with the intention to bring to light the discrimination that exists within them, we are at the same time participating in a form of discrimination by ignoring other categories. Is that right? I just read the passage over again and I’m still doubting myself. But this passage to me is yet another reason for why an intersectional approach is of paramount importance in order to truly get a grip on the complicated interactions between various social groups. We must not only investigate how the Black woman’s race and gender impacts her everyday life, but we must also factor in other aforementioned categories such as culture and age all at once if we are to see the ways in which multiple oppressions (or maybe even privileges? Like for example if she’s able-bodied) are operating and working together and/or against one another. It sounds extremely complicated, and well…it is. It’s a lot easier to just focus on one category (like I’ve been doing with my emphasis on gender). But of course what’s easier isn’t often what’s right, and now I’m attempting to pull my head out of the sand and come face-to-face with those complicated intersections I’ve been doing such an excellent job of avoiding up until now.

“Imagining that inequalities are equal as a method for analyzing…inequality can only deny what needs to be changed…intersectionality [has become] a method for fitting law to reality, rather than reality to law” (1024)

Inequalities are not equal! That seems really weird to say, but it’s true! It all goes back to what I was trying to say in the rant just about this last passage: inequalities, especially when it comes to policy and law, are not all dealt with on the same scale. Race and gender tend to be taken more seriously than the others, and even among those two categories one could probably argue for one being privileged over the other (I was going to guess which one it would be, but I had too many arguments for each one to actually pick…perhaps that’s a good thing though!). I also really like the second part of this quotation about fitting law to reality as opposed to the other way around. The reality is that people are not just made of their class, race and/or gender, and the law must account for the countless other factors that play into what makes us who we are.

“In the absence of this intersectional way of thinking, the rape of African American women has often not been seen as the assault on the Black community that it is (1273), nor have the specifically gendered dimensions of the lynching of Black men generally been grasped” (1027)

Reading this part of the article made me think of Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull, which is a non-fiction novel chronicling the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in post-Apartheid South Africa. Chapter Sixteen of the novel, entitled “Truth Is A Woman” is by far the most horrific part of the entire book, as the crimes against the Black women of the community are described in disturbing detail. The female prisoners endured the worst possible treatment imaginable: “‘Then things happened that could not happen to a man. Your sexuality was used to strip away your dignity, to undermine your sense of self’…You had to strip in front of a whole range of policemen making remarks about your body. Women had to do star-jumps naked, breasts flying, Fallopian tubes were flooded with water until they burst; rats were pushed into vaginas…‘Women have been made to stand the whole day with blood flowing down and drying on their legs. Did they gain strength from looking at their blood? From asking you to drink your own blood?’ asks Mthintso [one of the black female victims of Aparteid]. It is only when the men in prisons are forced by sodomy to behave like women that they realize how it is to live with a constant awareness of your body and how it can be abused and ridiculed” (Krog 235-236). In this excerpt, the importance of what it means to not only be a Black or female body, but rather a Black female body, is made extremely evident. The Black male prisoners of South Africa were not treated this way, and of course the white women of the nation were not treated this way. Neglecting the combined intersections of sexuality, gender and race when researching these women’s experiences would be a completely fruitless exercise. Taking into account intersections of race alone, or gender alone, would not be an accurate representation of these women’s positionalities. They are not just Black, and they are not just women: they are Black women. Black women, not Black men or white women, were the victims of this gut-wrenching abuse, and if any of these intersections had been altered, they would not have been treated this way.

   

“‘Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women’s experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double discrimination—the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women—not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women’ (Crenshaw 1989, 149)” (1028)

This quotation from Kimberlé Crenshaw (as cited in Mackinnon) is a simple and straight-forward reason for why intersectionality is so important. Black women are victimized for both their gender and their race: sometimes for one or the other, sometimes for both. A researcher can investigate the implications of gender over race, or the other way around in a paper, but if she or he hopes to get to the root of the Black woman’s experience, one cannot take precedence over the other.

In terms of how this information impacts the approach I’ve been taking to my research, I certainly understand now how closed-minded (if that’s the right term?) it can be to deal with feminist issues without considering intersections outside of gender. There is a lot more to a woman than just the gender she identifies with, and other intersections can seriously influence how she is treated in society. As a white, upper-middle class, twenty-two-year-old, able-bodied woman, my everyday life is different from a Black, lower class, fifty-two-year-old, disabled woman. While our gender might bring us together in many respects, these other intersections socially separate us and give us our unique identities and positionalities. It would be ignorant to generalize mine and this woman’s experiences in a paper as the same merely because we have the female gender in common.

Carol [Alison’s therapist]: I think your mother has some resentment about being female that got passed on to you (279)

Reference: Bechdel, A. (2012). Are You My Mother?. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

I think I’m going to struggle a little bit with this one. I’m somewhat concerned that I’m not going to be able to do it justice. I mentioned very briefly in my last post that there was a lot that went over my head in Bechdel’s memoir. What I thought would be a quick read, as you’d expect from a graphic novel, actually took me a lot longer than I would have expected. Bechdel doesn’t write like a typical comic book author: her language choice is extremely elevated, and she makes many direct references to famous theorists, authors and other academics such as Virginia Woolf (who was also mentioned in Marbles…she’s coming up everywhere these days! I mentioned her novel Flush in my post from last week) and especially Donald Winnicott (a well-known paediatrician and psychoanalyst who “was especially influential in the field of object relations theory,” according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott).

With only Psychology 1F90 under my belt, many of these references to Winnicott in particular were a major challenge for me. While I’m confident that I understood the majority of the text, I’m going to be honest and admit that there were some parts that no matter how many times I read them, I just could not understand them (like the idea of the “true self” and the “false self”…I mean, I think I get it but if it came up on a test I wouldn’t be confident in my answer).

To the best of my ability though, I’m going to tell you what this book was about. In the simplest terms, Bechdel’s text is about the complicated relationship between her and her mother. Throughout the text, she jumps backward and forward in time, cutting between different events of her past (she goes as far back as infancy, through to childhood…her college years, and adult years) in an attempt to consolidate all of her memories of her relationship with her mother and release her resentment. From my perspective (and I’m going to go into more detail), Bechdel’s mother is a living embodiment of the argument against all women being naturally attuned to motherhood. Bechdel’s mother should not have been a mother. Instead of having the typical mother-daughter relationship where the mother takes care of her child and the child depends on the mother, the relationship between Bechdel and her mother was inverted: Bechdel spent her entire childhood feeling like she was her mother’s mother. In her childhood, she felt guilty about troubling her mother with an illness and developed a phobia of vomiting because it represented a time where she had to rely on her mother for care (this is just one of many other examples). Even in her adulthood, Bechdel’s mother imposes the mothering role onto her daughter by overwhelming their phone conversations with only her own concerns (she never asks her daughter how she is doing, she is selfish much like how a child is selfish when she expects her mother to listen to her every complaint without the mother asking for the same courtesy in return). Bechdel’s mother never seemed to figure out how the mother-daughter dynamic was supposed to work, and if she did, she did not care to execute it. As a result of her mother’s inadequacies as a parent, Bechdel goes to therapy from her early to later adulthood to figure out when, where, how, why…her mother chose not to mother her.

In terms of the artistic style of the graphic novel, Bechdel’s book is a lot more detailed and better resembles other adult graphic novels compared to Forney’s book. While Forney’s book has many pages that are consumed with elaborate drawings and diagrams that take up the whole page, Bechdel sticks predominantly to the traditional panel format:

In this example, Bechdel has illustrated one of the many exhausting and one-sided phone conversations that she has had with mother.

Interestingly though, Bechdel’s comic is completely black-and-white aside from some red accents (in various intensities and shades, sometimes deep, sometimes appearing more pink). In the example above, everything is in black-and-white except for Bechdel and her mother’s clothing, her mother’s lips, and the window frames and some furniture. As much as I can say that it was an interesting stylistic choice and it looks really good, I would love to know the reason behind it. I wish I had a creative idea to offer for why she might have done this (maybe if I slept on it something would come to me…), and maybe if I had more experience with graphic novels I would have an easier time, but alas I have no idea! I can’t help but think about Schindler’s List with the little girl in the red coat…but what could that possibly have to do with a memoir about a woman’s relationship with her mother?

Am I missing something here?

I’m just going to move on before I explode.

Aside from the red-black-and-white colour choice, I also really loved how on pages 103-106, the time that Bechdel is in therapy is delineated by the tree outside of the window, indicating the passing seasons.

 This happens right after Bechdel’s therapist, Jocelyn, asks her if she believes in God. We of course know it is autumn because of the tree outside. On the following pages the tree is bare for winter, and then develops buds for spring.

I’m not sure what that has to do with anything to be honest. I just thought it was clever…

Anyway.

Since this graphic novel has a lot more text and thus much more quotable material compared to Forney’s book, I’m going to revert back to my old blogging style to highlight my observations/connections to my own life and experiences while also incorporating connections to feminism and geography (but in the case of this book, it’s predominantly feminism).

To make things easier to follow, I’m going to write out my quotes in a script format as many of them involve back-and-forth conversation between multiple characters. I’m also going to keep everyone on a first-name basis (aside from Bechdel’s mother since we’re not given her first name when they’re mentioned in the “script” just because I don’t have everyone’s last names. I thought it would be important to mention that so you don’t think I’m being sloppy!

I should also mention that any time I am quoting Alison’s narration (so pretty much what’s not in the speech bubbles) I write “Alison [narration]”.

Okay. I think that covers it all.

Here it goes!

Alison: [Bechdel has just told her therapist about how she wanted to cry when looking at the innocence of the children in the Christmas play at church. Her therapist asks her why] I dunno. It makes me think of this newspaper clipping of a Christmas pageant I was in when I was ten. I look different from the other kids.

Carol [her therapist]: How?

Alison: Uh…self-conscious? (45)

I really liked this exchange. From the time Alison was very young, she learned that she had to be strong for her mother and take care of her, and thus was never really given a childhood. In childhood we do not have that obsessive awareness of how our bodies look in and take up space. We are care-free. Along with her lack of innocence in childhood that came as a result of her mother’s poor parenting, she never experienced that blissful disregard of bodies and space that we have when we’re young.

Young Alison [to her mother]: Why didn’t you become an actress?

Alison’s mother: Oh, I wanted to get married and have kids (94)

When I read this, I immediately wondered: was that the right decision? Writing this now, I’m also wondering why it has to be one or the other: why can’t a woman act while also having a family? In these times though, it makes sense because women were pretty much given the sole responsibility of their households and children, so if you committed to a marriage and family, everything else sort of automatically went out the window. I think Alison’s mother is a good example of what happens to a woman when she doesn’t follow her heart and her dreams, and simply does what society tells her she should do. I have a feeling she’d probably be much happier if she stuck to acting (as bad as that might sound…I’m sorry Alison Bechdel. It’s nothing against you!).

Alison [narration]: One of the reasons why the mother might fail to meet the infant’s spontaneous gesture [which according to Bechdel/Winnicott is the “true self” of the infant, which is who the infant is when he or she is not complying to the mother’s needs], Winnicott writes, is because the father is not performing his part well enough.

Alison’s father [to his wife about baby Alison]: Can’t you keep that brat quiet? (95)

Even though we only get small snippets of what Bechdel’s father was like (I’d have to read her other book to find out more about her dad!) it is evident from examples like this that he was not a good father, either. He doesn’t seem to want anything to do with his daughter and has put all of the responsibility of her care onto his wife. As awful and unfit for parenting as she is, I can certainly empathize with Bechdel’s mother and understand why her relationship with her daughter had become so twisted. Without any support from a husband who became angry with HER for her pregnancy (as if she conceived her children all on her own!) it isn’t farfetched that she would take her anger and resentment out on her daughter.

Alison [narration]: [After a conversation with her mom about some pro-life comments a journalist had made on TV] I had long since given up trying to debate abortion with my mom. None of my feminist arguments could sway her (124)

I included this quotation because I think the abortion argument is a good reminder of the fact that not all women are feminists! It sounds really funny, but there are many women out there today who are perfectly content in a patriarchal society (and by “content” I mean that they just sort of live like blind sheep in a system, doing what the system says and living by the system’s rules and not really questioning anything. Many of these women, of course, use religion as the foundations of all of their beliefs and take “the Bible says so” as law for their entire lives). Ugh. It’s so frustrating. I’m going to rein myself in here before I go on a tangent. It’s even more frustrating to know that Bechdel’s mother is an educated woman. Before I fly off the deep end, I know everyone is entitled to their own beliefs…but COME ON! Especially coming from a woman who shouldn’t have had kids to begin with!

Okay I’m done. Time to move on.

Alison [narration]: [Alison is grappling over the fact that her mother tried to call her multiple times at her old dorm room when she was in college, and she had missed the call. Her mother needed some consolation upon deciding to divorce her father] I wasn’t there when she had needed me. The phone ringing in the empty room. I couldn’t get it out of my head. One ring reverberating into another. And another. And another (158-159)

This is a great example of how Bechdel acts more like a mother than her own mother does. You would expect this sort of regret coming from a mother, but instead Bechdel feels terrible that she missed her mother’s phone call.

Alison’s mother [on the phone with Alison]: You’re not going to use your real name, are you? Couldn’t you use one of your funny names?

Alison: That would defeat the purpose!

Alison’s mother: I would love to see your name on a book, but not on a book of lesbian cartoons (182)

This broke my heart when I read it. She was so excited to tell her mother some news for once, only to be completely knocked down. Her mother is ashamed of her for being a lesbian and doesn’t want the public to know. Is it her family’s image that she’s worried about? Is it her daughter’s image she’s worried about? From what I’ve seen, and based on her selfish behaviour everywhere else, she’s probably more worried about what people will think of her. Hmm. Once again, not a great mother figure!

Alison: [On her therapist Jocelyn’s request, Alison asks her mother a compelling question] What’s the main thing you learned from your mother?

Alison’s mother: That boys are more important than girls (263-264)

Earlier in the book, Bechdel mentions how her brothers were treated better than her throughout her childhood, so it seems that Alison’s mother has chosen to carry on this awful cycle of valuing men above women. But WHY? If she was treated this way in her own childhood, why would she ever want to pass that on to her daughter? Is it like a form of revenge? Maybe if I took more psychology courses, I would have better ideas…but I can only go so far with my speculations.

Donald Winnicott [quoted by Bechdel]: The awkward fact remains, for men and women, that each was once dependent on woman, and somehow a hatred of this has to be transformed into a kind of gratitude if full maturity of the personality is to be reached (279)

Alison’s mother [to Alison as a child]: Alison, get off the floor!

Alison: I can’t! I’m crippled!

Alison’s mother: Oh, do you need some leg braces?

Alison: Yes!

Alison [narration]: What I remember is a feeling of inebriation. The further I moved into this imaginary space, the more it opened up.

Alison’s mother: Okay, let me lace them up.

Alison [narration]: I can only speculate that there was a charge, an exchange, a mutual cathexis going on…She could see my invisible wounds because they were hers, too (286-287)

These last couple pages were probably the most compelling of the entire book. Prior to this exchange, Bechdel mentions how she would pretend to be crippled for her mother’s attention when she was a little girl. Here, she is making a connection between her mother’s indulgence in this make-believe play and transgenerational female oppression. Both Alison and certainly her mother harbor feelings of inadequacy as women, and thus in this moment they can play together because they can both see each other’s “wounds.” Bechdel resents being a woman as a result of her mother’s treatment of her (especially when compared to how she treated her brothers) and her mother resents being a woman as a result of her husband and her own mother’s treatment of her. Ingrained in both of these women is the idea that “boys are more important than girls” (264).

In creating this memoir though, I think Bechdel is beginning the healing process after generations of oppression. Now that she has exposed this vicious cycle, hopefully she will be able to stop it...

I never thought I would say this…and I don’t mean to say I don’t think she would be a good mother because I don’t know that…but maybe Bechdel’s socially uncharacteristic choice to not have children (it seems it was hardly a choice…more like she was rather apathetic to the whole idea from the start) was a good one.

The abusive cycle ends with her. 

“I had health insurance but it didn’t cover mental health” (82)

Reference: Forney, E. (2012) Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me. New York: Penguin Group.

You’re so depressed that a “good day” is being able to move from the bed to the couch, and somehow health insurance doesn’t cover mental health? Don’t even get me started on the suicide rate… 

For this blog and the one following, I’m going to mix things up a little bit. Instead of going about this in my usual English-brain-inspired fashion with the quotations, analysis and personal references, I’m going to follow a different formula. The books I was instructed to read are graphic novels, and thus much of the message they deliver is conveyed through the illustrations: the colours they choose, the lack thereof, the way they use the space on the page, etc. There may be a couple of quotations here or there, but instead of isolating them I’m going to weave them into my general observations and analyses. Maybe I’ll even take a picture of a few of the pages that stood out to me and insert them into the blog for reference (as of right now I’m not sure if I’m going to do that, it all depends on the amount of energy I’m going to have when I get there…if you scroll down and see pictures, you’ll know I had said energy in abundance). But anyway. What I’m going to do is start by telling you a bit about what the books are about and how they’re written (ie. attempt to describe the author’s artistic and literary styles, perhaps with picture references). Then, I’m going to provide some general impressions and observations, probably some questions, too (especially with Are You My Mother?...I have to admit that a lot went over my head in that one, but I’ll get to that shortly) and also make connections to my own life and experiences as per usual. Lastly and most importantly, I’m going to see if I can make some connections to the work I’ve been doing in geography so far: what does a book about a woman’s battle with bipolar disorder, and another woman’s complicated relationship with her mother have to do with geography? Just sit tight and I’m going to tell you (to the best of my ability, anyway).

So just as the title of this blog and the reference suggests, I’m going to begin with Ellen Forney’s Marbles.

As it mentions on the cover of the book, Marbles is a graphic memoir detailing the struggle the author has gone through with bipolar disorder (I’d love to say this struggle is over, but unfortunately bipolar disorder is something that is never really cured) from pre-diagnosis, to diagnosis and then through the difficult years of treatment and eventual “recovery” (I of course use the term “recovery” very loosely here). Forney also struggles a lot with her medications: she worries that if she is medicated for her bipolar disorder, she will lose her creativity. She spends a lot of time reflecting on all of the famous artists, poets and authors who struggled with bipolar disorder and tries to weigh the risk of losing her profession (as a comic writer, she needs her creativity) and potentially losing her life (many of these famous individuals, like Virginia Woolf for example, ended up committing suicide). After countless therapy sessions and experiments with medication after medication in different quantities and combinations (which takes almost five years!), Forney and her psychiatrist finally figure out what works for her, and she realizes that her medications don’t cause her to lose her creativity. In fact, she is actually able to focus a lot better than she did before.

I have to admit that prior to reading this book I didn’t really know what bipolar disorder was. If you asked me before picking up Forney’s book to describe the disorder, I probably would have thought for a while before spitting out “mood swings?” and then not even being totally sure about myself. I will admit that I definitely downplayed what I believed it to be. Forney does an incredible job of showing readers just how serious this mental disorder truly is: it’s a lot more than just “mood swings”…it’s extreme and dramatic ups (mania) and downs (depression) that can last months with no relief. When you’re up, you’re UP to the point of near insanity, and when you’re down, you’re DOWN to the point of contemplating suicide (although Forney thankfully never got to that point…however she spent months struggling just to get out of bed, only to move to the couch). Because I think it’s important and deserves recognition, here is one of my favourite pages of the book: one that I thought was so interesting and compelling, in fact, that I showed it to my mom and one of my friends:

Although I would argue that you should read the whole book to truly grasp an understanding of the severity of this mental disorder, the illustration, along with Forney’s explanations, provide the best summary possible in a single page. To think that a person can go from nearly smacking their head off the ceiling from being so energized and excited during a manic period to lying lifeless on the floor during a depressive period is astounding to me.

In terms of what the rest of the graphic novel looks like and how it compares to other graphic novels I have read, with regards to style Forney’s book reminds me a lot of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis in terms of both her decision to keep her comic completely black-and-white, and also with the extremely simplistic style of her artwork. Compared to Are You My Mother?, it didn’t look like your typical graphic novel with the sequential panels and detailed illustrations. It was more abstract. Although there were some pages that followed the more traditional comic book style with pages full of panels and speech bubbles…

This is one of the last pages of the book, where Forney talks about how she wishes her current self could tell her past self that everything is going to be okay.

 …there were many pages that looked like this…

This picture illustrates Forney’s reliance on her sketchbook to help her through her depressive periods. Even though she didn’t have the energy to draw often, she would still on occasion muster the strength to draw some sketches (many of which she dedicates full pages of her memoir to, such as in the following illustration).

She includes this self-portrait among a succession of illustrations from her sketchbook. It doesn’t show it in this picture, but in the top right corner of the page in the book it says “crying in the bathroom.”

Now that I’ve given you a better idea of what the book is about and what it looks like, I’m going to move onto talking about some of the parts of the book that stood out to me and some of the connections I have made. To start off, I want to say that I really enjoyed this book. I think any book that leaves me feeling like I was completely naïve and foolish before reading it is nothing short of a roaring success in my eyes. Like I mentioned previously, I knew absolutely nothing about bipolar disorder before last week. Actually, I would often get it mixed up with schizophrenia…which now seems really dumb (though I guess you’re sort of a different person when you’re manic and when you’re depressed…but still, it’s not even close to the same thing). Since I know neither of them will ever see this, I’m going to share something personal. I know I do this a lot, but this might be bordering on TMI (though I must admit after reading these two memoirs I feel like nothing is TMI anymore). Here it goes, anyway.

Almost immediately after finishing reading this book, I ran downstairs to tell my mom about it. I told her what the book was about, and I said, “I can’t believe dad accused you of being bipolar…you’re not even remotely close to being bipolar. That’s so stupid.”

I might have actually called him stupid here, or maybe even an idiot…but I’m not going to admit to that just in case there’s some cataclysmic shifting of the universe and he ends up seeing this. For the record, I’ll just say I don’t remember.

Anyway.

I guess when my parents were having problems (they’re divorced now) and they were going to therapy my father brought this theory up to the therapist. He said he had been searching all of the signs of a bipolar online, and my mom fit the bill. My mom told me that upon hearing this, the therapist casually turned to my mother and asked her what she does for a living. My mother told him that she was the president of Niagara Falls Tourism.

The therapist told my father that my mother was not bipolar. From this one detail about her career, he knew that could not be possible. Someone with bipolar disorder would never be able to run a company untreated, which of course made perfect sense when Forney talked about how she pretty much stayed in bed for weeks on end.

That wouldn’t fly in the corporate world.

The reason I’m telling this story is because it shows how ignorant people are about mental disorders, as well as how problematic it is to go around accusing people of being “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” or “obsessive compulsive” or any other serious mental condition without any actual knowledge of what any of them are. My father is not “stupid” or an “idiot” or anything that I may or may not have called him when I was talking to my mom. He’s an intelligent man, but he is extremely ignorant when it comes to the seriousness of mental disorders.

Even the most intelligent people can be ignorant, and this example with my parents shows how important it is for people to get their facts straight. My mother was extremely hurt by my father’s accusation. She of course is not bipolar, but for people who actually have this disorder, even after reading Forney’s memoir I really cannot begin to grasp how difficult it must be to tell people about it.

People who, more often than not, probably don’t have the right information. Sure, there have been many efforts over the years to increase mental health awareness. But how far does this “awareness” really go? I know mental disorders exist, but that doesn’t mean I know what people actually go through when they have them. I think Forney’s book was a good start.

Now that I realize how ignorant I was, and I’ve had a lightbulb or two go off in my head to clear up some of that ignorance, I can work at obtaining a much fuller and more authentic understanding.

I’d like to start making some connections to my study area, starting with feminism! If you ask me, pretty well everything should start with feminism, but that’s an argument for another day.

In the beginning of Forney’s memoir, she begins by showing her readers what her life was like before she was diagnosed with her disorder. Forney is in a manic phase at this point, which means she’s full of energy, excitement and hyperactivity. I have to admit that when I was reading this part of the book, I couldn’t help but admire her! She seemed like the coolest woman ever to me: she exercises countless times a day, her mind is always going at a mile a minute and spilling over with creative ideas, she throws exciting and elaborate parties and she flirts and sleeps with whoever she wants whenever she wants! During a manic period, Forney is confident and completely fearless! No social situation makes her uncomfortable and she says and does precisely what she feels. I especially loved the part on page 18 when she mentions how “brazen” she was and how she “didn’t fear rejection” when flirting with both men and women. In one panel, she goes into a store and says to the man (upon first meeting him): “Let’s make out in your back room.” In the next panel, she meets a girl in a sauna and says to her: “What would you say is your sexual orientation? Because I’d really like to kiss you.”

Why aren’t there more women like this?! Okay sure, maybe she might be a little “much.” But I think women especially should be more like Forney! Maybe not completely like Forney of course, because the depression that comes after the mania is definitely no picnic, but her shameless confidence is majorly inspiring to me. I wish I could just go up to a random guy and ask him to make out with me in the back room.

And now to incorporate some geography into this!

One of the main thoughts that kept pervading my mind was that…

FORNEY TAKES UP SPACE!

And it’s amazing!

In our society, women are made to think that they should take up as little space as possible: we should be quiet and docile, thin, cross our legs, keep to ourselves. Pretty much everything about how the female body moves and behaves has to do with being as small as possible. Manic Forney, on the other hand, is larger than life. She doesn’t care what people think about her, and she is happy in her own skin.

If only this Forney…who in this illustration, takes up the entire page as her face is not outlined…

…have to turn into this Forney…

Is it possible to be like manic Forney without the bipolar disorder diagnosis? While I don’t think a woman would be able to physically keep up a high to the magnitude that Forney’s highs were, I definitely think Forney’s attitude while manic is certainly worth adopting.

While manic, she seems completely liberated from all of the pressures of the outside world to be the particular version of a woman that society accepts. She is a feminist to the core and doesn’t let the normal confines of different spaces and social influences impact her behaviour.

I don’t think I need to lose my “marbles” to change the way I perceive my world and the spaces I feel free to inhabit and how I choose to inhabit them.

…see what I did there?

Okay, I think that’s enough for this one. On to graphic novel numero dos!