Throwing Patriarchy-Shaped Tomatoes Everywhere

Dear Community,

It feels like it’s been months since I wrote the last newsletter, approximately 7 days ago. This week's issue is coming out a bit earlier, because tomorrow morning I will be traveling to the mountains of Transylvania and I don't want to carry my laptop.

Time has a way of expanding here in Romania, possibly because I’m on vacation and in no particular rush, but also because everything is so close. Most places take ten minutes to reach, and much of the getting around can be done on foot.

Sometimes, in the privacy of my own mind, I imagine I’m a medieval traveling character who has ventured to some exotic land and will return home carrying news of faraway places.

I don’t consider Romania an exotic land exactly. I consider it a place where certain things, ideas and stories seem to move at a different speed, sometimes frustratingly, overwhelmingly out of sync with the present.

Between meeting friends of 40+ years, high school friends, relatives, godparents, hearing stories of glory and defeat, watching people I knew as children reach the heights of their careers or bloom spectacularly as latecomers; making new friends; eating ridiculous amounts of Romanian food; drinking wine; and surviving jet lag, it has been quite a ride.

On my second day here, I had the pleasure of sharing wine with two friends, both of whom I’ve known for longer than 40 years. We’ve stayed in regular touch, kept up to varying degrees with what’s been going on in each other’s lives and developed the ritual of catching up every few months, usually over wine or some other socially respectable intoxicant.

Alcohol. What a fascinating drug.

Social lubricant, neurotoxin, hepatotoxin, and occasionally a remarkably effective bullshit amplifier. Despite my many reservations about alcohol, I have to admit that it can facilitate a deeper dive into conversation: people become more candid, stories become less edited, things that might otherwise remain politely buried sometimes make their way to the surface.

Or, as the old saying goes: in vino veritas. Wine tells the truth. (Or at least it gives everyone enough confidence to believe they are telling it.)

Another small side note, since I’m writing from Romania: alcohol is perfectly legal and deeply woven into social life here, while cannabis and psychedelics remain controlled substances, with serious legal consequences attached to unauthorized possession and other activities. There is something slightly absurd about a culture that is perfectly comfortable with one consciousness-altering substance while treating other forms of consciousness alteration as a considerably more serious affair.

Anyway.

The first bottle of wine hadn’t even reached our table yet when one of my dear friends pulled out a very old, very socially acceptable Romanian saying, one I’ve heard since I was a little girl, repeated countless times by my mother, various relatives, and pretty much everyone else, as though it were one of those truths carved into stone at the beginning of time.

And if you’re Romanian, or Eastern European, you know exactly what I mean:

“There is nothing more disgusting than a drunk woman.”

I heard it, and had to take a deep breath. I literally slowed down my body and mind in real time, so I wouldn’t react and would give myself the time to notice what was going on inside of me upon hearing this remark that is so present and deeply embedded in the Romanian psyche. (And, needless to say, my patriarchy detector went off immediately).

Let’s sink our teeth into this one, shall we?

It looks like drunkenness has a gender now?

A drunk man may be slurring, falling over, announcing his investment theories to strangers and urinating in the alley behind the restaurant? That's unfortunate, possibly even funny.

A drunk woman? Disgusting.

How convenient that alcohol can apparently destroy a woman's dignity while leaving a man's largely intact. My friend could have said, “I don't like being around drunk people,” or “Drunkenness makes me uncomfortable,” or even “I don't find intoxication attractive.” All perfectly legitimate preferences. The man likes what he likes.

But “there is nothing more disgusting than a drunk woman” carries a different flavor. It sounds suspiciously like this old social rule: Men are allowed to become ridiculous. Women are expected to remain composed. And as I am writing this, a question popped into my head: Am I fighting for the right to be ridiculous? Actually, no. I’m advocating for the right not to be judged by a different standard simply because of one’s gender.

And here is where I want to slow myself down again, because I may have become a bit too good at spotting patriarchy these days. (Maybe my patriarchy detector has become so finely calibrated that it now goes off when someone burns toast? What if I'm hearing my friend accurately? But what if I'm not?)

Maybe he has an elaborate, unexamined hierarchy about how women are allowed to behave. Maybe he simply finds drunkenness unattractive. Maybe he associates female intoxication with vulnerability, danger, sexuality or loss of control. Maybe he had experiences I've never heard about. Maybe he was repeating a sentence he has heard all his life without ever examining it- I don't actually know.

I have questions for my friend (and I would like to extend the invitation to you, Dear Reader as well, in case you have some unexamined beliefs about altered states of consciousness in either gender): what, exactly, is disgusting about a drunk woman? Is it the loss of control, the appearance, the behavior, the vulnerability, the noise, the fact that she is no longer pleasant or easy to manage? Or just the sight of someone being profoundly human in public?

I intend to ask him, in-person. And if I get anything interesting, I will report back.

These seemingly innocuous, harmless sentences have become very interesting to me. Because these tiny sentences are often where the machinery hides: the rules about how women are supposed to behave, look, age, drink, speak, desire, take up space, lose control (always gracefully(!)), regain control, and generally remain acceptable to everyone around them.

I realize that it’s impossible to dismantle an entire worldview in one dramatic gesture. Most of the time, for me, the process is precisely this:  I notice one sentence,  sink my teeth into it, and go: Who taught me this?

And why did I believe it?

And, in the spirit of fairness, or at least of occasionally looking over my own shoulder, I should admit that the lens through which I see the world these days is pretty heavily patriarchy-colored. I’m aware that I could become a little tedious if I start playing the same tune all the time: patriarchy, patriarchy, patriarchy, the root of all evil. I don’t actually believe that. I think patriarchy is a significant part of the problem, but it didn’t build this particular mess (the current global mess we are in) all by itself. Women have participated in it too, sometimes enthusiastically, sometimes unconsciously, and very often because we learned to survive inside the system we inherited.

And this is where I stop throwing patriarchy-shaped tomatoes at everyone and welcome YOUR input.

With love, (a tiny sprinkle of) rage, and reverence, Your disorganized, recovering people-pleaser, community-dreamer, hope-filled activist in the making, deep-sleeper, clean compliment giver and receiver, not-a-true-exhibitionist, 21-day resetter, recovering prostitute, courageous by practice, trusting by skill, always with my head in the clouds, but loving my feet on the ground, soul worker (!), inner voice listener, pleasure list maker, Aquarium sleepover organizer, beginner-level meditator, wabi-sabi contemplator, self-fascinated observer, giving-up-machismo supporter, hot soup-slurper, enthusiastic and tired traveler, death by Yellowjackets antidote and higher consciousness dreamer, aspiring human rights warrior, zielschmerz-stricken, nap lover, mostly Romanian wine-drinker,

Corina