Dear Tess,
I think you are right in your claims that to be a writer is to put pen to paper, or jab letters on our keyboards as opposed to being published. I’ve recently taken to writing on a typewriter as I like to see the way the ink pushes each letter into the paper, sometimes I write poems straight onto it. This way I consider each letter, the way it sits on the page, how many spaces, if it looks enough on it’s own. I ask if it needs more words. I can’t delete, so it becomes a raw, uncensored process. Sometimes it’s about the process more than the end point, right?
No matter what I tell myself though, It’s like I need some kind of validation or accolade to consider myself fully belonging to that identity – which is probably partly why I am doing this course. If you have a creative writing MA then surely you can claim to be a writer? What does this matter anyway? Is it so when a stranger asks the inevitable question of
“what do you do?”
I can say many things, not just mother?
Maybe it would have been because of this years ago when I had my first daughter. I had family members express their opinions along the lines of ‘it being the end of my life’ or ‘won’t do anything with my degree now’
Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t have any issue with the role of mother. I often wished I could fully encase myself in motherhood, that I could feel fulfilled by it. I know many don’t and still do it full time. Really my own situation doesn’t come down to this at all. It made financial sense for my husband to stay at home and me to work. I had more of a career aspiration, drive, inspiration. Whilst he just floated from job to job to make ends meet. I went back to work when my eldest was 4 months old out of necessity, maternity allowance does not pay even the most basic of bills.
I think because my husband and I were both so young when we had our daughter, and that we both came from working class backgrounds, had endured a fair share of trauma and didn’t have even one practical parent between us…we just muddled through. We abandoned all presupposed gendered parenting roles and we did what we needed to in order to survive. So when I read that article you sent me about the mother feeling like a carer to her husband, I can’t relate much.
As far as housework goes, my husband does the most of it and the mental load is split quite evenly. In some ways I am more familiar with the patriarchal pressure to provide for my family yet I don’t come home and demand dinner be on the table whilst reading the newspaper with my feet up (I joke, kind of as I still know people like this). So really neither of us fit into our assigned roles, I know my husband dreads being asked ‘what do you do’. I think there is quite a stigma around stay at home dads. We often argue about feminist issues because he seems to think that we have it sussed—we don’t—or that because our life isn’t a picture of patriarchal oppression, that I should’t have an issue.
Oh but I do, I have plenty.
Because although our household bubble might be more ‘equal’ – it does not stop societal expectations weighing down on us. I wrote about this in my discussion on the uni forum this week but I could’t help but notice the difference in questions I got asked at a photography conference I spoke at last week over my male (dad) colleague. Questions like; how do you manage to run a business if you have 3 kids? Or do you feel guilty leaving your family for a week? Or (one I’ve been asked many times) what does your husband do for work? — as if I could’t possibly provide enough for my family.
This is a very small example of what belongs to a big discussion about the identity and role of the mother within the patriarchal society we STILL live in.
And just to bring it back to sexuality, as it would seem I always do, I imagine it would be hard to feel desire for a person you are essentially mothering. Perhaps it is more to do with the role as opposed to gender though. I know women are categorised as having a lower sex drive than men. I’ve done a good deal of research into this, mostly through my favourite therapist on this topic, Esther Perel. I feel it comes down to, like most things, a lack of education. Most women have responsive sex drives, as opposed to a spontaneous sex drive that many men are blessed with.
Common misconceptions about sex, along with the porn industry give us the basis for what we think sex is, the ins and outs of it. When it is so much more. I think women need to feel desired in order to desire, that we need to have a good level of self worth and do we fuck want to feel like we are still taking care of people….
I’ve been reading a lot about compulsory heterosexuality within this feminism module and I have found that I’ve had so much unpicking to do.
I feel this letter is already quite long and yet I’ve only scratched the surface of so many important topics.
I’ll leave you with my recent poem I wrote when I was really trying to pick apart the ideology of compulsory heterosexuality.
Best wishes,
Becy x
Dear Mother 