I have been watching episodes of The Honeymooners and what struck me for the first time was how strong a character Alice, Ralph Kramden's wife, was. She stands up for herself and tongue lashes Ralph every time he needs an ass kicking, which is practically every episode. Every time he uses the phrases: "Bang! Zoom!" or "To the moon, Alice" he is saying it in response to her standing her ground. Every time he thinks she is behaving, like a bitch, he threatens her with those phrases. This, in part, is one of the inspirations behind this post. That and two emails I received in the last three days.
I am the luckiest woman in the world. Last Thursday, during the Language Exchange Group which is held in my home, one of the students came to teach a Spanish class. I have structured the group in such a way, fashioned after my own progressive experiences with education, so that everyone teaches and no sole person is the source of information. Benjamin arrived and gave a lecture on palmistry, in Spanish. I struggled to follow along, watched him draw various diagrams and listened closely as the other learners viewed their own palms; laughed and oohed. I gathered what I could from his lecture and once class was over I used the internet to try and piece together what I had gathered from class.
The lines on my palms are as if someone has drawn them with a Sharpie pen. They are bold and deep. I have never thought much about those lines until I began to read about their supposed symbolism. According to the website not everyone has the same lines present on their palms. Every line that one could possibly have are present on my palm. My life-line is the colour of the earth's soil: chocolate. My fate line, (Moira means fate), heart and head-lines are the colour of milk chocolate. It is my fate and life lines that stand out most. At the beginning of each line there are other lines that create a sort of cross hatch effect. The cross hatches are meant to symbolize troubles or difficulties during the course of a life.
On my palm those cross hatches are at the beginning of each line and they are free from cross-hatches forever after. Looking at my own palm, while reading the potential implications and meanings, caused my jaw to drop. Literally. And then I laughed. The answers to everything I need to know has always been in the palm of my hand. It was one of those 'Little Grasshopper' moments.
Two days ago, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from a woman I casually knew- but had not seen in ages- admonishing me for for some imagined faux pas that involved her deciding that I was a snob who was too paranoid to be her friend because I was rich. If it sounds crazy to you, dear reader, guess how crazy it sounded to me. The next day I got an e-mail from another woman I'd met once, (once!), informing me that I was rude because I had not answered my phone fast enough for her and that now that I was living in Mexico I had better answer my phone faster. This last e-mail was so crazy that I just laughed and hit the delete button. But as I was reaching for the delete button I muttered the following phrase: "There be some crazy-assed bitches" in Mexico. I muttered that phrase because it is a phrase a woman friend of mine says, when she is referring to women she meets, who are consumed by pettiness, and unleash their rage upon other women.
I have never referred to, or thought of, any woman, I have ever met as, a bitch. At the beginning of my life, while stuck in high school, I'd met bitchy girls, (who seem to like to congregate in bathrooms), but that is the extent of it. The women I have known in my life and who have nurtured and loved me; whom I have admired and looked up to, have all been women with a plan. A mission. A focus. An agenda and none of them strike me as women who can't figure out how to say: No. That word uttered by woman gets them labeled as bitches, cunts, difficult, hard to get along with, dikes, rude, monsters and probably phrases and words I haven't yet heard of.
Women who are without focus detest women with focus. They either hate them or are taking notes on how to be more like them. I'm a note taker. The ones that detest other women will spend the last five minutes, of their last breathe on this earth, to try and get another woman to join them in their misery. The simple cause and reason for their misery is: they haven't figured out, yet, how to say: No. When another woman says this word to another woman, it can cause a violent upheaval within; women make the assumption that because I am a woman I should not utter the same word that men get to utter whenever and where ever they please. I think for some women, using the word 'no' is assumed to be a masculine privilege and one not afforded to women. When men say 'no', women are expected to listen and change their plans. This type of woman views other woman as having this shared understanding, and if the understanding is not shared, that other woman suddenly, (and understandably), directs her rage, which she can't do, towards a man, at the woman with focus. (I write 'understandably' in the sense that she perceives the focused woman as still a woman and therefore weaker than a man, and a random, but still suitable dumping ground for her anger).
Darling, baby-girl, you have no idea whom you've just met. I know what's going on here. Mexican woman, in general, have not met feminism. Yet. They are still on the Catholic tit which feeds them everything they know about their position in society. As a New Yorker I feel comfortable saying that they are also light years from perceiving therapy as a method to examine their unhappiness. Education will also do wonders to uplift Mexican women. TV advertisements that inform listeners about birth control or a woman's rights to not be beaten would do a world of good too.
I don't have the time or the inclination to guide women en masse These woman feel sorry for me because I am not married nor have children. They say it to me. To my face. They tell me it is all a pity because, "What is a life without children and family?" (It looks like my happy unfettered life). But at the very same time that these women are repeating this bullshit rhetoric, these same women declare that they admire me. Now between you and me, I want you to know that I worked to get where I am, and I worked hard. I worked like a slave to get here.
Here is why I consider myself the luckiest woman in the world. The first woman in my life, my birth mother, sends e-mails out like the ones I'd received over the last few days. And then we parted company forcefully. I was removed from her and placed, in my formative years, into the hands of some of the world's other luckiest women.
Last night, while I was muttering to myself about these e-mails I'd received, I called upon Yvette Flunder and asked her a question about how she wished to be referred to in a piece, this piece, that I had not yet decided how might it unfold. She immediately wrote back that, "She often refers to herself as Same Gender Loving (SGL)". When I read her words I immediately connected something in my heart. She identifies as lesbian but ALL women should be Same Gender Loving. All women should treat other women with kindness and give comfort to, when possible, to other women. All woman should see the child they were (in children), the woman they are (amongst peers) and the woman they will be (in our older sisters).
Yvette was my foster mother and teacher. I have goosebumps right now as I write. She is a part of my life line and my fate line. It was fate that had us coincide. Because I was in my formative years I learned. I was a sponge. I needed a mother and a guide and I got Yvette. She knows how to say, no, but she also knows how to say, yes. She said yes to me and in return I received a guide that has served me well for all the subsequent years on my own. With Yvette I took notes. I wanted to be more like Yvette. Once, Yvette suggested to me, when I was wee, that I return some money I had just found in a bathroom, at a drive-thru Jack in the Box, in San Francisco. I sulked until I saw who the money belonged to. An ancient woman who had just cashed her social security check. The woman was in tears and I will never forget what I felt: I got to see the face of another human being in pain at having lost what I imagined was my gain. I felt empathy. I got to see, with my very own eyes, what being thoughtless might do. I learned to think twice. I understood immediately what Karma refers to. Instantly, I identified with this other woman and put myself into her shoes. I wanted another women, some day, somewhere, to return the money she might inadvertently find. I knew I would never again see found money as my fortune and the 'tough luck' of another. I learned to do the right thing in the span of ten minutes. Subsequently I've learned that religion and identifying as gay or lesbian is not an oxymoron. My moral compass has, at times, been taught by women who identify themselves as lesbian.
Before I met Yvette I knew Sue S. That woman loved to say 'no'. She invented that word for generalized usage amongst women. Never was there a woman with clearer boundaries set up and constructed for the sole purpose of women loving self and others. She was my mentor and mother, while not a foster mother, she was my teacher and friend. My big sister who taught me about boundaries. I loved her from the tips of my toes because I felt safe with her and I felt safe with her because she had boundaries and they were clearer than diamonds. And you never had to guess jack-shit about Sue. She never made you try and figure out if she liked you or was mad at you. Had e-mail been available back then, I would never have received one such as those I received of late, because the second I did something that bothered Sue I would have been informed immediately. I like this kind of woman. And trust me, I knew all kinds of young people back then who simply referred to her as, The Bitch. You couldn't pull anything over on her. She called you out on everything. Everything. And people referred to her as, 'The Bitch', because they couldn't get over. I think people misconstrue 'getting over' with being likable. And if you don't get what you want from these types of women they get labeled as difficult. Saying 'no' pisses people off. Sue, in my understanding of how women should treat women, taught me how to be a same gender loving woman. I still know Sue and though I am not a part of her everyday world, I have no doubt, given her chosen profession, that she is still saying 'no', still has boundaries, and has many women under her wing that love her from the bottom of their toes. She teaches now too, which means, unbeknownst to her, she is influencing others left and right.
Later in life I met Blanche Moyse. I will put it to you this way: You would not have gotten the idea to write an e-mail like that, to Blanche. The thought would never have crossed your mind. I lived with her for 5 years, while going to graduate school in Vermont, and I watched grown men and women shudder in their shoes when approaching her. She was the 94 year old, (when I met her), Master Embodiment of Bitch. Her whole complete presence said: "I am busy creating a legacy; don't bother me with bullshit". If you said something ridiculous to her she simply said things like: That's preposterous and would walk away. There was never a discussion. I never laughed harder or longer with another woman. She thought it was funny that people called her a bitch behind her back; at least I thought she did. She seemed to have cared less. She knew people called her that. And this is what she had to say about it: "I am more serious and more disciplined than the average person. People come from all over the world to get my approval and advice; when I tell them they don't cut it as a musician, and they've spent years studying, I get the label 'bitch'. You are a bitch when you say anything the other person doesn't want to hear". (When men say what you don't want to hear, they get respect).
Blanche was a protege and her entire life, from beginning to end, was comet-like. She never had the opportunity to be anything other than gifted and focused and that stratosphere prevented anyone from seeing her as a woman. All they saw was a woman who was the pinnacle of classical music, and all they wanted was to learn how to get it for themselves. She wasn't perceived as human.
On the fourth year of our friendship she came to me and paid me the greatest compliment I have ever been paid. She said: I want to be like you, Moira. My reaction was, and I said to her: What? She knew that I was referred to as 'bitch' too. (All kinds of people reported back to her that I was rude, that I was a bitch, that I needed to be fired, that I didn't know my place, et cetera, ad nauseam...). This crap went on for five years. She and I laughed about it and she adored me because I saw her. The difference between us was that she couldn't show that she wasn't (a bitch); I could. It did hurt her to be known as a bitch. She always had to be Blanche Moyse and uphold this notion so that others could reach farther in their efforts to create great music. She succeeded in this respect and some of the world's greatest musicians owe their greatness to her. I didn't see the bitch in her, I saw the woman who had the moral character of Yvette, the boundaries of Sue, and never once in my time with her did I shudder in my shoes, in or out of her presence. She was solid like a rock. The world lost a positively great woman. Most people think they lost a musician, but I know they lost a matchless woman. I loved her and she loved me. And I am lucky to have known, and to have been loved by her.
Thirty years ago I would have wept having received these two e-mails. I would have been devastated. I would have questioned who I was and bent over backwards to make things better for the writers. Today? No fucking way. Over my dead body. I have a life. Stop mooching off of mine. Getting your own life takes hard work, but it can be done.
I was given three great woman in my life that confirmed for me that I had not only the right to have boundaries but that having them allows me to be a same gender loving woman who treats other women the way I want to be treated. Those three women gave me confirmation that who I am, is good; is solid and that the title of Bitch is simply an acronym for: Babe In Total Control of Herself.
I am the luckiest woman in the world. Last Thursday, during the Language Exchange Group which is held in my home, one of the students came to teach a Spanish class. I have structured the group in such a way, fashioned after my own progressive experiences with education, so that everyone teaches and no sole person is the source of information. Benjamin arrived and gave a lecture on palmistry, in Spanish. I struggled to follow along, watched him draw various diagrams and listened closely as the other learners viewed their own palms; laughed and oohed. I gathered what I could from his lecture and once class was over I used the internet to try and piece together what I had gathered from class.
The lines on my palms are as if someone has drawn them with a Sharpie pen. They are bold and deep. I have never thought much about those lines until I began to read about their supposed symbolism. According to the website not everyone has the same lines present on their palms. Every line that one could possibly have are present on my palm. My life-line is the colour of the earth's soil: chocolate. My fate line, (Moira means fate), heart and head-lines are the colour of milk chocolate. It is my fate and life lines that stand out most. At the beginning of each line there are other lines that create a sort of cross hatch effect. The cross hatches are meant to symbolize troubles or difficulties during the course of a life.
On my palm those cross hatches are at the beginning of each line and they are free from cross-hatches forever after. Looking at my own palm, while reading the potential implications and meanings, caused my jaw to drop. Literally. And then I laughed. The answers to everything I need to know has always been in the palm of my hand. It was one of those 'Little Grasshopper' moments.
Two days ago, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from a woman I casually knew- but had not seen in ages- admonishing me for for some imagined faux pas that involved her deciding that I was a snob who was too paranoid to be her friend because I was rich. If it sounds crazy to you, dear reader, guess how crazy it sounded to me. The next day I got an e-mail from another woman I'd met once, (once!), informing me that I was rude because I had not answered my phone fast enough for her and that now that I was living in Mexico I had better answer my phone faster. This last e-mail was so crazy that I just laughed and hit the delete button. But as I was reaching for the delete button I muttered the following phrase: "There be some crazy-assed bitches" in Mexico. I muttered that phrase because it is a phrase a woman friend of mine says, when she is referring to women she meets, who are consumed by pettiness, and unleash their rage upon other women.
I have never referred to, or thought of, any woman, I have ever met as, a bitch. At the beginning of my life, while stuck in high school, I'd met bitchy girls, (who seem to like to congregate in bathrooms), but that is the extent of it. The women I have known in my life and who have nurtured and loved me; whom I have admired and looked up to, have all been women with a plan. A mission. A focus. An agenda and none of them strike me as women who can't figure out how to say: No. That word uttered by woman gets them labeled as bitches, cunts, difficult, hard to get along with, dikes, rude, monsters and probably phrases and words I haven't yet heard of.
Women who are without focus detest women with focus. They either hate them or are taking notes on how to be more like them. I'm a note taker. The ones that detest other women will spend the last five minutes, of their last breathe on this earth, to try and get another woman to join them in their misery. The simple cause and reason for their misery is: they haven't figured out, yet, how to say: No. When another woman says this word to another woman, it can cause a violent upheaval within; women make the assumption that because I am a woman I should not utter the same word that men get to utter whenever and where ever they please. I think for some women, using the word 'no' is assumed to be a masculine privilege and one not afforded to women. When men say 'no', women are expected to listen and change their plans. This type of woman views other woman as having this shared understanding, and if the understanding is not shared, that other woman suddenly, (and understandably), directs her rage, which she can't do, towards a man, at the woman with focus. (I write 'understandably' in the sense that she perceives the focused woman as still a woman and therefore weaker than a man, and a random, but still suitable dumping ground for her anger).
Darling, baby-girl, you have no idea whom you've just met. I know what's going on here. Mexican woman, in general, have not met feminism. Yet. They are still on the Catholic tit which feeds them everything they know about their position in society. As a New Yorker I feel comfortable saying that they are also light years from perceiving therapy as a method to examine their unhappiness. Education will also do wonders to uplift Mexican women. TV advertisements that inform listeners about birth control or a woman's rights to not be beaten would do a world of good too.
I don't have the time or the inclination to guide women en masse These woman feel sorry for me because I am not married nor have children. They say it to me. To my face. They tell me it is all a pity because, "What is a life without children and family?" (It looks like my happy unfettered life). But at the very same time that these women are repeating this bullshit rhetoric, these same women declare that they admire me. Now between you and me, I want you to know that I worked to get where I am, and I worked hard. I worked like a slave to get here.
Here is why I consider myself the luckiest woman in the world. The first woman in my life, my birth mother, sends e-mails out like the ones I'd received over the last few days. And then we parted company forcefully. I was removed from her and placed, in my formative years, into the hands of some of the world's other luckiest women.
Last night, while I was muttering to myself about these e-mails I'd received, I called upon Yvette Flunder and asked her a question about how she wished to be referred to in a piece, this piece, that I had not yet decided how might it unfold. She immediately wrote back that, "She often refers to herself as Same Gender Loving (SGL)". When I read her words I immediately connected something in my heart. She identifies as lesbian but ALL women should be Same Gender Loving. All women should treat other women with kindness and give comfort to, when possible, to other women. All woman should see the child they were (in children), the woman they are (amongst peers) and the woman they will be (in our older sisters).
Yvette was my foster mother and teacher. I have goosebumps right now as I write. She is a part of my life line and my fate line. It was fate that had us coincide. Because I was in my formative years I learned. I was a sponge. I needed a mother and a guide and I got Yvette. She knows how to say, no, but she also knows how to say, yes. She said yes to me and in return I received a guide that has served me well for all the subsequent years on my own. With Yvette I took notes. I wanted to be more like Yvette. Once, Yvette suggested to me, when I was wee, that I return some money I had just found in a bathroom, at a drive-thru Jack in the Box, in San Francisco. I sulked until I saw who the money belonged to. An ancient woman who had just cashed her social security check. The woman was in tears and I will never forget what I felt: I got to see the face of another human being in pain at having lost what I imagined was my gain. I felt empathy. I got to see, with my very own eyes, what being thoughtless might do. I learned to think twice. I understood immediately what Karma refers to. Instantly, I identified with this other woman and put myself into her shoes. I wanted another women, some day, somewhere, to return the money she might inadvertently find. I knew I would never again see found money as my fortune and the 'tough luck' of another. I learned to do the right thing in the span of ten minutes. Subsequently I've learned that religion and identifying as gay or lesbian is not an oxymoron. My moral compass has, at times, been taught by women who identify themselves as lesbian.
Before I met Yvette I knew Sue S. That woman loved to say 'no'. She invented that word for generalized usage amongst women. Never was there a woman with clearer boundaries set up and constructed for the sole purpose of women loving self and others. She was my mentor and mother, while not a foster mother, she was my teacher and friend. My big sister who taught me about boundaries. I loved her from the tips of my toes because I felt safe with her and I felt safe with her because she had boundaries and they were clearer than diamonds. And you never had to guess jack-shit about Sue. She never made you try and figure out if she liked you or was mad at you. Had e-mail been available back then, I would never have received one such as those I received of late, because the second I did something that bothered Sue I would have been informed immediately. I like this kind of woman. And trust me, I knew all kinds of young people back then who simply referred to her as, The Bitch. You couldn't pull anything over on her. She called you out on everything. Everything. And people referred to her as, 'The Bitch', because they couldn't get over. I think people misconstrue 'getting over' with being likable. And if you don't get what you want from these types of women they get labeled as difficult. Saying 'no' pisses people off. Sue, in my understanding of how women should treat women, taught me how to be a same gender loving woman. I still know Sue and though I am not a part of her everyday world, I have no doubt, given her chosen profession, that she is still saying 'no', still has boundaries, and has many women under her wing that love her from the bottom of their toes. She teaches now too, which means, unbeknownst to her, she is influencing others left and right.
Later in life I met Blanche Moyse. I will put it to you this way: You would not have gotten the idea to write an e-mail like that, to Blanche. The thought would never have crossed your mind. I lived with her for 5 years, while going to graduate school in Vermont, and I watched grown men and women shudder in their shoes when approaching her. She was the 94 year old, (when I met her), Master Embodiment of Bitch. Her whole complete presence said: "I am busy creating a legacy; don't bother me with bullshit". If you said something ridiculous to her she simply said things like: That's preposterous and would walk away. There was never a discussion. I never laughed harder or longer with another woman. She thought it was funny that people called her a bitch behind her back; at least I thought she did. She seemed to have cared less. She knew people called her that. And this is what she had to say about it: "I am more serious and more disciplined than the average person. People come from all over the world to get my approval and advice; when I tell them they don't cut it as a musician, and they've spent years studying, I get the label 'bitch'. You are a bitch when you say anything the other person doesn't want to hear". (When men say what you don't want to hear, they get respect).
Blanche was a protege and her entire life, from beginning to end, was comet-like. She never had the opportunity to be anything other than gifted and focused and that stratosphere prevented anyone from seeing her as a woman. All they saw was a woman who was the pinnacle of classical music, and all they wanted was to learn how to get it for themselves. She wasn't perceived as human.
On the fourth year of our friendship she came to me and paid me the greatest compliment I have ever been paid. She said: I want to be like you, Moira. My reaction was, and I said to her: What? She knew that I was referred to as 'bitch' too. (All kinds of people reported back to her that I was rude, that I was a bitch, that I needed to be fired, that I didn't know my place, et cetera, ad nauseam...). This crap went on for five years. She and I laughed about it and she adored me because I saw her. The difference between us was that she couldn't show that she wasn't (a bitch); I could. It did hurt her to be known as a bitch. She always had to be Blanche Moyse and uphold this notion so that others could reach farther in their efforts to create great music. She succeeded in this respect and some of the world's greatest musicians owe their greatness to her. I didn't see the bitch in her, I saw the woman who had the moral character of Yvette, the boundaries of Sue, and never once in my time with her did I shudder in my shoes, in or out of her presence. She was solid like a rock. The world lost a positively great woman. Most people think they lost a musician, but I know they lost a matchless woman. I loved her and she loved me. And I am lucky to have known, and to have been loved by her.
Thirty years ago I would have wept having received these two e-mails. I would have been devastated. I would have questioned who I was and bent over backwards to make things better for the writers. Today? No fucking way. Over my dead body. I have a life. Stop mooching off of mine. Getting your own life takes hard work, but it can be done.
I was given three great woman in my life that confirmed for me that I had not only the right to have boundaries but that having them allows me to be a same gender loving woman who treats other women the way I want to be treated. Those three women gave me confirmation that who I am, is good; is solid and that the title of Bitch is simply an acronym for: Babe In Total Control of Herself.
PS. In this episode I imagine the blonde as being the the writer of e-mails sent solely to bitches in order to take the spirit away from a bitch. Pay attention to Alice's words and facial expressions.
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