Why do feminist friendships crack? Sinefin Gış reflects on the intersections between feminism and friendship, and the conflict points: “I want us to follow where our emotions go and heal our cracks.”
Sinefin Gış / Çatlak Zemin
“What do you hear when you hear the word feminism? It is a word that fills me with hope, with energy. It brings to mind loud acts of refusal and rebellion as well as the quiet ways we might have of not holding on to things that diminish us. It brings to mind women who have stood up, spoken back, risked lives, homes, relationships in the struggle for more bearable worlds. It brings to mind books written, tattered and worn, books that gave words to something, a feeling, a sense of an injustice, books that, in giving us words, gave us the strength to go on. Feminism: how we pick each other up. So much history in a word; so much it too has picked up.” ((Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life p.1)
What comes to mind when you think of feminist friendship or female friendship?
I can summarize what it means to me as arriving to a big garden. I envision it as a destination because the social order we are born into does not teach us how to set it up, on the contrary, it makes us think that we should constantly compare ourselves to the women on the screen and next to us because we are in competition. To conform to the day-to-day and ever-changing standards of beauty, some of us spend a lifetime in the futile attempt to take on forms our genetic heritage has never allowed. We are talking about the fact that there are so many bodies that are measured at every moment, collided with each other, and turned against its carrier. There are also myths like “woman is home to a woman” added to this. When you look at these, it is not a skill to see that the society we live in does not have much reason to support female friendship. I say ‘arriving to’ because Sara Ahmed, in her latest book, ‘Living a Feminist Life’, says feminism is homework:
“If feminism is homework, it’s a self-assignment. With homework, I’m not suggesting that we all feel at home with feminism in the sense of feeling safe or secure. Some of us can find a home here, some of us may not (..). Rather, I say that feminism is homework because there is a lot to take away from not feeling at home in a world. “(p. 20)
And I say ‘a big garden’ because many things can coexist in this garden. The transition from the suppressive form of concrete to the tree branches reaching the sky. Crossing the small creek that flows from the desperation of traffic with plenty of horns and feeds the land from which it flows. Transition from dead bodies that you walk by with helplessness and trembling, to knowledge that you know the name and treatment of every disease and that you apply to every living thing in the garden. The transition from the abuse of the material to afternoon pleasure wine: my “lived happily ever after.”
However, in this article, I would like to talk about the cracks that we hear from time to time in the garden and that we close our ears and do not think about, rather than the garden itself. (Of course, the source is my highly subjective friendship experiences and the book I’m currently reading, Leading a Feminist Life, which makes me think a lot about feminism. I’ve been chatting with the book since I started reading it.)
Yes, why do feminist friendships crack? Do you have such experiences? Do you relate to what I am telling? Or am I talking about something pretty stale and too individual?
Here are some reasons why feminist friendships can crack when I brainstorm with myself:
– when friends give each other too many missions to handle: Yes, feminist consciousness may be promising the friendship we always need. A feminist friend does not judge us by the moral standards of the society, listens to our subjective experiences and accepts them as they are, can wake us up when we are in an unequal relationship or have been wronged in daily life, lie to our family when we meet with our boyfriend, and support many more, large and small. Could this situation sometimes involve the danger of burdening our friend with more missions than they can handle? Her needs (taking care of her own preoccupations, being alone in her private space, pondering her relationship, taking care of her academic career, weaknesses, depressive and bad days, economic troubles, just having a tired day…, just like ours) can be ruthlessly ignored under this mission.
What do I mean by ‘many missions’: for example, she is always there for us when we are sad, when we break up with our partner, she grabs a bottle of wine or two coffees and pops up from the other side of the city on the hoop, understands our needs without speaking, is in a state of unconditional love and forgiveness, accepts us with all our faults, gives without demanding, acts as if giving, compassion and maturity are her main duties and as if she has an endless, inexhaustible spiritual resource, supports us when we are subjected to dating violence, and if we return to this relationship and insist on staying with our partner, she continues to be kind to our partners as before, if our partner does not welcome our meeting with her, she moves away with maturity, or when we come back and we want to be included in her life again she continues to listen with matureness even if we accuse her with egoism and ‘having changed’ if you come across a period in which she is involved in other preoccupations and tries to establish herself on different grounds.
Aren’t these expectations a bit cruel?
I think that once upon a time, an imaginary mother lap was created from us. We seem to be born into what we are meant to be. But now we can openly discuss and reject it. Could it be that this mission cause women leave less margin of error for each other, or even more behave cruel to one another in certain conflicting situations than they do it for men? This may cause the friendship to end by creating an extremely hard impact, especially if it is “feminist friendship” in question, since it causes the relationship to fall from the throne and then take it to the top.
-when one of the friends can’t hear the other’s voice: This really happens sometimes. The person in front of us shouts at the top of her voice but we cannot hear it. This is very humane. If it has taken too long (the dynamic of the friendship determines the reasonable time to get suspicious), if you don’t sit and talk, it will go away silently and deeply, and you won’t even be able to understand what is going on.
-when friends talk behind each other’s back: Sometimes very close friends can do this to each other. One of the most irreversible friendship sins. Even when it is done with small strategies as if you are not talking behind her back, it is still talking behind her back. This may, the person cannot defend herself because she is not there, and the one-sided narrative of the story will be thrown into the air like a bullet. Let’s not. Let’s talk about our problem with the addressee.
You can read the full article here in Turkish.