How not to be a good girl
It has occurred to me that I have spent my life being a good
girl and in fact I was a bad one. Cause I did not like traditions, I did not
like so much the conservative environment I lived in. It always bothered me how
men were more privileged than women and how men were called nothing when women
were called whores. It was normal for men to drink and smoke but for women not.
A good girl would not drink, yet would not drink even coffee. A good woman
would build the house, make the house, without a woman a man was not able to do
his own chores. How to be a good girl was of utmost importance.
It was given so much importance that even women would mock
the bad girls. Girls had to get married before they opened their eyes. A girl
should not have studied too much… a woman’s place is near her children right?
Then well of course I will not tell you what people thought about premarital
relations so on and so forth. The list of being a good girl was equal to being
obedient and the list of being a bad girl was quite long.
Obedient to what? Obedient to religion, obedient to elderly,
obedient to husband, obedient to customs, traditions, what being a good girl or
woman constitute of.
Sometimes it is possible to see that the work life treats women
as if they are from a small town. In some work life, we see the mentality of
villages, even in the most professional places. Most of the time women are paid
less than men (research), and it also shows that women (are forced to) accept these roles.
Women are not given jobs at an age where they might be pregnant. What an equal
world? Women are more disadvantageous when they come back from maternity leave. They
need to hide their children as much as they had to do, when they hid their
vaginas. So it is very weird, that women are internally turbulent, furious and
anxious when all these things happen to them from family life to work life and
we find ourselves saying: all the world is a village.
Moreover, the solidarity amongst women is very low. Possible
games are played as if we are adolescents and there are groups that dislike or
mislike or hate someone and that someone is to be excluded. Hypocrisy is in
place if a woman is different from others for any kind of reason. The
solidarity is in decline not only in workers’ lifeworld but also in many of the
work places.
I have observed from my own experience that, being good is
not being obedient. I have learnt that being good is being good to someone
although that person is not so good to you. Being good is not an easy thing, it
is something that you do cause you are good, that is it. And that you want to
be good as a human, from a humanistic perspective. It is not something that you
create from the bottom of your mind just because you think that a good girl
would behave like that in this or that society, being good is being good in
purest form. And being bad has nothing to do with those lists that are
mentioned by small villages, traditions, men, families, work places… being good
is empathy and showing friendship when one is in difficulty. Listening to a
friend, understanding when someone is in need but calling that person also when
she or he isn’t in need. Being good is understanding migrants, understanding
others, understanding how we might have hurt other people via our actions. Being
good is self-reflection. It is not that hard, it is just a bit
self-sacrificial. Let us be good people not good girls. Cause a good girl or a
good boy, is just a societal construct and it will be understood very
differently 100 years from now on. And we will need to save the world from all the
hazards we caused, and then those who have protected the trees and animals and
other humans from harm will be the best of all regardless of their gender, not
because they were obedient. Sometimes you need to be disobedient to be good.
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