“Big Girls Don’t Cry” – It Takes a Tough Woman to Withstand Harassment in American Politics
“BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY. The Election that Changed Everything for American Women.”
Rebecca Traister. New York: Free Press.
In BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY, Rebecca Traister follows key women involved in the 2008 Presidential election, to tell the story “about the country and its culture, how we all reacted to the arrival of these surprising new figures on the presidential stage and what they showed us about how far we had come and how far we had yet to go.” She does an extremely good job of reaching that goal for most of us.
Traister basic contexts are gender politics (including but not narrowly defined by feminism and misogyny), race (including but not narrowly defined by racism), and inter-generational perspectives.
She observes that Hillary Clinton, who would put 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling, was “a prism through which the country’s attitudes about sex, power, and the place of women in society were going to be projected. It was impossible for Hillary Clinton to have chosen a path to the White House that bypassed the loathing, jeering derision and gendered stereotyping built on two centuries of male power. As Clinton got closer to the race, a widely anticipated wave of resistance began to make itself apparent. This was the easy-bake misogyny of anti-Hillary men, but also of women eager to advertise their solidarity with and enthusiasm for traditional gender roles, like the one who entered a John McCain rally in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in November 2007 and asked the presumptive Republican candidate, ‘How do we beat the bitch?’ “
Easy Orchid To Grow
Orchids generally have a reputation for being very fussy plants. In order to cultivate easy orchids successfully, one must meet their requirements for light, temperature and humidity. But only if you provide the proper environment for the growth, you’ll be rewarded with fabulous blooms.
Warm-temperature orchids usually require a medium to strong light, which one can easily provide by placing them in a southern exposure during the winter and an east-facing window for the rest of the year. The temperature should always be kept at 63 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit during the night and 75 to 90 degrees during the day.
Watering requirements for easy orchids are usually very specific. While the plants are just approaching dryness, always water very heavily from the top of the container, and always make sure to water all the way around. It would be the best to water in the morning so that the foliage has time to dry during the day after that apply water until it flows freely from all drainage holes.
Parental Decision-Making Has Long Unexpected Consequences
As I look at the cursor blinking on my computer screen I find myself holding my breath as I wait for inspiration. Many thoughts get triggered in my mind. I remember to breathe, and breathe and breathe some more. What makes it so difficult to face relationships? Do I think about what relationship I had as a soul before I got born into this world? Do I think about my physical relationship and how I have not always thought of my body as a temple to be lovingly cared for? Do I think about my emotional relationship and how it got suppressed? I continue excavating it like an archeological site finding treasures of wisdom and meaning buried. Do I think about my relationships with others and how my fear keeps me at arm’s length? Do I think of the relationship with the world that has been such a paradox of experiences that I fluctuate between engaging and disengaging with it? If I sound confused it is because whenever I think of my relationships it sends me into my state level of memory: a world that I have resisted facing because it can be such a confused, terrifying and distorted place. My journey toward soul-fullness had led me on a path to finding myself and my voice. I know now that each time I connect to my body’s wisdom I come out more healed and whole than when I went in. The trip is not pleasant but the outcome and the process it leads me to is well worth the price of admission. What is the price of admission? A willingness to face what lives in my body as sensations, feelings, pictures and glimmers of traumatic overwhelming experiences that didn’t get integrated. These experiences live in the cells of my body as unexpressed unprocessed and unintegrated suppressed experiences and beliefs. They lay dormant until just the right sensory trigger activates them engaging my neurophysiology.
A curse? A gift? Both? They have been an unconscious curse sabotaging me intermittently throughout my life. What I have learned is they offer me the gift of transformation into an integrated wholeness that creates a healthier present and future. Of course at the time I didn’t know this. I had to experience it in the safety of others. It is sad that it took so long to find them. My sense of my early life was that I was in heaven and then it got taken away. Not all at once but experience by experience, year by year and death by death.
I remember as a teenager when times got really hard for me and I felt like I wouldn’t survive all my struggles I somehow got this sense of a group of people watching over me. I can remember hanging cloths on the line with the breeze making the sheets flap in the wind and I was just ranting inside my own head. By that time I had learned that you don’t express yourself with your attitude, your feelings and you’d better be careful about your behaviors (especially voicing yourself). I was angry about the unfair treatment I felt I was getting at home. We all had chores and being the oldest from my perspective meant I had more than anyone else including and especially my mother. So I was ranting and raving to myself in a rather ugly way about everyone in the world when I got a sense of this group in a circle smiling down on me. It was as though this warm and loving energy out of nowhere wrapped my body in a calm and soothing way.
