I’m at junior high basketball practice and we’ve been ordered to run sprints. The poorly ventilated gym/cafeteria is hotter than it should be, and there’s a lingering odor of sour milk and french fries. I’m in the middle of this pack of gangly girls. My head swims a little as I squeak through one turn and then another, sweat streaming down my neck. One girl has fled from the room with her hand over her mouth. Another sits on the bleachers, head between her legs. And still the rest of us push on as the coach barks at us to get the lead out. Although basketball practice was the first time I can recall becoming explicitly aware of it, in retrospect, I know this was just one of many introductions to the “no pain, no gain” principle. By the time I was a teen, the message about masking vulnerability and embracing toughness was already so well internalized that I didn’t question it, nor did anyone else as far as I could tell. Like so many around me, learning to rationalize discomfort and suffering as necessary to achieve more noble and significant goals was a habit I acquired early and that I’ve consistently relied on over the years.
To be clear, my participation in the discipline-and-punish worthiness/achievement dance didn’t begin or end at the doors to the gym. It is true that there, amid the pungent miasma of misery and the coach’s harangues, our socialization into “no pain, no gain” was most clearly on display. But this, at least, was a boot camp experience that, in many ways, we girls shared in common with boys. Long before we’d stepped onto the court, though, we’d already become well acquainted with many of the mundane, repetitive hurdles that we would be expected to face. In fact, I can’t recall ever NOT knowing about the razor’s edge of opportunity for becoming an acceptable young woman: body, hair, clothes, speech, make-up, attitude, gait, and on and on. As I moved into high school and college—at some point recognizing that I was destined to be more an observer than participant in the feminine project—I rarely met a girl who didn’t struggle to navigate brutal double binds: to be confident without being perceived as bitchy or standoffish; attractive to boys but without alienating other girls; thin and fashionable but without appearing to make any effort to accomplish either; to dress, speak and move in a way that confirmed heterosexual femininity and availability but without telegraphing “victim.” It’s no wonder that when I discovered the critiques of feminism by way of women’s studies in the 80s, I embraced them. Here, finally, were poets, scholars, and social critics insisting that girls and women could be okay without plucking, starving, painting and contorting themselves into unrecognizabilty, and compliant, uncomplaining invisibility.
But here’s the thing: After decades now of being both a feminist and a spiritual seeker/practitioner, I still haven’t made peace with how neatly certain elements of the sexist socialization of girls and women overlap with some of the spiritual aims that so many Western women are eager to adopt in yoga classes, with life coaches, or in gratitude workshops. I mean, is it a coincidence that a particularly self-denying form of spiritual self-improvement is taken up so enthusiastically by so many women, or that we become so invested in being “good” at it? I have in mind what might be described as “feminized” spiritual ideals, those spiritual characteristics and qualities that overlap with those associated with being a “properly socialized” woman—say, a good girlfriend, wife or mom—for instance, patience, forgiveness, gratitude, and acceptance. What can we make of the fact that, in the West, so much of the audience for these kinds of teachings are women who, to some degree, have probably been schooled for most of their lives about the dangers of anger, and the importance of passivity, soft speech, compliance, self-sacrifice, and self-denial? Do these “spiritual” qualities not line up almost too well with those associated with being a very good girl?
One way to deal with this disconcerting fact is simply to accept that it’s a strength of popular spiritual teachings that they foreground and encourage the development of stereotypically “feminine” attributes, ones that have historically been devalued. Some will insist that the spiritual emphasis on yin-based principles such as strength through patience rather than force is something to celebrate rather than to critique or worry about. And I agree that values such as forgiveness and acceptance are to be cultivated, and, yes, of course, that anger, manipulation and control—stereotypically “masculine” approaches—tend to create more suffering. In fact, this is much of what I write about here on OtherWise. But I also watch as women living unfulfilled lives provide spiritual rationalizations for following the same tired, sexist script that has dogged many of us since girlhood. Like this: If I agree to be treated like a second-class citizen in my own home, doesn’t that show that I’ve transcended the need for ego validation? If I repeatedly overlook the shitty behavior of others, especially that of men and boys, doesn’t that demonstrate how patient, forgiving and understanding I am? If I subjugate or deny my own dreams and desires—especially the most bodily or “selfish” of these—isn’t that proof that I’m grateful for what I have rather than focused on what might be missing in my life?
This practice of avoiding facing actual life questions, discomfort, and difficulties by appealing to spiritual principles and values is sometimes referred to as “spiritual bypassing.” I don’t love the term, but the concept is one that I think every spiritually serious person has got to wrestle with at some point, perhaps women especially. Because, while it is entirely normal that most of us are initially led to the spiritual path from a desire to alleviate our own suffering, this does not—cannot—mean avoiding the psychological and physical pains, struggles, and discomforts of being human. Or of being women born into and steeped in a sexist society. Even if we may call upon them to deal with acute periods of difficulty, our spiritual practices—including meditation—are not meant to function as a long-term blanket or chronic narcotic between us and the challenges of our lives. When our spiritual practices and ambitions become just one more way to distract or numb us from barely tolerable life circumstances, then, like any “mother’s little helper,” they make us weaker and smaller. This amounts to using spirituality to shoehorn ourselves into a life that does not fit rather than as a vehicle for open-ended expansion and realization. As I share that I have myself abused spirituality this way sometimes over the years, I will also share the encouragement I now give myself: May my spiritual path make me fiercer in my forgiveness, compassion and acceptance of myself than my sexist conditioning has primed me to be. And may it lead me ever closer to the life of freedom and joy actually worthy of me than the life that, as a girl and woman, others have tried to persuade me is good enough.
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