As the amount of time grows from the end of my marriage, I
am more clearly able to see some of the deeply rooted beliefs that had taken
hold during those 17 years of relationship.
One of them was turning my back on feminism, which I can see now was
actually a break, rather than a conclusion.
I have spent some time in the past few days reflecting on my
relationship with feminism and being pleasantly surprised by how important it
has been to me, not least because my mother was a feminist of the 60s and 70s.
During my years living in a residential college at the
University of Melbourne, I became the representative of the colleges on the
Universities Feminist Committee. To this
day I am not sure how that happened, and I remember feeling utterly
under-qualified for the position but determined to learn as much as I could.
This experience of being thrust into positions that seem far beyond my
abilities has been a recurring pattern in my life, but with the Feminist
Committee, as with many other situations, I seemed to find my way and
ultimately began to identify as a feminist.
This sometimes involved battling with the assumptions of the other women
on the committee who felt that all women living in residential colleges were
unduly privileged and therefore uninformed and un-critical. I felt this was unjust and oppressive and
told them so, and some of the members began to treat me with a little more
respect. Of course, there was some truth
in their accusations, but I was right to suggest that women excluding other
women from potential growth opportunities was a small-minded response.
During that time I purchased all the contemporary
pop-feminist literature that was available, including Susan Faludi’s ‘Backlash: The undeclared war against women’,
and Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’
and ‘Fire with Fire’, as well as the
less politically correct ‘Get your tongue
out of my mouth, I’m kissing you goodbye’ and an older text by Colette
Dowling ‘The Cinderella Complex’. I also stole some books from my mother’s
collection: ‘The Hite Report’ and ‘The Women’s Room’. My social work lecturer encouraged us to read
Foucault’s ‘The History of Sexuality’
and I remember Virginia Wolf’s ‘Orlando’
coming out as a movie during this time.
All in all, it was a reasonable beginning and I was well supported by my
‘privileged’ friendship networks to challenge assumptions and make loud
speeches at dinner parties, even if I only had a few pieces to string together.
Over the next two decades I began to question feminism however,
and I can see now that this was caused by the incongruence between the ideals
of the discourse and the realities of my life.
I clearly remember thinking ‘What’s the point of all this feminist
reading, it’s just making me terribly unhappy.
I can’t live up to these standards’.
After years of quiet raging, I turned my back on critical beliefs and
turned towards more positive readings. I
reignited my passion for Humanism and it’s emphasis on unconditional positive
regard – the opposite of holding critical perspectives. I imbibed every positive psychology text that
supported my individual choosing of happiness, and I focused on flourishing and
creativity. And I reignited my faith,
moving through Buddhism to Integral Spirituality. These were not wasted decades. I learned a great deal from these scholars
and I am particularly grateful to have developed a capacity to take
responsibility for my own part in any challenging situation, rather than simply
blaming others.
In the year before my marriage ended however, I discovered a
new discourse. My studies of Ken
Wilber’s integral thinking led me to two women (one American, one Australian)
who had developed an on-going conversation called Feminine Power – Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas. This on-line group provided me with the
impetus to value the contribution that women are here to make in the
world. The focus on mutually empowering
relationships and choosing a calling that is bigger than individual happiness literally
changed my world. Learning to value
myself again allowed me to make the important decisions that I had been trying
to run away from.
It still took some time to come back to critical feminism
however. I recall participating in a
Feminist Music Therapy symposium in Argentina in 2008 where I declared that
there was no more need for feminism and that our mother’s had achieved all they
could through this discourse (ahhh, it is a humiliating memory, I must
admit). But lately I have found myself
tentatively poking around the edges of feminism again. I have bought more books, read more articles,
and allowed myself to be truly appalled by the statistics about the treatment
of women in the world – supported by viewing many TED talks that provide
important information about the issues facing many women in countries around
the globe. In my own privileged world at
the University I have participated in women’s leadership forums where the facts
are also oppressive and where male domination is still the status quo. And finally I have found my way back to
feminist theory. The opportunity to work with Sue Hadley as a Co-Editor of Voices: A
world forum for music therapy (along with Brynjulf Stige), has been
particularly inspiring. And so have many
women colleagues in my field and beyond – particularly the anti-oppressive work
being advocated by Sue Baines, and Randi Rolvsjord’s ‘Resource Oriented Music
Therapy’.
I am making a re-commitment to feminism in this summer-time
blog. I aspire to problematize my
research findings, and to shine light on the assumptions that underpin the
oppressions that impinge on people’s full participation. I recognize that my circle of influence is
limited, but I aim to contribute what I can and to support others to do what
they can. I take up Craig Hamilton’s
challenge (from the Integral Enlightenment group) – if not you, then who?
