Thoughts about "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter" by Sue Monk Kidd

I’m 1/3 of the way through The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd.  She keeps talking about her feminine “wound” referring to the yoke of acculturation for women to be lesser than men.  She writes on and on about the tiny steps she took in trying to embrace the role of her whole feminine self. 

 

She keeps quoting Clarissa Pinkus-Estes, who also talks about breaking out of the yoke of what culture tells us about proper, gracious women. I try my best to have compassion for them, since I have had the wool pulled over my eyes also, and took a long time until it came away from my eyes and I woke up.  Sue Monk Kidd also refers to waking up out of the feminine wound.  I personally feel like I threw off that yoke when I was still a teen.

 

For me, it was more a struggle to act normal vs. being my authentic self.  I was about 45  when I decided that if they don’t like me the way I am, then they don’t deserve what I bring to the job.  Of course, I was well under way by that time into shifting my income from nursing to rental units. 

 

My mom was an early feminist. She spent her life proving that she could do just as good or better than any man.  She was an acrobat, entertainer, basketball and ice hockey player. She was a bookie’s assistant, a dance teacher, a secretary and typist, a truck driver, a dispatcher and switchboard operator. She became an expert in diamonds and toured the country giving talks about diamonds. She managed jewelry stores. In the sunset of her life, she strung pearls to make money.  Her pearl stringing booth in the shopping center burnt down for her 89th birthday.  She just continued her business from home.  My mother was not totally sold on that feminine role. 

 

My dad was delighted to have all girls.  He loved girls and didn’t want a boy.  We were all raised to believe we could do anything we wanted whether we were male or female.  I was my dad’s right-hand man on his moonlighting jobs.  He taught me to use tools and fix things. 

 

I was wrapped up in the feminine role through junior high school to about 9th grade.  That’s when I discovered what abusive shits boys could be, and that all girls could think about was boys.  I stopped shaving my legs, plucking my eyebrows, staring closely in the mirror at my blemishes and putting on makeup, bleaching my hair, and thinking about boys.  I became a recluse.  There was no one at school I could confide in or trust.  I became a vegetarian and started doing yoga.  I was breaking out of the roles forced upon me by culture and community.  All because I realized that girls were obsessed with boys and boys were worthless shits. 

 

Sue Monk Kidd also comes from the Baptist church.  I was once at a laundromat with a young Baptist woman.  She told me that because Eve ate the apple, all women were the source of evil.  I love comparative religions!  The belief by this young woman that she was a source of sin because she was born with a certain genitalia was equivalent to the belief that we are all sinners from the get go because our parents did the dirty thing and a baby was conceived. 

 

I remember in the book “Riders of the Purple Sage” by Zane Grey, how the Mormon protagonist clung to her faith in the Mormon traditions even though the Elders were perpetrating heinous crimes on her and her ranch hands in the name of Mormon scripture. 

 

I keep thinking of the Taliban in Afghanistan banning women from going to work.  The Taliban interpretation of sharia law makes women house slaves.  Is it any different in the Baptist Church? 

 

I am thankful that in the Jewish tradition, G-d is feminine one day a week, on the holiest day of the week, and we are commanded to spend one day per week doing nothing else but having a honeymoon with Her. 

 

The honeymoon with the feminine aspect of the Divine includes eating, drinking wine, having sex and studying the sacred texts. 

 

I come from a much different tradition than the author of this book.  I come from generations of feminists, and a religion that sees the Divine as both masculine and feminine.  I don’t have to heal the “feminine wound” like she does. 

 

As a Buddhist, I follow the 8-Fold Noble Path.  I have been a practicing Buddhist much longer than I have been a practicing Jew.  Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.  I forgive Sue Monk Kidd for allowing herself to get so deep into the role assigned by the patriarchs.  I forgave her for being such a fool, just like I forgive all those Muslim women who want their sons to be martyrs. 

 

I hear her suffering in every word of the book.  I hear how her “feminine wound” has caused her to suffer, and how she strives to transform her anger into love.  I hear how this and that experience briefly relieved her suffering, but then returned to the suffering of the feminine role and what it takes to break out of it.  I have compassion for her since I have also suffered, I have also had the wool pulled over my eyes and woke up when it was torn away.  I have compassion for her because she doesn’t see her plight as being parallel to removing her hijab.  I have compassion for her because she myopically believes this is an American problem. 

 

The fact is that everyone suffers. 

 

I dislike when people tell me all their pains and ailments.  That’s not what I want to talk about.  Suffering is in a point of view.  We are all constrained by the limits of this mortal life; we have to eat and shit, and one day we will die.  Pain and pleasure are just aspects of the mortal package that we inhabit.  Sure! Fun is fun! And pain is pain!  But they are all part and parcel of this living body we inhabit.  Some of it is pleasant and some is unpleasant, and some we don’t even notice.  So what! EVERYONE HAS PAIN! 

 

But not everyone suffers.  Suffering is in your point of view. 

 

Suffering comes when you believe the pain is you and yours.  By believing that pain and pleasure are just part of the daily routine, makes it unremarkable. 

 

Both Pinkola-Estes and Kidd seem consumed by the fight to free themselves of the classic feminine roles and find their unique feminine selves.  And as I read, I think, that poor woman had to be middle aged before she realized she was being hoodwinked by the patriarchy! 

 

I wonder why Black people worship a White God that fills them with fruitless Hope?  Someone sold them a bill of goods. Probably a Christian man.