Protect me from what I want / dos homens que odiavam as mulheres

"Porque é que ele me humilhava desta maneira? Creio que não foi, como acontece muitas vezes, porque as qualidades que o inicialmente encantaram – a minha vivacidade, a minha liberdade, o meu sentido de igualdade com os homens – acabassem por o irritar.
[...]
Ele tinha medo de mim: é a razão por que era cruel comigo. Tinha medo de mim de uma maneira vulgar e de outra invulgar. No primeiro caso tinha medo de mim da maneira que os homens costumam recear as mulheres: porque as amantes (ou esposas) os compreendem. Alguns homens são muito pouco adultos: querem que as mulheres os compreendam, e para atingir esse fim contam-lhes todos os seus segredos; e depois quando elas os compreendem totalmente, eles odeiam-nas porque elas os compreendem.
No segundo caso – o mais importante –, ele tinha medo de mim porque tinha medo de si próprio. Tinha medo de me amar completamente. Não era o simples terror de eu lhe invadir o escritório e a solidão; era o terror de eu lhe invadir o coração. Era cruel porque me queria afastar, porque receava amar-me completamente. Vou contar-lhe o que, no meu íntimo, acredito: que para Gustave, de um modo que ele não apreendia totalmente, eu representava a vida, e que me rejeitava ainda mais violentamente porque isso lhe criava a mais profunda vergonha. E eu tenho alguma culpa? Eu amava-o; há alguma coisa mais natural do que eu querer dar-lhe a oportunidade de ele me amar a mim?
[...]
É verdade que era um homem difícil de amar. O seu coração estava distante, afastado; tinha vergonha dele e muito cuidado com ele. O verdadeiro amor sobrevive à ausência, à morte e à infidelidade, disse-me ele uma vez; os verdadeiros amantes podem passar dez anos sem se verem. (Não fiquei impressionada por estas observações; limitei-me a concluir que ele se sentiria mais à vontade se eu estivesse ausente, se fosse infiel ou se morresse.)

Gabava-se de estar apaixonado por mim; mas nunca vi um amor tão impaciente. "A minha vida é como andar a cavalo", escreveu-me ele uma vez. "Dantes gostava de ir a galope; agora gosto de ir a passo". Quando escreveu isto ainda não tinha trinta anos; já tinha decidido ser velho antes do tempo. Enquanto eu... o galope! O cabelo ao vento, a gargalhada que vem de dentro, do fundo dos pulmões!

A sua vaidade lisonjeava-se com a ideia de estar apaixonado por mim; creio que também lhe dava um prazer não assumido o desejar constantemente o meu corpo e, no entanto, proibir-se de o ter: negar-se o prazer era tão excitante como ceder. Costumava dizer-me que eu era menos mulher do que a maioria das mulheres; que era uma mulher na carne, mas um homem no espírito; que eu era um hermaphrodite nouveau, um terceiro sexo. Afirmou-me muitas vezes esta teoria louca, mas na realidade estava só a afirmá-la a si próprio: quanto menos mulher ele me fazia, menos amante ele precisava de ser."

Julian Barnes, O Papagaio de Flaubert [pg 172, 173, 174]

Women aren't funny

women aren't funny

Depois dizem que somos histéricas

Segundo Carol Gilligan, Jean Piaget, George Herbert Mead, Freude e Erik H. Erikson, equivalem o desenvolvimento humano ao desenvolvimento masculino.

In a different voice

The really beloved bad boys of women's literature don't bully or abuse the heroine, but they continually provoke and tease her – they are teasing her to release her own latent wildness. Ando one thing the romantic heroes of women's fiction, even the bad boys, who can be brusque or verge on rudeness, never, ever do is actually snap at, that is, negatively startle, the heroine; think of the edgy but grudgingly respectful repartee of Darcy and Elizabeth. Virtually every women's genre romance novel follows a script of a man who seems bad – insensitive, corrupt, womanizing – but turns out to be good. It also often features a heroine who begins demure and unripe – "Poor, obscure, plain and little" in Jane Eyre's speech – but who becomes herself, under the provocation of this bad boy who is secretly good.
This seeming paradox or politically incorrect fantasy is, I would argue, an essential archetype of the female heterosexual journey. A skilled, even at times slightly dangerous, male provocateur can help the female sexual journey to begin. "Badness" is not literal badness – it is otherness, wildness, the dimensions of the unknown. The motorcycle boots, the Harley – they are about her adventures, her penchant for the open road, erotically and in terms of her own creativity and subcersiveness, that society has generally repressed in her and forbidden her to claim as a longing, let alone as part of her "good girl" identity. His male "badness" is simply the projected dark animus of her own unacknowledged wild self."

Naomi Wolf, Vagina

Édipo

The separation between mothers and sons is mandated in patriarchy. This is what the Oedipus complex is about: sexualizing the intimacy, placing it under taboo, linking freedom with leaving women and going off with men, and making any woman who resists this separation a virtual Jocasta, Oedipus' "unspeakable mother." Except of course Jocasta didn't resist. She joined Laius, her husband, in wounding and abandoning her son."
Carol Gilligan, The Birth of Pleasure

"In a different voice"

"Gabriela was a character so close to who I am. I would like if women could be just the way we are. Not the way need to be."
Sónia Braga

Olhem-me só o patriarcado a falar!!! / da pedofilia disfarçada / do reino de Peter Pan

"Viagra is another reason — men are able to satisfy younger women. And people are living longer and they can get out and still have a life.”

O senhor que afirma isto acabou de se esquecer de dizer que 'Viagra is another reason — men are able to satisfy women of all ages, and [older] women enjoy taking their time to wait for those men who don't feel like or cannot take viagra."

Nem todos os older men andam por aí feitos baratas tontas à caça de gajas novas! Nem todas as 'gajas novas' querem gajos velhos!
É a cultura da pedofilia! A Barbie culture!
Pronto. Indignei-me.

O artigo, "Divorce after 50 becomes more common",  aqui.

Destaco:
“Staying together until death do us part is a bigger challenge than it used to be because we expect so much more of marriage than we did in the past, and we have so many more options when a marriage doesn’t live up to those expectations.
[...] If you are a healthy 65, you can expect another pretty healthy 20 years. So with the kids gone, it seems more burdensome to stay in a bad relationship, or even one that has grown stale.

e... Já Carol Gilligan o constata... "Most divorces among older couples, as in younger ones, are initiated by women." 

"Probably once the boy dolls get out I would probably play with them a lot."

Self-sacrifice

"The notion that virtue for women lies in self-sacrifice has complicated the course of women's development by pitting the moral issue of goodness against the adult questions of responsibility and choice. In addition, the ethic of self-sacrifice is directly in conflict with the concept of rights that has, in the past century, supported women's claim to a fair share of social justice."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

Lost in translation

"Given the evidence of different perspectives in the representation of adulthood by women and men, there is a need for research that elucidates the effects of these differences in marriage, family, and work relationships. My research suggests that men and women may speak different languages that they assume are the same, using similar words to encode disparate experiences of self and social relationships. Because these languages share an overlapping moral vocabulary, they contain a propensity for systematic mistranslation, creating misunderstandings which impede communication and limit the potential for cooperation and care in relationships. At the same time, however, these languages articulate with one another in critical ways. Just as the language of responsibilities provides a weblike imagery of relationships to replace a hierarchical ordering that dissolves with the coming of equality, so the language of rights underlines the importance of including in the network of care not only the other but also the self."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

Luzes, câmera, acção: [Precipitating Crisis]

"In the film 'Wild Strawberries', Marianne, the pregnant daughter-in-law of old Isak Borg, travels with him to Lund, where he is to receive the highest honor of his medical profession. She is returning to end her marriage, given her husband Evald's position that she must choose between him and the child. Hoping to avert this decision, she went to his father for help, impelled by 'some idiotic idea' that the old doctor would heal the division. Instead, she found 'well hidden behind [his] mask of old-fashioned charm and friendliness,' the same wall of 'inflexible opinions' that encircled his son's opposition, a lack of consideration for others and a refusal to 'listen to anyone but [himself].' Just as Evald claimed to have made absolutely clear his wish not to have a child, explaining that he had no 'need (for) a responsibility which will force me to exist another day longer than I want to,' so his father wanted no part in Marianne's marital problems, saying that he did not 'give a damn about them' and had 'no respect for suffering of the soul.' Yet when in the car, Borg offers the opinion that he and Evald are 'very much alike. We have our principles... and I know Evald understands and respects me,' he is startled when Marianne replies, 'That may be true, but he also hates you.'
With this counterpoint between the old man's principled withdrawal and the young woman's efforts to sustain connection, the action of the film begins. The link established between Borg's 'evil and frightening dreams' and Marianne's realization that 'it would be terrible to have to depend on you anyway' ties the despair of his old age to the ongoing failure of family relationships. Erikson (1976), taking Bergman's film as his text for explicating the cycle of life, cites Marianne as the catalyst who precipitates the crisis that leads to change. He compares Marianne to Cordelia in driving to the surface an old man's despair, confronting him with the source of his discomfort by revealing the disturbing but liberating truths of relationships. And Erikson shows how this confrontation spurs the sequence of memories and dreams through which Borg retraces his steps through the stages of life, arriving at intimacy, the point where he failed. He dreams of an examination in which he forgets that 'a doctor's first duty is to ask forgiveness,' and he cannot tell if a woman is dead or alive. The examiner pronounces him 'guilty of guilt.' The sentence: 'loneliness, of course.' Thus connecting the present with the past, Borg comes to acknowledge his own defeat ('that I am dead, although I live') but in doing so, he releases the future, turning to offer Marianne his help.
Erikson, defining Marianne's role in breaking the cycle of repetition that had extended across generations a cold loneliness 'more frightening than death itself,' identifies the 'dominant determination to care' in this 'quiet, independent girl with her naked, observant eyes.' Yet in tracing the
development of the virtue of care, which he views as the strength of adult life, he turns repeatedly to the lives of men. Since in life-cycle theory, as in the film, Marianne's story remains untold, it is never clear how she came to see what she sees or to know what she knows."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

Girls will be girls

"Jean Baker Miller (1976) [...] finds in psychology no language to describe the structuring of women's sense of self, "organized around being able to make and then to maintain affiliations and relationships ." But she sees in this psychic structuring the potential for "more advanced, more affiliative ways of living — less wedded to the dangerous ways of the present," since the sense of self is tied not to a belief in efficacy of aggression but to a recognition of the need for connection. Thus envisioning the potential for a more creative and cooperative mode of life, Miller calls not only for social equality but also for a new language in psychology that would separate the description of care and connection from vocabulary of inequality and oppression, and she sees this new language as originating in women's experience of relationships."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

Life stages

"The problem that female adolescence presents for theorists of human development is apparent in Erikson's scheme. Erikson (1950) charts eight stages of psychosocial development, of which adolescence is the fifth. The task at this stage is to forge a coherent sense of self, to verify an identity that can span the discontinuity of puberty and make possible the adult capacity to love and work. The preparation for the successful resolution of the adolescent identity crisis is delineated in Erikson's description of the crisis that characterize the preceding four stages. Although the initial crisis in infancy of "trust versus mistrust" anchors development in the experience of reletionship, the task then clearly becomes one of individuation. Erikson's second stage centers on the crisis of "autonomy versus shame and doubt," which marks the walking child's emerging sense of separateness and agency. From there, development goes on through the crisis of "initiative versus guilt," successful resolution of which represents a further move in the direction of autonomy. Next, following the inevitable disappointment of the magical wishes of the Oedipal period, children realize that to compete with their parents, they must first join them and learn to do what they do so well. Thus in the middle childhood years, development turns on the crisis of "industry versus inferiority," as the demonstration of competence becomes critical to the child's developing self-esteem. This is the time when children strive to learn and master the technology of their culture, in order to recognize themselves and to be recognized by others as capable of becoming adults. Next comes adolescence, the celebration of the autonomous, initiating, industrious self through the forging of an identity based on an ideology that can support and justify adult commitments. But about whom is Erikson talking?
 

Girls and Boys

"The problem that female adolescence presents for theorists of human development is apparent in Erikson's scheme. Erikson (1950) charts eight stages of psychosocial development, of which adolescence is the fifth. The task at this stage is to forge a coherent sense of self, to verify an identity that can span the discontinuity of puberty and make possible the adult capacity to love and work. The preparation for the successful resolution of the adolescent identity crisis is delineated in Erikson's description of the crisis that characterize the preceding four stages. Although the initial crisis in infancy of "trust versus mistrust" anchors development in the experience of the relationship, the task then clearly becomes one of individuation. Erikson's second stage centers on the crisis of "autonomy versus shame and doubt," which marks the walking child's emerging sense of separateness and agency. From there, development goes on through the crisis of "initiative versus guilt," successful resolution of which represents a further move in the direction of autonomy. Next, following the inevitable disappointment of the magical wishes of the Oedipal period, children realize that to compete with their parents, they must first join them and learn to do what they do so well. Thus in the middle childhood years, development turns on the crisis of "industry versus inferiority," as the demonstration of competence becomes critical to the child's developing self-esteem. This is the time when children strive to learn and master the technology of their culture, in order to recognize themselves and to be recognized by others as capable of becoming adults. Next comes the adolescence, the celebration of the autonomous, initiating, industrious self through the forging of an identity based on an ideology that can support and justify adult commitments. But about whom is Erikson talking?
   Once again it turns out to be the male child. For the female, Erikson (1968) says, the sequence is  bit different. She holds her identity in abeyance as she prepares to attract the man by whose name she will be known, by whose status she will be defined, the man who will rescue her from emptiness and loneliness by filling "the inner space." While for men, identity precedes intimacy and generativity in the optimal cycle of human separation and attachment, for women these tasks seem instead to be fused. Intimacy goes along with identity, as the female comes to know herself as she is known, through her relationships with others.
  Yet despite Erikson's observation of sex differences, his chart of life-cycle stages remains unchanged: identity continues to precede intimacy as male experience continues to define his life-cycle conception. But in this male life cycle there is little preparation for the intimacy of the first adult stage. Only the initial stage of trust versus mistrust suggests the type of mutuality that Erikson means by intimacy and generativity and Freud means genitality. The rest is separteness, with the result that development itself comes to be identified with separation, and attachments appear to be developmental impediments, as is repeatedly the case in the assessment of women.
  Erikson's description of male identity as forged in relation to the world and of female identity as awakened in a relationship of intimacy with another person is hardly new. In the fairy tales that Bruno Bettelheim (1976) describes an identical portrayal appears."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

To be a Girl

"This psychological seclusion of girls from the public world. The dissociation of girls 'voices from girls' experiences in adolescence, so that girls are not saying what they know and eventually not knowing it as well, is a prefiguring of many women's sense of having the rug of experience pulled out from under them, or of coming to experience their feelings and thoughts not as real but as fabrication. [...] [Jean Baker] Miller and I have been struck by the fact that although we have approached the study of women and girls from different ways, we have arrived at much the same insight into the relationship between women's psychology and the prevailing social order. A new psychological theory in which girls and women are seen and heard is an inevitable challenge to a patriarchal order that can remain in place only through the continuing eclipse of women's experience. Bringing the experiences of women and girls to full light, although in one sense perfectly straightforward, becomes a radical endeavor. Staying in connection, then, with women and girls — in teaching, in research, in therapy, in friendship, in motherhood, in the course of daily living — is potentially revolutionary."
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice

Look at me, not at me!

"The birth of pleasure in itself is simple, but staying with pleasure means staying open, and this is where history tends to kick in. Volumes of psychology have been written about the ways we defend ourselves against love and loss, often giving up what we most wanted. [...] But when something impedes the process of repair, the core sense of self [palavras de Damásio] recedes from relationship and begins to build a wall of protection."

[...]

"It is a women's nightmare to discover that although she feels loved she doesn't fit the image: her breasts are too large, too small, some part of her is not right. And most women have a ready script for blaming themselves for why they are left."

Carol Gilligan, The Birth of Pleasure

Educating the 21st Century Child

to know and not to know

"If feminism is understood not as a battle in the war between the sexes but rather a movement to transform a world in which both men and women suffer losses that constrain their ability to love, then the story of Psyche and Cupid is a feminist tale. In breaking the taboo on seeing Cupid and speaking about their love, Psyche reveals the world in which she has been living: a world where Cupid is hiding his love and where she cannot know what she knows. [...] To leave patriarchy she [Psyche] must cross its psychic terrain [...] The labor of love that leads to the birth of pleasure is a difficult psychological labor."
Carol Gilligan, The Birth of Pleasure

Isto é forte!

"When Psyche lets go of Cupid's leg and falls, exausted, to the ground, Cupid turns in his flight. Alighting on the top of a tall cypress, he speaks to her about what he had not wanted her to see: his relationship with his mother, his vulnerability. "My poor, naïve Psyche," he begins. She did not know what was happening, could not know except insofar as she felt his fear of being exposed, his fragility, and the urgency of his need for control. Now anger rushes to the surface as he begins to speak about his love. His voice is distant and supercilious: "In fact I disobeyed the orders of my mother Venus, who had commanded me to chain you with passion for some wretched and worthless man and sentence you to the lowest sort of marriage. Instead I flew to you myself as your lover." He had shot himself with his own arrow, falling in love with her and making her his wife, only to discover that she had thought him a wild beast, a monster, and had taken a knife to cutt off his head, "the head that held a lover's eyes." It is hard to hear the love ("your lover, lover's eyes") through the veil of attack, which now picks up force. He had warned her not to listen to her sisters. As for Psyche, he will punish her now "merely by leaving." With this, Cupid takes off into the sky, heading for his mother's chambers. By refusing to accompany her father in his blindness, by saving herself and her child instead of obeying her husband, by opening her eyes and seeing with whom she is living, Psyche has walked out of the Oedipus plot, but Cupid is heading into the heart of tragedy."
Carol Gilligan, The Birth of Pleasure

Tragédia no feminino

Carol Gilligan on Women and Moral Development

"The good woman is selfless. The good woman is responsive to everybody else's needs."
Carol Gillian

"I just was not the girl that was told that a man would define me. We woman were raised to accommodate men." aqui
Sharon Stone