#sonia johnson

[haggishlyhagging]

I was standing before the desk of my doctoral dissertation adviser who was angrily telling me that I was not going about my dissertation in a way that suited him. He shouted at me, from his intimidating height, that my master's thesis adviser had told him I had pressured him unmercifully too and hadn't asked his advice either all along as I should have. I asked my fuming educator, as calmly as I could, why my master's adviser had never indicated this to me. I suggested that if he hadn't approved of the way I was proceeding, he should have said something to me at the time. And that since he always signed everything I took to him to sign, and since he had not stood in the way of my receiving my master's degree, I had simply assumed he approved.

Even as I asked the question, however, I knew the answer. I hadn't behaved femininely. I hadn't asked their advice. I hadn't acted as if I weren't capable of doing all this without their help. Hadn't, in short, acted incompetent, helpless, childish, and infinitely grateful for every little scrap of attention or advice they, as superior beings, had given me. I was twenty-eight years old when I began my master's research. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how to go about doing it. I proposed it to my adviser. He agreed. I did it. That was that—I thought.

Oh, but not so. I didn't lean on him. To me he was just part of the red tape. I cut through him as quickly as possible. And I had no time to linger. Already we had one child and were ready to conceive another. I had to move faster almost than humanly possible, and I did.

Now my doctoral adviser had heard from my previous master that I had not been sufficiently humble and impressed (did not respect the priesthood enough, meaning the men). But this one wasn't going to make the same mistake. He'd show me who was boss. I understood this as women understand it, not intellectually, just in the flesh of my face as he scowled at it, just in the resignation of my weary-with-watching-male-ego-signs flesh. And I knew exactly what to do about it, without thinking, without strategizing—cry. So he would know I wasn't trying to show I was as smart as he was and didn't need him to tell me what to do next. Cry—so he would realize I was just another weak little woman and he had no cause for alarm. Cry—so he would feel bigger and more rational, and still, above all else, still blessedly in control.

So I cried on purpose that day, and because I did I became Dr. Johnson a year later, moving with great speed through a system designed to slow doctoral candidates down. Because I cried.

If men hate to be thus manipulated, then they must allow us to be real, they must not force us to manipulate their egos in order to live a full human life. I hate such machinations. I despise them with all my heart. But women are forced to resort to them because men won't otherwise allow us to exist. And we have a right to life.

-Sonia Johnson, From Housewife to Heretic

[ncfreespace]

“We will know we are being effective against patriarchy when we are attacked, belittled, and laughed at, when we are told that we are brainless fools, doing everything wrong, will never get anywhere acting like this, are obviously wanton, unattractive to men, hateful, strident, vicious, and our own worst enemies”

- Sonia Johnson, Going Out of Our Minds

[candle-1-1-shine]

Today's Quote

“I decided to be a human being and not a role”

Sonia Johnson

[radfemmedia]

Sonia Johnson Media

Interviews

Viewpoints - March 5, 1982 Time: 29:18

Speeches

Going Farther Out of Our Minds (19??) Part 1 Time: 58:08 | Part 2 Time: 41:48 | Also Here Time: 1:39:58

Patriarchal Panic: Sexual Politics in the Mormon Church - Sept. 1, 1979 (Text Only)

Church Vs. Women - January 19,1980 Time: 28:30

Misc

Sonia Johnson Papers (Archive Holdings List)

Sonia Johnson Meetup (Year??) Time: 27:53

[scum-man-of-pesto]

Hey, could y'all link short tidbits (audio or video format) of your favorite excerpts from feminist speeches/talks/interviews/etc, especially if they're older/from known feminist activists. I'm prioritizing short but impactful segments for a project that I'm helping to whip up. Youtube links with timestamps are fine as well!

[matriarchybarbie]

"Feminist analysis, more than any other analysis of the human situation, has its origins in direct experience. All feminist theorists first observe and draw conclusions from their own lives; all feminist theory results from the transformation of that experience and observation into principle."

— Going Out of Our Minds by Sonia Johnson

why actual feminist analysis is in direct conflict with post-modernism

[justanotherbloodywoman]

Idk how accurate I'm being, but by my learning experience, studies in and about aboriginal communities have shown that things (and word & symbols) would often be defined in relation - in comparison, to other things. Similar and yet different ones like sun and moon, man and woman, water and earth would be defined based on opposition, so I don't think it is a stretch that men would originally very well think of themselves as death and destruction bringers when we, women, can very well symbolize life.

“Because men cannot create life, they specialise in death. They compensate by destroying.”

- Sonia Johnson, Going Out Of Our Minds

[thankyouforthememoriesworld]

Azzi for the U19 tournament

[haggishlyhagging]

Waiting is part of the stereotyped role for women—a large part. Waiting to grow, for breasts and hips to fill out, to wear lipstick, perfume, brassieres: waiting to star in the big role—man enticer. Waiting to be asked for a date. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting, waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting to be asked to dance. Waiting to be asked to go steady. Waiting to be asked to marry. Always waiting for someone else to act. Passively, miserably waiting.

And if the phone doesn't ring? If no one asks? If you wait, and wait, and wait, and Prince Charming doesn't come riding up? What can you do?

In the fifties, when I was a young woman, there was nothing you could do and still be considered decent. Being able to choose and act on that choice was a privilege reserved for men. That should have told me something. I think it did, but I didn't want—or didn't know how—to deal with it at the time. So I put it away in that deep unconscious filing cabinet reserved for matters which must have frightened me with their too-clear implications of female servitude and subordination. It took me forty-two years of gathering such data unbeknownst to myself before I finally accumulated more than my file could hold and it burst open, forcing me to look.

Waiting is one of the earmarks of subservience. As Milton truly says, "They also serve who only stand and wait." Waiting is a service. The words waitress, lady-in-waiting, waiter are all service titles. Waiting delineates rank. Sergeants don't keep colonels waiting, but generals do. Teachers don't keep principals waiting, but superintendents do. Those in power can make their subordinates wait, can expect them to wait. To keep someone waiting is manipulation, a method of maintaining control; it is a way of announcing and wielding power.

My unconscious servitude to Rick began early in our courtship. I remember sitting on a bench by the service station for several hours while he fixed his car. It was an unspoken assumption in my youth that girls loved to keep boys company during such times, liked to hold things for them, enjoyed watching them clean the points, or change the brake shoes. Having their girl hovering around must have been like having their own private cheerleader. Girls did it because we wanted to be with them more than they wanted to be with us. We were more emotionally dependent upon them, as we had been trained to be. We needed to be around them, and though they liked having us around, they had other interests in their lives. We had been trained to have only one major interest, despite all the other things we might do, and that was them. Not because it is any more natural for us females to be dependent and to base our entire lives upon some male's approval and presence, but because patriarchy socialized us thus. It is great for male egos. It is catastrophic for ours.

But I didn't get a real taste of the despotism of waiting until Rick discovered the computer at the University of Minnesota. The next ten years were one long struggle against the humiliation of being constantly rejected for the computer—Rick's "iron mistress," his "three sexty." Ten years of being completely forgotten for whole days and suddenly remembered apologetically, of my putting the uneaten supper away and going to bed at midnight or one or two A.M., not having heard from Rick since morning when he promised to be home by six.

That he should have thought it natural to keep a human being waiting for six, seven, twelve hours without word made it clear to me again and again how he thought of me, how not completely human I was to him, how much just a part of himself—not a separate or real person to be taken seriously, or about whose esteem he needed to worry. He would never have kept any male friend whose friendship he valued waiting so consistently for years. No peer would have put up with it.

At the time, I thought it was all my fault. If I were more interesting, more sexy, more something, he would want to come home to me. I blamed myself, when the fault lay in Rick's patriarchal world view.

Part of the unwritten definition of wife is: the one who waits.

I tried to tell Rick over those long years how often I felt rejected and figuratively slapped in the face. I couldn't help but believe he secretly enjoyed the idea of my waiting for him, the constant service of wondering and worrying about him in his absence. Surely there was something more behind his making me wait than mere forgetfulness. He was an extremely intelligent man, but I couldn't get him to understand how deeply he wounded me by showing disdain for the hours of my life I wasted in waiting for him and for the hurt and rage and erosion of love for him this brought about in my heart.

And through it all, I must never make him wait for me. I must never reverse the sadomasochistic game. Yet by calling it that, I admit my own collusion in it. Years ago I should have ceased to care unduly when he came or went, should have planned my life as I wanted without consulting his. Should simply not have allowed him to tyrannize and manipulate me. But I knew that the moment I refused to supply this apparently necessary ego support, I would lose him.

And I did. When I became interested in the ERA, he often had to wait for me—to get off the phone, to come home from meetings, to come to bed. I ceased to pay much attention to when he came and went. I no longer cared a great deal when he was hours late or rejoiced overmuch when he was early. My life no longer centered around him, as his had never centered around me. I began to live an independent life, such as only men are entitled to. That's when I overstepped my bounds and it was all over.

And I've thought since, with considerable wryness, how for nineteen years I waited for him, and how he couldn't wait for me for one.

-Sonia Johnson, From Housewife to Heretic

[woman-for-women]

[cr1msondll]

Pt.3

[yourlocalsonia2]

New trope unlocked: tragic found family, where some are doomed by the narrative but they still stick together through everything

[kittyit]

max dashu is really so amazing. she spoke at the first womens event we ever wandered stupidly into and her presentation literally blew my mind. i was like oh shit ok this is what's up. stan max dashu

[silentlondon]

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 5

Pordenone changes a person. I don’t just mean in the way that my bloodstream is now 80% espresso. It changes your aspirations. My dream now is to live in an apartment designed by Sonia Delaunay, watching Peter Elfelt’s dance films (they are playing before several of the screenings) all day. For loungewear, I would choose the louche shawl-collared robe sported by Jaque Catelain in Le Vertige, and…

[sursulapitschi]

I do think she has a point though. Throughout the book she details the different methods of feminist activism, their reasoning for them at the time and their outcome. And each time she comes to the conclusion that it didn't really work and tries something different (e.g. when she realised after the hunger strike that, even though it felt good and worthwhile at the time, noone had actually cared and they had only done harm to themselves - because it's a form of protest that works for men).

In the end, she is out of ideas of how to change the system, because all of them work within the framework of the system itself and thereby strengthen it (the masters tools and all that). Her conclusion as far as I understood is that we as women should stop trying to beg and pressure men to grant us better living conditons within the existing system, but rather gather together and live as much as possible as though it was already the case. By this she means that we should be women-focused and gather the tools to live independently from men and just do it.

I agree that she takes it a bit too far with the magical thinking, but otherwise I think her conclusion makes a lot of sense. I found that reading her essay "Taking our eyes off the guys" helps a lot to understand her mindset.

In my opinion her book is really unique and insightful because other than most feminist books I know it's not based on theory of how patriarchy works, but about how to actually change it, while having the experiences to back it up. Sure it's a bit depressing, because we want to think that things like civil disobedience work, and she found that on the whole it didn't actually change a lot. But I think her perspective on this as someone who actually tried all of those things is important.

I read the book as like a memoir, where she shares the wisdom she gained from her life and tries to spare other women from going through the same process herself and be able to spend their energy starting at the point she spent years to get to.

I’ve been quoting a great deal from Sonia Johnson’s Going Out Of Our Minds lately, both on here and irl (my apologies to my very bored friends).

I’ve very nearly finished it, and thought it might be valuable to note the below for anyone thinking of reading it, particularly on the basis of something I’ve quoted from it:

I do not like or agree with this book.

Towards the beginning, there is a very strong chapter (Chapter 3, Women Against Women) on ego clashes between two or more women, the methods women use to tear each other down, why, and how to counter it. Chapter 4 is insightful into the experience of fasting/hunger strikes, and the middle chapters about Johnson’s run for president are interesting too.

But as the book goes on, and works it’s way towards the revelation she references from the first chapter, it becomes increasingly irritating. Johnson wholeheartedly espouses an approach I consider to be fundamentally postmodern - what might now be called manifesting, or the idea that you can ‘think reality different’. The idea that if you think and feel differently about the world and reality, it will change to reflect your thoughts. I disagree with this conception.

I’ve been chewing over why Johnson seems to believe this idea so wholeheartedly, why it makes so much sense to her, and why it leaves me so cold, and I keep coming back to her personal history, of which I know very little save this: that she was Mormon for 40 years.

I think this makes a great deal of sense. I think that the postmodern approach of ‘thinking reality different’, despite its real-world ineffectiveness - or perhaps because of it - is incredibly attractive to the formerly religious. I think this is part of why it’s caught on so entirely in the United States, but is weaker in less faith-based societies. I see very little difference between the idea that changing your attitude to something will change it in reality, and the idea that prayer will fix your problems. The magical thinking necessary for Johnson’s argument does not vibe with this non-believer, any more than other faith-based approaches. I don’t experience the thought process known as ‘belief’ - if you are the same, due warning, this book may not please you any more than it did me.