Buckle up, y'all. Lily's in a rage and should probably not be blogging.
By this time in my life, I recognize that I'm pretty reliable for sniffing out silver linings in situations that may seem a little dark. Like some bright silver thread, if I can pick it up I'll be able to follow it through to the end of the storm and back into sunny days. Swinging like Tarzan from one small success or “at least I learned something” to the next. Giving myself mad props, I've done just that a fair number of times and I'm proud of it. Proud that despite experiencing some personal challenges and disasters, I make it through and I try at life again. Always hanging from some silver lining.
But now it's just time to talk about a reality that does not offer any sort of consolation prize to the people who get shat on. This is a cloud that covers my every waking moment spent out of my house. From the way it looks to me, I'd imagine it's an approaching storm every morning for all the muchachas under 65 who are getting ready to start the daily grind. And the more time I spend with it hanging over my head, thunder rumbling, the less hope I find in a silver lining for the women in my community. You can probably guess where I'm going once I've singled out the ladies (“Ladies,” Demetri Martin would say).
Foul demon, thy name is Machismo. This cultural phenomenon is unbelievably prevalent here, at least in Guanacaste. Lily, you might say. Remember when you lived in Bolivia? Remember when you lived in Ecuador? You'd be right to ask, and of course I had run-ins with the concept whilst previously abroad. But they were incidental, something I could often laugh off and, remember, I was a student. Students aren't professionals, aren't responsible for maintaining any sort of organizational reputation (You could argue that in theory they do, but my field research shows...). What did I care if some leering drunk guy late in the club district was calling me a goddess and making all kinds of preposterous propositions? I usually walked in the company of gringo friends, or at least with a local compañero or two. It gave me great liberty to be dismissive, to treat it like it didn't really apply to me and that I was above it.
Which seems kind of stupid, now...how can I be above something aimed directly at me? I am objectified and there's not a damn thing I can do about it in the instant I am singled out and made to be less than what I am. The vulgarity of machismo is not something I can avoid because it's not something for which my engaged participation is necessary. It's a thought, it's a string of words and it's out there in the world no matter what I'd like to do about it. Hola mi amor, porqué no tomamos una cervezita y después...
In true Lily/Kathleen style, because I have no control over it...I get pissy. Absolutely smoldering anger churns in my veins when I realize that once again, I've been reduced to blonde hair and a skirt. When I was 16 in Bolivia, I did not care because I was getting attention I'd never had stateside. When I was 20 in Ecuador, I thought, “Oh, this again?” When I heard it earlier today on the street I wanted to turn around and scream, “I have a NAME. And a mandate to serve your community selflessly for the next two years, so can I get a little respect?!”
Wanted to. Did not. Called a friend who circuitously got me thinking about the things that make me who I am.
Doctor Who. Liberty Thrift. Nervous Nikki and the Chill Pills. Cherry Coke Zero. I can't jettison the random assortment of shtuff that defined me and my life just because I can't do them anymore. I am who I am, regardless of my circumstances. Being an independent decision maker and free-thinker with a fire under my butt to always be more than what people expected (albeit sometimes grudgingly)...that was part of who I was, too. That's part of why Peace Corps wanted me as a Volunteer and it's why I'm planning on getting all kinds of awesome stuff accomplished with my community. I guess some men here can try to make me the subject of local notions about what American women and women in general are like. But honey, I've been marching to my own powerful beat since the day I said hello to this world. Mine are character traits that I'm not willing hide under the bushel of machismo just because I've got breasts. Let that light continue to shine, please.
I feel safe in my community – please do not misunderstand me. Peace Corps Costa Rica has done a great job of placing me in a home with windows that close, doors that lock, etc. and I'm surrounded by friends and family. Throughout training I've seen firsthand how important maintaining Volunteer safety is to the people in charge. All I'm saying is that now the catcalls aren't met by a dismissive snort. It's not fun anymore when a guy tries to put moves on me after we've danced like, two merengues because he thinks it'll happen. I'm not flattered by and I don't respond to endless streams of texts that are clearly fishing for an invitation to come over (I gave out my phone number one time. ONE TIME! Terrible choices are made in the name of trying to be polite).
When I'm sweating through a shirt, make-up running, mentally exhausted from just talking to people, coughing up a storm because I'm sick and my legs look like I have smallpox from all my mosquito bites...I know I know I KNOW this is not my best look. So I know that it's not because I'm overwhelmingly beautiful that I'm getting these comments. And do I want to hear how preciosa I am in this moment? No. If someone wanted to shout out that it will all be okay, that you're doing this for a greater social good, you're a powerful and educated female who can be a good leader, that you'll one day look at the mosquito scars on your legs and fondly think...I changed people's lives. That would be okay. That, however, would not be machismo.
The most heart-wrenching part is not my personal confrontation with machismo. It's a thirteen year-old girl on a bike who listens to the catcalls issuing from the bus stop and smiles as she bumps along down the road. Passivity, acceptance, complacency. These are a few of the foundational structures for machismo that women knowingly lay but refuse to acknowledge. That is what gets me the most – I'll be gone in two years to a world where at least the machismo is more disguised, easier to ignore. I go home, and the women in my site will still be in my site.
There's ten million other things that people here want me to do in the way of projects. But all I've got on my brain today is creating some sort of glorious super-project for empowering the female population. A project that finally puts a wooden stake through the heart of this living nightmare. I think of young girls here gaining a sense of who they are, feeling like they are valuable and own their roles as children, sisters, daughters. Not just living receptacles that collect pressures of what other people want them to be. Forming powerful and supportive friendships with other females of all ages in my community. I changed people's lives.
But then I think of that guy. Hola, Lily, que rica, te amo. And I don't feel capable of anything at all.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Never, never, never, never, never, never give in to machismo. It is a disease and deserves to be treated as such. I have heard our own cross cultural trainers in the past tell PCVs, "Well, it's just part of the culture...there's nothing you can do about it." Nonsense. (Those trainers don't work for us anymore!) Until CR girls and women are educated and empowered, and until CR boys and men are educated and sensitized, sure, it will continue as a social disease. But that doesn't mean you can't do something about in Pozas, maybe something that could blossom into a national movement, maybe something that could help lift the dismal relationship between genders in this country to a higher plane of resepct and appreciation. And if you you need collaborators, count me in.
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