When I was working as a business technology journalist directly out of college, my favorite song was Lily Allen's "The Fear." I wouldn’t have told anyone that, though. I wouldn’t have told anyone a lot of what went on in my head.
Although separate parts were reasonable on their own, altogether my thinking was a humiliating contradiction. I was living and obsessed with a housemate who once asked me to cook a meal for him and a love interest so they could launch into a weekend road trip on-schedule. Yes, I cooked that macaroni and cheese, and they drove away together on time. I didn't know why I did it.
I was also an aggressive technology journalist and graduate of a community-minded women’s college. My social conscience balked at the insularity of the business technology industry, my feminist education balked at my mac ‘n cheese-making, and my technology-focused brain told me that I didn’t need anything but sound logic to gild my opinions into truth.
Lily Allen’s song cheered me up as I drove to and from the outside world to my quirky, stranger-filled house, feeling otherwise guilty for emitting exhaust fumes into the environment and not suppressing more of my humanity at work. I viewed myself as a pathetic, helpless young woman whose only consolation was making fun of the media, specifically that stupid girl who sings about “not knowing what’s right or real.”
I was also attending church more than most young New Englanders at that point. Every Tuesday, I went to a meditation service followed by dinner and discussion of a “faith issue” held at a church down the street from my house. There was no top-down morality being imposed there, just middle-aged people discussing why they believe in an invisible, unprovable source of existence. And me, breathing, not thinking, hoping that I wouldn’t betray a sign of my general desperation.
Then I lost my job in a mass layoff. On the day of the layoff, I went for a long walk in the rain down to an exhibit at Brandeis University on women’s rights in the construction industry. I enjoyed it and then walked the mile back to my house in the pouring rain. I was soaked, but more determined to prove my superior logic to my crush: “Emotion plus an air of defiance = romantic success.” Yeah, Gloria Steinem. Yeah, soaring polemics. Yeah, fame-through-the-fight. Ms. Allen sang to me: “Forget about guns, forget ammunition/Cuz I’m killin’ them all, on my own little mission,” and I knew that I would prove my independence, thereby gaining what I wanted.
Usually I’m not that stubborn; I think there were a couple of factors at work here, some that maybe I shared with a broader community of young women: the isolation of being young, intelligent, and always on the verge of moral disaster due to an inborn will to rebel; and the fear of being stuck between wanting to be a modern, flawlessly reasoning woman and needing to be more than just logical.
The technology industry was the most successful and prevalent of the era in which I was raised. The story of technology, I learned as a reporter on the industry, was that of eccentric, brilliant, often alienated men spending years alone developing tools that would revolutionize society. They embodied the notion that one can reason one’s way through anything and come out a fuller, better person than one was beforehand. The model of feminism I grew up with was similar; one had only to reason one’s way out of dependence on patriarchy, and then you were free to do what you wanted. Free from believing in a power external to yourself, free from guilt, free from self-doubt.
The self-sourced logic of computer programming in itself, I still believe, is wonderful, and technological tools hold the potential to empower many men and women with knowledge. Independence from a patriarchal form of judgment is also good. That practical logic that prods individuals out of themselves and into deeper creative existence ensures that a bedrock of relationship will catch failed abstractions as they fall.
My three additional housemates might have provided some comfort, this sense of community. Night after night, though, we each went to our rooms and watched TV or surfed the internet, alone. I put up a white board and wrote messages on it continuously about what I was doing and where I was - my own household form of Twitter. No one seemed to care. I was either a robot or a complete airhead, I thought, erase-board marker in-hand. I couldn’t connect.
Lily’s song has emerged for me an epitaph for a girlhood in which proving myself was possible, when valiant ventures outward were always followed by a return to a lunch made with TLC by Mom. I eventually realized that I couldn’t in good faith make my crush any more lunches with TLC. My faith, in fact, called me to a version of logic that defied his apathy toward people who didn't fulfill his desires, and my previous desire to transform his apathy into respect for the willpower and wisdom of woman. It cured me of my contradictions.
And here it is: A fight is just a fight.
The entirety of who I am as a woman, as a professional, and as a partner cannot be decided by a contest. A few years ago, I wanted to be like feminists from my mother’s generation and like the lone genius on top of the tech industry. Now, I’ll sing along with Lily about plastic making my life f***ing fantastic one day, and give a presentation on ethical considerations faced by technology corporation leaders in the distribution of knowledge capital the next. I am a feminist in my rejection all forms of power that would stiffen my body into something to be won or lost. Me and Lily.
I’m not suggesting that anyone go out and embrace the pop lifestyle of self-starvation, drug use, and ignorance toward anything that doesn’t gravitate toward one’s own ego. That is what my mother taught me not to do, and also that from which women who pioneered the rights to equal pay and to speak our convictions liberated us. Nor am I saying that the next Bill Gates won’t be Bella Gates.
I am saying that it’s good to believe that you’re more than the sum of your negative parts, and less than the sum of your positive parts. It’s enough to be human, to have the fear, and to let the world know all of the stupid stuff going on in your living mind and your sweet, desperate, deepening heart.
Some recommended reading surrounding this post:
http://gomakemeasandwich.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-launched-wow-galleries-analysis-part_12.html
http://feministing.com/2011/02/03/faith-feminism-here-i-stand-without-the-goddess/#more-29717
http://thenewgay.net/2011/02/the-debate-over-bisexuality.html
http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/definition/Our-Favorite-Technology-Quotations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
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