{"id":213582,"date":"2014-05-01T09:10:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T09:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/05\/01\/these-girls-arent-wounded-so-much-as\/"},"modified":"2014-05-01T09:10:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T09:10:48","slug":"these-girls-arent-wounded-so-much-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/05\/01\/these-girls-arent-wounded-so-much-as\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
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These girls aren\u2019t wounded so much as post-\u200bwounded, and I see their sisters everywhere. They\u2019re over it. I am not a melodramatic person. God help the woman who is. What I\u2019ll call \u201cpost-\u200bwounded\u201d isn\u2019t a shift in deep feeling (we understand these women still hurt) but a shift away from wounded affect: These women are aware that \u201cwoundedness\u201d is overdone and overrated. They are wary of melodrama, so they stay numb or clever instead. Post-\u200bwounded women make jokes about being wounded or get impatient with women who hurt too much. The post-\u200bwounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: Don\u2019t cry too loud; don\u2019t play victim. Don\u2019t ask for pain meds you don\u2019t need; don\u2019t give those doctors another reason to doubt. Post-\u200bwounded women fuck men who don\u2019t love them and then they feel mildly sad about it, or just blas\u00e9 about it; they refuse to hurt about it or to admit they hurt about it\u2014\u200bor else they are endlessly self-\u200baware about it, if they do allow themselves this hurting.<\/p>\n

The post-\u200bwounded posture is claustrophobic: jadedness, aching gone implicit, sarcasm quick on the heels of anything that might look like self-\u200bpity. I see it in female writers and their female narrators, troves of stories about vaguely dissatisfied women who no longer fully own their feelings. Pain is everywhere and nowhere. Post-\u200bwounded women know that postures of pain play into limited and outmoded conceptions of womanhood. Their hurt has a new native language spoken in several dialects: sarcastic, jaded, opaque; cool and clever. They guard against those moments when melodrama or self-\u200bpity might split their careful seams of intellect, expose the shame of self-\u200babsorption without self-\u200bawareness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Leslie Jamison, The Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain\u201d<\/a> (via et\u2014cetera<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t relate to any of this, but I see it a lot<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the feelings camp<\/p>\n

I think the feelings camp is fruitful\u00a0<\/p>\n

I can see why vulnerability is terrifying, though<\/p>\n

the mania<\/p>\n

the hysteria<\/p>\n

it\u2019s a storm women know very well<\/p>\n

openly acknowledging our place in the storm marks us as irrational, as power-hungry yet powerless<\/em><\/p>\n

I think that we should resist the acute trivialization of this recognition, I think that we should learn from this recognition, I think that we should derive different meanings from this recognition\u00a0<\/p>\n

this recognition of our place in the storm does not necessitate weakness<\/p>\n

this recognition of our place in the storm marries counter-hegemonic powers with abjection<\/p>\n

when we remain cold and silent, we take on a heteropatriarchal performativity\u00a0<\/p>\n

when we are complicit in self-abnegation, in restraint, in fucking-and-forgetting, in \u201claughing shit off,\u201d we are upholding, fulfilling, reifying the demands posited by heteropatriarchy\u00a0<\/p>\n

to pride ourselves on our abjection, to break ourselves open for the world to see how we\u2019ve been wounded \u2014 and how we plan to effectively, autonomously heal said wounds \u2014 is an act of defiance\u00a0<\/p>\n

to know terror, to recognize terror, to speak up about terror, to believe in other women who know, recognize, and speak up about terror\u2026 this is the most fundamental pathway to collectively understanding, re-legitimizing, and uplifting our powers\u00a0<\/p>\n

defend feelings<\/p>\n

defend madness<\/p>\n

defend the spirit of the untamed woman<\/p>\n

(via thymoss<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These girls aren\u2019t wounded so much as post-\u200bwounded, and I see their sisters everywhere. They\u2019re over it. I am not a melodramatic person. God help the woman who is. What I\u2019ll call \u201cpost-\u200bwounded\u201d isn\u2019t a shift in deep feeling (we understand these women still hurt) but a shift away from wounded affect: These women are … <\/p>\n

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