What you said yesterday

I have been thinking about something you said yesterday. We were talking about how you would get angry, about how I felt trapped and shocked. You said I flirted with Hugo. I said that rather, I was happy to see him because I was in a horrible situation with no one to talk to and I needed air. I talked with him happily, I was glad when he was there, because you didn’t yell in front of him, and I felt safer when he was there.

I said I was traumatized and I didn’t know how to deal with you, how to treat you. And you said this: that everything would have been ok if I had approached you and relaxed you and made you feel better, that you would have felt more confident, we would have had some good sex and the problem would have dissolved. Your anger would have relaxed. You said you don’t blame me, because I was young, and yes, of course I didn’t know how to treat you. So it’s ok that I couldn’t do that then. You said that since then you have met kinder women who have shown you such gentleness.

This has been bothering me and I want to tell you how I feel. And you may disregard it if you like.

You were angry and would become jealous and would attack me emotionally, yell at me for hours. Most of the time I didn’t know why we were fighting, and I didn’t know what to do to stop it. So I would sit quietly and wait, but this made you more angry because I wasn’t engaging with you. The only times you would stop being aggressive and turn to being nice to me where the times I started crying. Somehow you liked that.

We have talked about this before. We agreed that we both had our problems then that we brought into the relationship, most of which didn’t have to do with Us (one-another), and that it got out of control. Neither of us knew how to deal with it. We agreed that it is wrong to place blame, because we both made mistakes and we didn’t know then how to handle it. I didn’t know how to handle you. I didn’t know how to manage you. I was shocked and scared of you exploding at any time without reason, and I was living in you room, in a city and a country where I didn’t know anyone. Where you accused me of flirting whenever I spoke to someone, so I was cut off from other people. In a room, where you told me not to meddle with your things. I left when I could and I never wanted to look back. And the thought of being with you smelt of death for years.

This much we have said already.

I want to tell you how I feel about what you said yesterday; that everything would have been ok if I had approached you and relaxed you and made you feel better, that you would have felt more confident, we would have had some good sex and the problem would have dissolved. Your anger would have relaxed. You said you don’t blame me, because I was young, and yes, of course I didn’t know how to treat you. So it’s ok that I couldn’t do that then. You said that since then you have met kinder women who have shown you such gentleness.

If somehow I had found a way, with a bit of humor, to put your aggression towards me aside. If I had had the skill to reach out and touch you from across this black crack that grew between us. If I had somehow taken down your emotional fist and had come closer, and had made you feel that I liked you, that I was happy to be near you, that I enjoyed you and admired you. That I was pleased with your presence. If only I had known how to manage you, and relax you, to release your tension, to pause everything and have a satisfying sexual experience with you, I would have successfully brought out your sweetness towards me. Like beauty and the beast, who found a prince inside the monster. Like the frog who is only a frog until a girl gives his slimy face true loves kiss.

I feel that this is a colonialist’s, a patriarch’s point of view. It is the view of a Man, who is the 1^st sex, who has a woman by him, below him. I feel that it is hurtful, and undermining. I feel that you are telling me to be your poutana (in the wider sense of the word.) let me explain. I hope I can explain it well. This is colonialism, and patriarchy. It is poutanio, the new order of the day for women.

Poutanio: the new sexism.

This is what women keep telling me. They all say this: men are all the same in the following: Their ego is very important to them. You need to feed it, even just that little. It is the key to men. You need to manipulate them a little. That is what they want. They want you to caress their ego a little and then ask them for what you want. Get it from them, but all the while make them feel that they thought of it themselves. That they brought it out from the goodness of their heart. That that is how men work.

That’s what all women say. They say this because it is the ‘collective’ wisdom about how to get along better with our men. And all sorts of women tell to me as advice, to help me in my relationships. And I say no. I can’t accept this. I can’t treat a man like that, because I wouldn’t want to be manipulated. Because I think that it is disgusting, because if that worked then I wouldn’t respect them as people. Anyway, I say, I don’t believe that all men are like that. I don’t want such a man. I want someone who doesn’t want that for himself. I want an equal, who will treat me as an equal. I want a relationship between two adults, a man and a woman who are healthy and want to share with each other, and love one another as people. And women say: well, I don’t think so. All men are like that.

And men tell me the same thing with their action over and over again. They show it in their choices of partner, they show it in their exclamations, like you did in yours.

I was 18 and I wanted these things. If I had been like that, really, it would have been sad. I would have had to have been raised in poutanio. I have always struggled to be who I am. I have made choices, often alienating ones, so as to evolve the way I have, to be honest to my growth. But the world rejects it. Am I insensitive, or cold? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe that the kindest thing I can do for people, for men, is to give them what I think will really allow them to grow and mature healthily. I avoid manipulation.

What you ask of me is perhaps what your mom should have done. Not because she is a woman who is there to make you feel good. Because she was the adult and you were the child and she should have taught you that love is selfless. It should have cost her nothing to put her own issues behind her and treat you with love.

I am these things. I have these 3 things to offer and men keep telling me to be a slave. Does anyone want me to be free? Can they love me so? Is freedom selling your self cheaply to many and getting nothing real from no one. I don’t want that. If men want me to die for them, I am saddened.

I am who I am with my faults. But I treated you as an equal and you are so sure that I haven’t. Like a beast that never sleeps you cynically tore everything about me apart to show up my inadequacy and my dirty heart. And then when people seek to manipulate you and use you you like it and respect them.

What should I feel? What should I expect from the world? How can I be happy about growing, when you, whose intelligence I respect, who cares about the world and cares about justice tells me these things. And its not just you. But from you I want more. What can I expect from the world as a woman? My dad says that a woman’s value is until about 30 (while she still looks good) then she is bothersome and petty. He is dating some girl, some dumb slut (for lets call things by their name) who looks 15. What does that tell me?

You say in your song that you want to burn the kapare, and hit the kaparetzides over the head. Have you ever loved a woman enough to wish to see her grow out of this sexually subjugated world? Have you ever loved me?

Would I do it now that I am older?

It is more women teach other women how to be oppressed – more so than men. My grandmother taught me how to be subordinate. Why is that? Because she cared about me I know. Because she wanted to keep me out of harms way, out of the highway of violence. She taught me everything she knew so that I could get by. I am ever so grateful. But don’t you wish she had taught me obedience rather than subservience? Or maybe she did, and I didn’t understand.

I talk about love. But what is it?

What is oppression? It is when you don’t let the other person express and share their good skills, their human capabilities? Because everyone needs to realize themselves and be happy. 

2010