Female
It is somewhat easy to identify the ways that my gender influences my everyday life (I carry pepper spray with me everywhere, I don’t walk alone at night, etc.), but I have never considered the ways it influences what I write. Elizabeth Flynn’s “Composing as a Woman” did help me to see that I often write about interpersonal relationships and people that I love instead of personal achievements, but beyond that, I am not sure how being female influences my writing.
After reviewing some of the recent blog posts and personal musings I’ve written, I am beginning to wonder if I subconsciously reject my gender identity in my writing. This does not have to do with an underlying gender struggle; I think it is because I want to stand in individualism in my writing. Like I have mentioned in previous blog posts, writing is a selfish act for me. I don’t write for others. I write as a single unit, not a part of anything larger. In adopting that “me versus the world” mentality, I think that I have accidentally rejected a very important part of my identity in order to preserve my solitude.
Maybe it even goes beyond subconscious rejection; maybe it’s intentional avoidance. I want to write for me, not for my gender and fellow women. In order to align my writing with myself and myself alone, I don’t acknowledge anything in my writing that doesn’t stem from a deeper part of me than basic qualities, like gender. By doing this, I try to bury any influence my gender may have on my writing. After considering the essays we’ve read about gender’s influence on writing, I realize that this is both a wasted opportunity and a disservice to my gender. It should not be “me against the world, including women.” No, it should be “me and women against the world.” The female gender has enough to deal with. We don’t need to be pitting ourselves against one another. I think my first step against combating my “me versus the world” attitude in my writing is to make a conscious, intentional effort to incorporate my gender identity into my writing. To be completely candid, I haven’t the slightest idea of how to do this, but I know I need to start.
